"Enlightening." Oh how very enlightening indeed... She learned how Friendship circuits worked over the past hour or so. Though... Fatigue nibbled at her. She desired to sleep, but the idea of nightmares... Oh, the nightmares. Yes, she held a Lunar Wing, but even so... She struggled to wish to sleep. Too many nightmares of losing friends during the war. But fatigue ran through her body like electricity, threatening to keel her over.

  "Yeah, it's definitely something unique even as far as our world is concerned. Most regions use something called Pokeballs to contain Pokemon and make them easy to transport around since most people go on Pokemon journeys at some point in their life, often late high school or between high school and college. Though Orre is an exception to that." Ben shook his head. He went over to a screen and pulled up a world map, showing a vast array of areas and different regions. Weiss stood, though her legs shook violently. Even exerting herself mentally wore her out. She needed nourishment and rest. But she still walked over to the map, studying it. Ben pointed to one small region. "That's Almia, where we are now. Fiore--" He motioned. "--and Oblivia--" He pointed again. "--are the three Ranger regions. Aside from Orre--" He pointed to a spot in the desert. "--most regions have a Pokemon League of some sort. If you wanna see a Pokeball, ask Summer next time you see her. She has one for her Luxray. But... You really don't look good. You should probably go rest or something." Ben seemed not to care for people much. He spoke bluntly and directly. He cared not for her feelings. If she erred, he made sure she knew. She didn't balk though. She grew used to it. Some of the mentors in the Guild were like him. Yes... She grew used to it as a child.

  "I'm...not sure where to go." She hadn't the time to learn where everything lay quite yet. She definitely needed rest, even if just closing her eyes for a while. Caffeine and other stimulants would do her no good right now even if she wished for them... Sleep remained a terrifying prospect.

  "All right then; I'll take you back to the barracks." He offered her a shoulder and she nodded, leaning against him. Her body... So weak from so much deprivation. She despised it, but what else could she do? A small 6x6 concrete cell... Fully soundproofed. She could do nothing to maintain her physique while she wasted away from only hard bread and water. Just enough to keep her alive. No matter what she did, they refused to give her more food…

  She tried to push the thoughts away, her breathing hitching. No, dwelling would do her no good now. Why bother? She felt Ben squeeze her hand and he looked at her. "Whatever you've been through, relax. Nobody's going to get you here. I promise." Weiss nodded a bit. She needed therapy. Badly. She knew it. A war then only who knew how many months of torture following her capture would likely remain with her for the rest of her life. She just... She may never be the same. She knew it, loathe as she was to admit to it. No. She would likely never be the same person as before the war... Torture truly had a way of changing people as did war.

  Ben helped her find her way to the room she and Blake stayed in the previous night and he opened the door. Her shaking legs carried her across the floor and she settled on the bed. He offered a fake smile then closed the door.

  Quiet.

  Too quiet for her.

  Reminded her too much of the cell.l

  Her breathing heightened and she curled into a ball, looking around.

  No, she escaped... She was free. But…

  It didn't feel like it, no. She swore she saw the walls close in a little bit.

  No windows, no nothing.

  Just beds and quiet.

  She got up, legs still shaking violently, and got up, leaving the room and sitting against the wall. At least some noise carried out here... The sound of people in barracks behind other doors reached her ears as did talking and laughter.

  Her heart hurt. She remembered the Guild, so lively and jovial at one time, much like this place. But so somber and deadly silent once the war began... Her sister... She missed Winter? What happened to her and her mother?

  Her throat stuck and she felt tears welling in her eyes. She buried her face in her arms, her body shaking. So many questions, no answers. She just... How to cope with all of this? Isolated from the people she loved most, her family, her community... Nobody to lean on. The other technomancers would understand her plight. Perhaps not the torture, but at least the war. They fought. They all did. All Guild-aligned technomancers had been drafted for one reason or another. Most sat in intelligence but her... She stood on the front lines. Her magic simply too powerful to not turn against those attempting to usurp the king.

