barring emergencies

[the_very_best]

Bella's not sure where she has wandered. She thought she was about to walk into a shop, but this appears to be an unattended bar. With none of the windows associated with the shop she thought she was entering. It could be an elaborate psychic assault of some kind, but it doesn't feel very... assault-y... and she was in the middle of a town and doesn't think any humans want to sic their 'mon on her. It's strange. She approaches the bar, looking around warily, hand hovering near her belt.

with Max (Benedict)

with Earth and Lightning (kappa)

with Ann and Sabrina (kuuskytkolme)

Comments

[can_i_go]

"But I want to talk to her! People here are so interesting, last time I spoke to a girl who was married to a merperson."

[the_very_best]

"I don't mind as long as nobody's going to try to hit me. The security lady was out here really fast, anyway. So what's your world like? Mine has Pokémon, apparently that's unusual."

[can_i_go]

"Well, we have reality television, kangaroos, take-away pizza, summer holidays, the internet, sliced bread, puppies, audiobooks, trees that are hundreds of years old and nuclear fusion."

She ticks the first things that come to her mind with her fingers.

"We don't have those Poké-things."

[the_very_best]

"My world has Pokémon instead of animals," clarifies Bella.

[can_i_go]

"Ooh, okay. That means you don't have kangaroos or puppies. What's it like, not having puppies? They're tiny and cute and people keep them as pets, and then they grow up to be less tiny but still cute. Some get allergic to their dogs and have to give them away. I think that was most of the relevant things about them. Ann, what do you think?"

[can_i_stay]

"Dogs are domesticated from another kind of animal and have had a basically symbiotic relationship with humans for a long while; they give us protection and company and get food and shelter. They're also smart, for animals, highly social and can be trained to do several things including herding, attacking people, working as blind person's aid and sniffing out drugs and bombs."

[the_very_best]

"Pokémon of one kind or another can do all those things."

[can_i_go]

"Hmm. If Poké-things are not animals, there must be something that an animal can do but a Poké-thing can't. What's the strangest thing an animal can do... Squirt blood out of their eyes? I think something does that."

[the_very_best]

"Iiiii don't think any 'mon squirt blood out of their eyes. Ew."

[can_i_go]

"Some snakes first strangle their prey and then dislodge their jaw and eat it whole. Because snakes are long and thin you can see if that kind of snake has recently eaten because there's a huge bulge in the middle of it."

[the_very_best]

"Animals eat each other? I guess some 'mon do that. Not most of them, though."

[can_i_stay]

"A world of mostly herbivores sounds very strange. Bigger and bigger predators is an obvious niche to fill, and even when the herbivores have ways to defend themselves there's always something that can and will eat them, even humans with our big brains and weapons. I find it hard to imagine, either what the most defenseless Pokémon can do makes it more efficient to compete for food rather than eat the Pokémon or you have less than a few dozen species all together."

[the_very_best]

"There's hundreds of species. But even a species that's often prey can beat something that would like to eat it under the right conditions. Size barely matters."

[can_i_stay]

"That's hard to believe. In our ...World? In our world power definitely correlates with size. There's nothing a two pound rabbit can do against a hundred pound wolf, other than run away."

[the_very_best]

"I'm a lot bigger than, say, Dusk, but if he didn't like me he could easily kill me. Branch is a lot smaller than an Onix, but grass-type attacks are particularly powerful against rock- and ground-type 'mon."

[can_i_go]

"Type? What does that mean?"

[the_very_best]

"Oh - 'mon have different, well, types, of characteristics. What type or types a 'mon is affects their defenses and correlates with their offenses. Like - Fireflower's an easy example. She's fire-type, so she can learn lots of possible fire attacks on top of a few others, and she's defensively strong against other fire attacks, weak against water, etcetera. There's a chart."

[can_i_stay]

"Oh, does it have something to do with how they've evolved? Animals are sorted by the very distant ancestors they've evolved from."

[the_very_best]

"Uhhhh... I don't know exactly how we're being translated, here, but I don't think you're coming across clearly."

[can_i_stay]

"What do you find unclear? Evolution? It is a relatively new theory and not trivially obvious, it's only been around for something like 150 years for us."

[the_very_best]

"The word is translating, but the thing it's translating as is... uh... trivially obvious."

[can_i_stay]

"Okay, let's define the terms. In short evolution is small cumulative changes in animal populations over a long period of time that results in individuals in different populations no longer being able to procreate and thus creating new species. There is, of course more to it, but it's not obvious unless you live for hundreds of thousands of years and habitually observe a certain group of animals."

[the_very_best]

"...Okay. The word 'evolution' in my language refers to individual Pokémon literally glowing and changing shapes under certain conditions often related to having a lot of combat experience but sometimes otherwise. Also, different species of 'mon can have baby 'mon together as long as they're in the same egg group. And all of them can have baby 'mon with Ditto."

[can_i_stay]

[can_i_go]

"Wow, that's super obvious, and also really cool! Do you have a video of it happening? What does a Ditto look like? Does its name mean "likewise" in your language too?