1 The Arrival

At the current time, a young male no older than eighteen can be seen running through what looked to be a rather open field of grass. He had a head of smooth straight black hair and a pair of golden eyes, a slim yet athletic physique with fair skin, and wearing a casual yet interesting set of attire.

His clothing consisted of a white and golden t-shirt that stuck well to his body, along with a pair of sleek long black pants and black running shoes. He had black fingerless gloves on, as well as a pair of white and gold headphones covering his ears.

Confusion.

That was the one single feeling that really overwhelmed any others right now for this young man, he was confused as to how and why he appeared in Pokemon Online. He was literally just resting on his couch getting ready to actually get onto the game, but that was the thing, he hadn't entered yet.

Yet, here he was.

It wasn't just that, he had found himself logged in here, in this unfamiliar land of pure grass. If he wasn't completely losing his mind, he did recall logging out in Lumiose City at the top of the Prism Tower. He was just enjoying the view before logging out to eat dinner.

As he ran, he seemed to also be focused on a holographic screen which can be seen floating in front of his eyes. Looking closer, it looked to be displaying a chat screen of sorts where there were various messages having been sent through.

『Zane』- I'm going through a forest right now, I think I'm close

『Zane』- I see your icon on the minimap, just stay still!

『Adrius』- Got it

Coming to a stop, the one known as Adrius stopped running and looked up at his minimap to see a green dot with a name above it approaching his location. Turning towards the nearby forest, Adrius waited until the leaves of the bushes near the trees shook violently.

"Adrius!" A male's voice called out to him as he saw a young male no older than he was rushing out from the trees before running towards him. The male quickly came to a stop once he got to Adrius, panting slightly as he slowly but surely caught his breath. "Thank god we found each other!"

"No kidding, I'm so confused right now..."

The male in front of him, Zane, was a friend Adrius met in the game quite some time ago. Zane had snow-white hair along with a pair of icy blue eyes, slightly pale skin and a rather slim build. His clothing consisted of black shorts and tall brown boots, and he appeared to be wearing a blue t-shirt underneath a white coat with white fur lining the sleeves and collar.

"Yeah, what's happening anyway? I was literally just flying over the ocean before finding myself teleported here!" Zane frowned heavily in confusion as he rubbed the back of his head. "What about you?"

"The thing is, I wasn't even in the game..."

"What?"

"I wasn't in the game."

"You're kidding, right?" Zane stared at Adrius with a look of incredulous disbelief, the male in question merely sighed before shaking his head. Zane scratch his head even harder as he groaned. "That makes no sense... what the hell's going on?!"

"Calm down, panicking won't do us any good. Maybe it's just a thing the developers are testing, though it wouldn't explain my situation." Adrius was just as confused and frustrated as Zane was, but he didn't want to just start screaming. "Check your menu, is everything the same?"

"Let me check."

Both males quickly went into their menus before looking through everything, and from the looks of it, everything was the same as they remembered. They both then went into their trainer cards and saw that everything was in order, nothing seemed to have changed.

.

『Trainer Card - Adrius』

● Title: World Champion

● Player Level: 512

● Starting Region: Sinnoh

● Trainer ID: 00000000105

● Pokedollars: 585,600,000

● Region Progress: [Kanto (Complete)] [Johto (Complete)] [Hoenn (Complete)] [Sinnoh (Complete)] [Unova (Complete)] [Kalos (Complete)] [Alola (Complete)] [Galar (Complete)] [Paldea (Complete)]

.

『Trainer Card - Zane』

● Title: Sinnoh Elite Four

● Player Level: 422

● Starting Region: Galar

● Trainer ID: 00000015035

● Pokedollars: 278,230,000

● Region Progress: [Kanto (Complete)] [Johto (Complete)] [Hoenn (Complete)] [Sinnoh (Complete)] [Unova (Complete)] [Kalos (Complete)] [Alola (Complete)] [Galar (Complete)] [Paldea (Complete)]

.

"All looks good. I still have all my items from the looks of it, and my Pokemon all looked to be the same." Zane nodded as he stated this. His face soon twisted into a look of suspicion and concern. "The logout button in the menu's gone though, the hell do we do?"