  Fire and lightning flashed before her eyes, her breath fogging as she slung ice and supercooled air toward the enemy. Screams. Shouts. Death. Chaos. All—

  "Hey, you all right?" She blinked at the strange voice, her eyes wide. A brown-haired woman sat next to her a few feet away. She bore sunglasses despite being inside. Strange. "You're not a Ranger, so what are you doing in Ranger barracks?" Her uniform a strange mix of red, black, and yellow. Very, very curious and strange... She'd never seen anything like it before.

  "I'm new here." Understatement, vast understatement. She only arrived the previous night. "Summer's letting me and my...companion stay."

  "Bleeding heart, that one, but she's a literal empath. What else do you expect?" The woman smiled and chuckled a little bit. Empath... Such abilities didn't exist on Selia. She couldn't rule anything out in the multiverse. Such strangeness could and probably did abound across the different worlds, threaded together like a delicate pearl string. Attached yet separated by knots and thread... She missed her own pearl adornments. She truly did... That felt like a lifetime ago, though. "So what's your name?"

  "Weiss Schnee. Who are you?" Awkward, so awkward... She lost any social graces she once had. So social once, and now, isolated and locked in a cell. Scarred by war. Nobody would understand her plight. Blake might, but nobody. No, not in this world. Nobody could understand. The Time Witch said this world knew no wars and stood at peace. She doubted it lacked wars in its history, but for now... Nobody within living memory would probably know of war and suffering to the extent she did.

  "Coco Adel. I'm from Unova. Where are you from?" A strange name to be certain.

  "Uh... Another world entirely."

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Coco shook her head. "Shouldn't be surprised. Summer is a magnet for all sortsa weird shit. Did you know she talks to God on a regular basis?"

  Weiss blinked. "You still believe in such nonsense?" Religion... No longer existed on Selia. nobody believed. Sometimes a stray cult popped up here and there, but rarely. As far as humans went, religion was nill. Old cathedrals remained preserved, but never for spiritual purposes. Just as places to gather for the community. The other races believed in their gods, but hot humans. Humans no longer believed on the whole. Every country maintained its own culture, but she knew not of places where religion existed within human society.

  "Uh, I've seen him myself. It was weird. Dude literally just struts around the Union from time to time if she's meeting with him. Not to mention the Creation Trio just show up outta the blue sometimes too, though they're pretty rare. It's more the Oblivian legendaries that run around here like it's no big thing. Just a shiny Suicune ramblin' around. It's bizarre." Coco shook her head. Weiss stared. None of that made any sense to her. She still didn't quite understand what these Pokemon creatures were.

  A strange purple cat with yellow spots and highlights walked up and tilted its head. It made sounds Weiss couldn't comprehend but Coco petted its head. "This is my Partner Pokemon, Callie. She's a Liepard."

  "Lie...pard?" It sounded like leopard but with lie instead. What an odd name for a creature. "May I pet her?"

  Coco looked at the creature who outright nodded and stretched. "Usually she's not one much for strangers to pet her, but... You're obviously in rough shape." Even with clothes concealing her from neck to toe... Her hands and face no doubt gave away how bad of shape she sat in. Still, she reached out with a trembling hand and petted the creature's head.

  "What...exactly are Pokemon, if you can excuse my ignorance?"

  "That's like asking what is life. Aside from humans, Pokemon are the dominant form of life here. We generally live in harmony with each other though in different ways. I'm from a trainer region, the Unova region. I'm a Mechanic but I still have a Partner. Most Rangers come from the three Ranger regions, Fiore, Almia, and Oblivia. Sometimes you get a weirdo like me that stumbles on what a Ranger is, learns what they are, and wants to become one. Well, I ended up becoming a Mechanic because I'm better with machines than people."

  "I...can definitely relate to that." She much preferred her computers to people. Data couldn't lie. People could. She did enjoy spending time around others, but never to the extent of wanting to be around them 24/7, much like the war had forced her hand. She no longer retained privacy...or hadn't, before her captivity. She slept in large barracks with ten people to a room. No privacy. Communal showers. Atrocious to a noble like herself, but she couldn't complain. She'd learned to get used to it in due time.

  "So what did you do on your world?"

