[ti]open[/ti]Rock is Dead

Alice had been spending a great deal of time exploring her immediate area as soon as the game started instead of attempting things like quests. She had the sense that she had all the time in the world to do all the quests and catch Pokémon and talk to her Mom and whatnot - what was wrong with snooping in everyone's house, really? She'd done it in every other Pokémon game, barging into NPCs' houses and engaging with every possible tile on the search for hidden items and every tiny detail of each game-accessible area. She wasn't just going to stop doing that because the NPCs were wildly more realistic this time around.

She'd just finished going through the diaries of one of her hometown's NPCs, Stella sleeping peacefully on her lap, and left the house to take a little stroll through the woods. Was it actually possible to encounter Pokémon before her catching tutorial? She was about to find out and began to hop through the tall grass, only becoming aware of the sky rapidly darkening when the shadows made by the trees completely swallowed her surroundings. "Uh... hello?" she said, tapping her UI and finding it wasn't working. In the next moment, she heard an ominous guitar riff nearby and abruptly recalled every Pokémon game had a professor, a Mom, and a rival at the start.

She walked forward and screamed as something instantly crashed into her. "HOLY SH--!" The rival can attack me now?! "You're supposed to attack my Pokémon, you IDIOT - oh!" This wasn't her rival. It was another player, an undeniably adorable one with long hair and cute cat ears - a similar to her own fox ears. "I'm sorry! I'm in the middle of your tutorial, I'm so sorry! I'll leave right now," she said quickly, assuming the girl was like her and would want to engage the rival without someone else breathing down her neck. "Are you okay? I totally wasn't looking where I was going! That guitar kinda scared the crap out of me."

Tuesday

The other player - Tuesday, according to her HUD - didn't seem even slightly bothered that Alice had interrupted her tutorial quest. Actually, she looked quite pleased if her laughter was any indication. She rose to her feet and declared a challenge into the darkness where the thunderous guitar riff had come from. The sound of a second riff joining the first was a shock to her.

"We can do our tutorials at the same time? That is kinda fun." God, she knew she was going to be way too obsessed with this game. "Well, this is happening, I guess. Might as well be in the beginning as God - er, Nintendo intended." Alice pulled out Chikorita's Pokéball and let Stella come out to land on the ground near where Munna was now floating.

Moonlight illuminated their makeshift battlefield, revealing the two Rivals grinning manically before them. The only difference between the pair of them was their caps (both backwards) were turned at different angles.

"TUESDAY!" the left Rival shouted, pointing his finger challengingly. The right Rival reflected him exactly, pointing and shouting, "ALICE!"

"Yeah?" said Alice, waiting for the inevitable declarations of ass-kicking and Pokémon Master-ing. To Tuesday, she muttered, "Have you battled yet? The mechanics are all the same, right?" It was different than other Pokémon games, but it couldn't be that different... hopefully. She was still reeling from how real it all felt.

"I'm about to rock your world," the Rival promised with another strum of the electric guitar. "You. Me. Pokémon battle. If you last longer than a couple rounds, maybe I'll even give you an advance copy of my new album." He waved a CD case in front of his face like a fan.

Alice made a face. "Yeah, no. Hard pass. You have an uncanny resemblance to a guy I used to know in high school. I think his band still plays in his mom's garage?"

Her rival's face twitched and then smoothed seconds later - not quite enough to faze this guy. A pop-up appeared on Alice's UI, prompting her to name her Rival. While it would be great to give him a funny and clever name, Alice wasn't that funny or clever. So she entered the name of the guy from high school he reminded her of: Tristan.

"Alright, Stella, let's do this - wait, how do you do this?" She swung to look at Tuesday again. "Mind if you go first? You seem like you know what you're doing. I literally started this game, like... a few hours ago."

"Otherwise he’ll just chase you all over the game until you battle him. Really fucking annoying."

Alice's pulled a face of horror. "Oh god, yeah I think it'd be better to just get this over with." Under the circumstances in which they'd met, she suspected Tuesday said this from experience. But why would you want to run from the starting tutorials - oh wait. She'd only started the game a few hours ago and had already been ignoring the starting tutorials. She really wasn't much different in that sense.

She was more than happy to stand and watch as the battle notification appeared for both of their rivals, prompting Tuesday to send out her Whirlipede. Her rival sent out Chimchar (Alex mentally wincing at the not-great type match-up), but Tuesday did not seem particularly fazed possibly because her Whirlipede knew Rollout. And she did know how to put on a show, glowing with confidence and the perfect amount of dramatic effect.

"So much for the enabled Pokémon speech with that one," she chuckled, though she found the Bug Pokémon's enthusiasm adorable.

Okay, attack, be showoffy for the cameras...? Like The Office? She wasn't gonna think too hard about it. "Get ready, Stella!" She pointed him forward, and Tristan took that as her signal she was ready to begin. He fingered out a bizarre tune before letting out a hoot and throwing out his Pokéball. Unsurprisingly, a Blitzle appeared in front of Stella. She was certain all the punk rockers in the original fifth gen games all had Blitzles or some other electric type.

It was plain to see Tristan's Blitzle would outspeed her Chikorita, but the nice thing about her partner was that his much beefier base defense and resistance to Electric-type moves would guarantee Stella would hardly feel a thing. Gah, what am I doing? She was thinking too much like a competitive player already. She needed to just stick to moves and type advantages - sitting there stalling her next move for the best possible strategy wasn't going to make it fun, and Tuesday probably thought she had no clue what to do like a total noob. She just needed to be in the moment.

"Not scared yet?" Tristan taunted. "Maybe this will jolt you! Blitzle, Shock Wave, go!" He rammed out a few chaotic riffs, the higher notes screeching in her ears, making her grind her teeth together. She had no idea if Stella heard her warning shout over the noise, but it was all the same - he practically shook off the Electric attack with minimal damage.

"That's right, walk it off, buddy!" she called out cheerfully. "And then Tackle it as hard as you can!" she added, ignoring the gnawing worry Blitzle might have the ability Static in this game even if it hadn't in other games. Stella slammed into the Blitzle, the blow knocking it off balance, but not severely enough to be dazed for longer than a second.

"You look nervous, Alice," mocked Tristan. Or was it a mock? He'd thrown in a wink with it. "Hey, I won't go easy on you, but I'll gladly soften the blow of your crushing loss tonight at dinner."

Dinner? That hadn't come with the familiar ping of a new quest. "NPCs can't like... ask you out, right?" she asked Tuesday for confirmation. Maybe it was just a weird bit of dialogue?