"Not much we can do." Adrius sighed as he continued looking through his menu. "Check your friend's list, see if anyone else is online. I'll try to contact as many others as I can. From what I can see, there seems to be a good deal of others who are all online right now."

"Good idea, maybe they're here as well... wherever here is." Both males then went silent as they continued to send a message to as many of their friends that were currently being shown to be online. "Dude, you were right! The others are saying they're lost as well."

"Same here..." Adrius frowned as he held his chin in thought. "What the hell is going on here... whatever, let's try and gather everyone together. Let's tell them all to meet up in the northern area, I saw a large flat rocky area up there some time ago. It'll be hard to miss amongst all the grass."

"Right, let's make our way there ourselves too then."

ㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡ

Adrius and Zane then went ahead and informed all of those on their friends list regarding them wanting to meet up as soon as possible, they also made sure to tell those that they told to also inform anyone they may be with or are also on their list of friends.

Since Adrius already knew where the place was where he wanted them all to gather, both he and Zane quickly made their way there and were currently waiting for the others to arrive. They weren't entirely sure how many other players were here, but there may be quite a lot of them.

"I see someone!" Zane quickly jumped up to his feet and pointed towards the distance and up to the sky. Adrius looked over to see that someone was flying over on a very large pokemon, and if you narrowed your eyes, you could see the person on top waving at them. "I think that's Freya!"

"Yo, guys!" The one riding on top of the large pokemon flying towards them shouted with a big smile. Due to the incredible speed that the pokemon flew, the trainer quickly arrived at their position before jumping off. "I finally made it here."

The girl in front of them looked no older than they were, having a rather petite build and creamy-coloured skin. She had silver hair with multiple snow-white strands that were tied into a side ponytail, and she also had a pair of rounded deep blue eyes.

.

『Trainer Card - Freya』

● Title: Kalos Elite Four

● Player Level: 430

● Starting Region: Kalos

.

"Dramatic entrance, much?" Zane scoffed slightly as he stared at the pokemon that slowly descended before hovering behind the female. "Coming on over on your Yveltal?"

While many trainers had legendaries in their possession, only a number of them were actually allowed by the game to use them in their official teams. Those people being those who hold significant titles, such as Elite Four and Champion titles.

For the three here right now, both Zane and Freya were allowed to have one legendary max in their official teams. On the other hand, while people with a champion title can have two, Adrius was allowed three due to his unique champion title.

"So, you got a problem?" Freya shrugged with a smirk on her face before materialising a Pokeball into her hand, pointing it at the green serpentine dragon behind her as the dragon soon got sucked into the ball in the form of a shining blue light. "Is it only us so far?"

"Seems like it." Adrius chimed in as he stood up from his seated position and walked over. However, his eyes blinked before his mouth curled up into a small smile as he crossed his arms. "Not for long though, take a look over there."

Both Freya and Zane turned their heads before widening their eyes in surprise when they saw multiple others now flying through the sky towards their location, a number of them waving towards them like Freya had done. There were also other trainers who could be seen riding pokemon that quickly travelled across the ground.

Just by looking at how the sky and ground were covered by countless different pokemon, the number of other players easily reached over the hundred mark. Soon enough, the players began to descend and land on the rocky terrain before returning their pokemon.

As the place continued to get packed with hundreds of players, the amount of space was quickly diminishing as a few decided to remain flying above on their pokemon as they all waited for any others to arrive. The group waited for around thirty minutes for any players to arrive.

"Alright. Listen up, everyone!" Adrius was the one that shouted as the hundreds of trainers in the area stopped their conversations and turned to look at Adrius, who could be seen standing at the top of the rocky area. "I don't know if everyone's here, but we need to start! First off, I know you're confused, and I'm the same. We don't know what's happening, but we can only assume we're trapped in the game for whatever reason."

"Yeah, the logout button's gone..."

"You think the devs messed something up?"

"Could be... damn, my pizza's supposed to be here soon!"

Despite the severity and nature of the situation all the players found themselves in, none of them looked too panicked about it and were just making small complaints. With a cough from Zane, they all returned their attention back up to Adrius.

