HELP!
Is there anyone who can help me?
Team Rocket has put out an all-region bounty on me.
There are too many of them.
I don’t think I can get away.
The player asking for help was Moon.
Naoki skimmed through the post and pieced together what had happened in Kanto.
Moon had joined Team Rocket through a chance encounter, but she could not bring herself to steal Pokémon from passersby, and she could not stomach what Team Rocket was doing to vulnerable Pokémon in their experiments.
In the end she defected, handed a collection of classified intelligence to the Kanto League, and triggered the destruction of several Team Rocket bases holding critical data.
Team Rocket’s response had been immediate and overwhelming.
Every Rocket member across the Kanto region was hunting her, and the pursuit had drawn in a high-ranking Team Rocket executive.
Naoki stared at the screen for a moment, unsure what to say.
He scrolled through the replies.
The comment section was in an uproar.
Players from every corner of the world were pouring in, debating the faction conflict event this one player had inadvertently ignited.
Even players in entirely different regions were considering making the trip to Kanto, because the listed rewards were extraordinary.
Faction Conflict — Kanto League vs Team Rocket.
Open to players currently in the Kanto region only.
Choose your faction and complete faction objectives to claim rewards.
Support the Kanto League: Upon event conclusion, receive an invitation to join the Kanto League, League Credit rewards, a large increase to reputation, one rare Pokémon Egg issued by the Kanto League, and +50 affinity with a mysterious figure.
Support Team Rocket: Upon event conclusion, receive an invitation to join Team Rocket, a large League Credit reward, a large increase to notoriety.
Any player who successfully captures the defector will receive a rare Pokémon personally selected by a mysterious figure, an immediate promotion from grunt to senior executive with expanded permissions, and +50 affinity with the mysterious figure.
Even Naoki felt a flicker of temptation reading through that.
Still, this Moon did not seem particularly sharp.
Looking purely at the rewards, helping Team Rocket was the obviously more lucrative option.
A significant number of players would choose that side, which meant there would be people actively hunting her.
The smartest thing she could do right now was go completely dark.
Hide, protect herself, and stop communicating with anyone, especially on an open forum where her situation was broadcasting her location and movements to everyone watching.
Instead she was posting publicly asking for help.
Though it seemed she had at least realized the problem.
My Pidgey evolved into Pidgeotto trying to protect me and it still wasn’t enough against that woman called Ariana.
My Gastly stayed behind to buy me time.
I just got the notification.
Gastly is gone.
If anyone can help me, please.
After that post, Moon went silent.
Below it, a string of players were still trying to find out where she was.
Naoki narrowed his eyes.
But she had something.
Ariana was not an ordinary Team Rocket member.
She was one of the four highest-ranking executives in the organization, second only to Giovanni himself.
And this player had escaped from her.
Two words surfaced in Naoki’s mind before he could stop them.
Talented recruit.
Was this not exactly the kind of person Geeta was looking for?
He had been thinking too narrowly this whole time.
Why limit himself to searching for Trainers native to this world?
A player like Moon could join the Paldea League just as well as anyone else.
Recruit players and bring them to Paldea to work under Geeta.
Put them to use for the League and collect the bonuses and promotions that came with it.
Naoki’s eyes narrowed slowly.
Someone like Moon.
The reward for bringing in a recruit like her could be substantial.
He sent her a friend request.
She declined immediately.
He sent another one.
This time she accepted.
A voice message came through immediately.
“You people need to stop trying to trick me.
I trusted someone just like you and that’s why Gastly is gone.”
The voice was thick with tears, young and unsteady, the kind that belonged to someone around fourteen years old.
Naoki waited a moment, then typed back.
Larry: I’m not here to trick you.
I’m not even in the Kanto region.
I just saw what happened and I’m offering you a way out.
He paused, then added one more line to put her at ease.
Larry: I won’t ask where you are.
You have my word.
She did not reply immediately.
He could almost feel her weighing it on the other end.
Eventually the message came.
Moon: You’re actually trying to help me?
Larry: Find the nearest port city.
Don’t tell anyone who you are or where you’re going.
Buy a ticket to the Paldea region.
Actually, skip the ticket.
Kanto is finished for you.
Come to Paldea.
There are people here who will keep you safe.
Moon: …
At that same moment, somewhere in the Kanto region, deep inside a cave far from any city, a fourteen-year-old girl stared at the message on her screen with tears running quietly down her face.
She was not a skilled player.
She had never tried to be.
In the real world she was an ordinary middle school student.
A few months ago she had seen the game called Pokémon and fallen in love with how it looked, and she had pestered her parents until they bought her a holographic headset so she could go in.
She had never chased strength or tried to grind her way to power.
Every day she simply played alongside her Pokémon and explored the world with them, happy and unhurried.
Pidgeotto, Pikachu, Meowth, Gastly.
Together they had wandered the open world.
With Meowth’s Pickup ability they gathered sellable items from the wild, and when they reached the next town they set up a small stall at the market and sold what they had found to cover the cost of their travels.
Then she had stumbled into Team Rocket, and everything changed.
Pidgeotto was badly injured.
Pikachu and Meowth were both running on almost nothing.
And Gastly had stayed behind to protect her and never came back.
What was she supposed to do now?
Who was she supposed to trust?
Moon wiped her face with the back of her hand.
She was afraid to log out.
Even offline, her character would not disappear.
The game would take over and move her according to her established behavioral patterns.
She was terrified that if she logged out now, she would come back to find Pikachu and Meowth gone forever.
Everyone said the same thing.
If your character died in the game, you could never log back in again.
She had heard about players who had gone to protest outside the game company’s offices over exactly that.
There had even been cases of people suffering brain death in the real world because of what happened to them in the game.
And yet the company had faced no consequences.
They paid out compensation and moved on.
By any reasonable standard the game should have been banned by now.
But Pokémon had not been banned.
If anything, the government was actively encouraging people to enter it.
Rumor had it that even soldiers in the military were playing.
And the news had been running the same story on repeat for weeks.
Playing Pokémon gradually strengthened a person’s physical constitution in the real world.
Given enough time, a player could take a direct hit from a hundred-thousand-volt electric attack and walk away without a scratch.