  "I'm what's called a technomancer--specifically a datomancer and hajomancer. I can basically download local data on any device and download it into my brain and analyse it. Then I can also manipulate the physical bytes on drives and such in order to rewrite data or destroy it." Well, no longer. Not until she returned to the Time Witch. Her magic, no longer her own. Still... Some part of her was relieved to not have to worry about ethics now. The Guild would wonder about this lapse in her ethics but... Without magic, she no longer needed to worry.

  "Interesting. I was a bit of a hacker when I came here. I more work with the software side of things than anything else. I work ole Benny boy, but he's not the most...pleasant to be around. But with Hastings retired, he took over R&D and command of the labs. Our education is brutal because he feels like none of us are up to his standards. Hard to be when he's a literal genius." Coco shook her head. Ben truly did not seem the most pleasant to be around, certainly true. But if she could do something... It would be with Mechanics and data. She knew software and hardware. She'd been trained in both of them, though a technomancer was almost always better with software rather than hardware. Before the war, she held a position as an encryption specialist. She worked for corporations, governments, and traveled a lot. Nobody could do much better than her. She simply maintained one of the highest levels of intelligence and capability on the planet. She knew more schools of Discipleship magic than most.

  "I'll need to heal before I can be of much use unfortunately." Even an hour of mental exertion left her exhausted. She needed sleep, she knew it, but the thought of nightmares... And it was simply too quiet for her. Reminded her too much of her cell. She shuddered slightly. "I need rest but it's too quiet and dark."

  "Huh, most people have the opposite problems. For those of us that live and work here, it's usually too noisy and light. Blindfolds are common here. But considering you're staying in a guest room over the barracks... It makes sense. Thankfully, I do have a solution. I'll be back in a bit. can you wait here?" Weiss nodded. Not like she'd be able to walk anywhere by herself... And she knew going too far risked a break. Her bones... They could shatter so easily if she fell. The lack of calcium and other nutrients... She'd been robbed of so much. Only sixty-five pounds... She ought to be closer to one thirty.

  Coco got up, leaving Weiss alone to sit in the hallway. Thankfully, people milling about did help decrease her hypervigilance, but she still felt so isolated. She looked around. Nobody paid her much heed. Why should they? A strange woman sitting against the wall... She must be insane. Or something along those lines. She wished she could do something but she couldn't... Her mind simply rebelled and her body begged her for rest.

  Eventually, Coco returned with a small bag. She offered Weiss a hand up and she took it, standing up. "C'mon, let's go in." They went into the room and flipped the light on. Coco took a small machine out of the bag as well as a little plug-in. "I used to need a white-noise machine when I came here since, well, adapting was pretty tough. It has some presets that you can cycle through. Nature sounds mostly, though some pure white noise if that's what you want. I managed to scavenge a nightlight from the kids' area that they no longer needed."

  Weiss blinked. "There a children here?"

  "What did you expect from co-ed sleeping? People get jiggy all the time." She shrugged. Weiss flushed a bit. She supposed that made sense. Though it seemed a poor decision to mix romance and work... But how could she judge? She nearly fell in love with another technomancer at the war's onset. But considering the climate... Both decided that a bad idea to pursue any further. And he died anyway... So many good people lost in the war.

  Then it hit her. "Wait... What about licenses and all of that?"

  Coco raised an eyebrow. "What are you talking about?"

  Oh, uh... Apparently a world difference. "Um. People have to pass intensive programs and be licensed on Selia to have kids..." With the world being as it was, populations need controlled. Illegal children were given to state programs to be raised, only to be returned if the parents passed their licensing exams. By that point, though, often children didn't want to go back to their parents…

  Coco looked over top of her sunglasses. "Your world is fucked and that is putting it lightly as far as this world's concerned." Weiss could agree to some extent... Few liked the fact such programs remained in place after centuries of rule. But nothing could change them since they had been in place for so long. "Anyway, get some rest. I'll check on ya later." She waved and left the room.

  Weiss turned on the white noise machine and flicked through all the various noises. The hum of a ceiling fan stood as the most familiar noise to her. Even with air conditioning standard, she enjoyed a fan. Not that she'd had access to one for years... She turned off the light, the soft glow from the nightlight casting enough to make her feel more at ease. She tucked the Lunar Wing under her pillow and fell into slumber, at ease for the first time in a long time.