"Please remain silent, we need to understand what is happening as best we can before doing anything!" Adrius voiced once again as the players all gave nods of agreement. "I'm sure you've noticed, we've been transported to who knows where. Maybe it's something to do with the devs, or maybe not. Nonetheless, there isn't much we can do."

"We've also tried contacting the devs, but nothing seems to be going through." Zane decided to chime in as he opened up his menu, frowning as the messages he sent were still red. "We've decided that the best thing to do now is to remain calm and try to find out where it is we are, maybe we're still in one of the regions."

One of the players then voiced. "What if we're not though? What do we do then?"

"You all have your build tool still available, correct?" Adrius voiced up after hearing the question. Every player checked their menus and all gave their responses such as 'Yes', 'Yeah, I do' and others as well. "If we're just in some wilderness, we'll start forming up some buildings and go from there. For now, I'll split us all up into groups and we'll each scout the cardinal and ordinal directions! Is everyone in agreement?"

"Sounds like a plan."

"Makes sense."

"No problems here!"

"Good! We'll meet back up here in two hours, and by that time, please assign one person from your group to relay all the information you have gathered to me!"

With everyone in agreement with the plan, Adrius, Zane and Freya started sorting everyone into large groups. After that was all sorted, they all quickly flew or ran off on their pokemon in the directions they were provided to scout.

ㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡ

A few hours prior to all of the players arriving, the people of Snowpoint City were all going about their normal daily lives in this cold area of the Sinnoh region. Today was no different from any other day, snow was everywhere and boats were coming in and out from the docks.

However, that all soon changed when a massive rumbling seemed to shake the entire city. The shaking caused the people to go into a mass panic, snow on the nearby mountains collapsed and caused avalanches, and the nearby waters violently smacked against the boats and land.

"What is happening?!" From what looked to be a school of sorts, a certain young female could be seen running out of the building and looking around in confusion. She was also having a bit of a hard time balancing under all the violent shaking. "What's with the sudden earthquake?!"

The female was a young female somewhere in her early or pre-twenties, having black hair tied into pigtails using scrunchies. She had on an elbow-length long-sleeved white blood, a short brown skirt, and a blue cardigan that was tied around her waist.

This girl was none other than Candice, not only a teacher here at the Pokemon Trainer School but also the gym leader of Snowpoint City. As of right now, she had been busy teaching her class before all of this shaking ended up interrupting it all.

"M-Miss Senior!"

Just as Candice was trying to figure out just what was going on, she turned her head upon hearing the new voice. When she did, she saw a young girl with orange spiky hair running over towards her, and running beside her was a grey feline pokemon.

"Zo-Zo, what's going on?!"

"You need to come to the docks, there's something appearing out in the water!" The female known as Zo-Zo, or more commonly as Zoey, shouted while panting a few times. Hearing this, Candice blinked in confusion. "I'm not sure what it is either, but it's huge!"

"Something coming out of the water?" Candice repeated in confusion as a frown appeared on her face. "Very well, let's get moving!"

Without wasting any time, both Candice and Zoey quickly began making their way toward the docks of the city. The run wasn't that far, so they quickly arrived in record time. Looking around, Candice noticed all the people staring and shouting out towards the ocean.

Turning her head, Candice widened her eyes in disbelief.

"Is that...an island?" Candice could only mutter those words as she saw what looked to be a massive island raising up from the ocean floor. Despite her words, the supposed 'island' was so big that despite how far it was from the city, it was clearly visible on the horizon as it rose. "How is this possible?"

Strangely enough, the island seemed to be cloaked by some kind of invisible forcefield that forced any of the water that followed it up to run back down into the ocean. Once the new land fully emerged, the forcefield seemed to fade away into nothingness.

None of the citizens nor their pokemon knew what to say or think, all they could do was stare at the new foreign land in front of them in shocked silence. Zoey, who had watched the events unfold, was the first person who managed to speak again, although with an obvious stutter.

"M-Miss Senior, what is this?"

"I don't know, Zo-Zo... I don't know."