“Well, I don’t know what fuintim o youtg warer is, but I simply have to have it,” said Morgana.

She had been gathering root beer barrels in the Western District as part of a belated Halloween minigame when the mysterious trade request went out. In excitement, Bergamot dropped her barrel, which splashed and fizzed on the dusty road. “I’m fascinated. Look, Guillotine! It must be a grand riddle. A cipher, even!”

<I think it’s just a typo,> said Guillotine Flatflipper. The Piplup– and all her Pokemon, in fact– seemed able to see the HUD in some form, which was no surprise given the apparent level of technology in this setting. Still, there were limits. They could certainly see Global Chat screens, and even the map. Bring up ‘user settings,’ however, and their attention seemed to suddenly wander.

Morgana wondered if the real world played similar tricks with misdirection.

She closed out of her UI with the custom ‘ricocheting bullet’ sound effect she’d set and typed in the coordinates for the newly-opened Route 8. She’d missed the Zapdos Opening event, so she hadn’t actually been there yet, but she’d played the demo at UNOVRCon and felt she had a strong idea of what to expect.

She was wrong.

The demo she’d played had been lively and vibrant. The air had buzzed with insect life; the moss on the city streets had crawled with ambient grass-types. The city had felt reclaimed, not abandoned.

A profound sense of yawning emptiness filled her senses. Wind, rushing through grates. Light, scattered and subdued. The sweet smell of root beer was gone, replaced with rust. It smelled like a place you were not supposed to be.

“You’re that Onix player!” Bergamot pointed accusingly at a small boy she could see on the other side of the lab. Or perhaps ‘gleefully’ was more accurate. She advanced on Saint like a bride on a deadline, blue skirts sweeping the steel. “How did you get so miniscule? Why, I could even catch you in my net.”

To demonstrate, she popped it out of her inventory and swung it energetically at the child (?) the same way you kill flies with a flyswatter. With extreme elasticity. Whoo-PAH!

"So dramatic!" Bergamot exclaimed. She attempted to finish scooping up the small child so she could heft him victoriously above her head, but alas, he was heavier than he looked. The net pole looked ready to bend and snap at any moment as she tugged and hauled at it, planting both feet on the concrete for extra leverage. "I only came here for— did you say horse?"

Why did she feel so indignant...

The villainess gave up trying to elevate Saint and flicked the net back off of him, sighing crossly. "In any case, hand over your fuintim o youtg warer, I've come to collect." She did a double-take as she pulled up a trade window (richocheting bullet sounds) and realized Saint didn't even have two trainer stars. "Ugh! Fine, and take this..." Morgana scrolled through her inventory quickly, settling on a cosmetic item she'd pilfered from some other helpless n00b, "...feline seal for it. Done! I mean, you know what will happen if you refuse, don't you?"

She made a neck-snapping motion, as if she might simply reach forward with her white gloves and suddenly twist the child's head backwards like the cap of a coke bottle. It was a little too brutal even for Morgana, who immediately looked troubled. "Yuck, apologies, I don't know why I did that. I meant-" She pantomimed a series of strange gestures instead, which seemed to include breaking Saint in half over her knee several times and then kicking the pieces over the side of the abyss. "Where are we, anyway? Is this a laboratory?"