Welcome to Gaia! ::

Burnet grinned at Crystal's question, as if she eagerly expected it. "I mean...maybe." She chuckled, motioning for them to follow her as she walked to another end of the room, stopping at an unassuming door. The professor would grab a hold of the doorknob but not turn it, the knob lighting up after awhile and a 'ding' sound ringing out before the door descended into the ground instead of swinging open, revealing the room before it. One could see that the door was extremely thick as it lowered, clearly the professor taking precautions seriously.

On the inside was a mostly white room with a raised hexagon-shaped platform at its center, a small set of steps leading up to it. Above the platform were smaller hexagon panels forming a large hexagon shape and a single antenna-like object pointed at the center. Besides the machine itself the most noteworthy thing in the room was the glass tube containing what seemed to be a single Zygarde cell, mindlessly floating around in some liquid. The professor would immediately answer the first question they may have. "Don't worry, Zygarde cells don't feel any pain and once their energy is used up the return to the Earth. I'll apologize to your team's friend later." Burnet said, insinuating she uses the cell as a power source and also revealing she had knowledge of Zac, not that it was that big of a secret considering its roll in the war.

"I've only been able to open up a small wormhole before for a few seconds but perhaps with your help, Crystal, we could stabilize it and with the rest of my machinery I should, in theory, be able to open the wormhole fairly close to the designated reality." The professor explained. "If you're ready both of you step up on the stage and Crystal when the wormhole forms, if you would, try and open it wider...however you do that."

The thick door slid down, to Monique's surprise, to reveal a large room containing a hexagonal dais. "Don't worry, Zygarde cells don't feel any pain." Her Pokédex went off at the sight of a new Pokémon. Zygarde. Dragon/Ground. The Order Pokémon. It's thought to be monitoring the ecosystem. There are rumors that even greater power lies hidden within it.

Crystal stepped onto the dais first, casting a hard light platform and beckoning Monique onto it. As she stepped, Crystal glowed in radiant white and yellow, enough to be nearly blinding even in this white room if she didn't have that huge suit on, and channeled energy into the infant wormhole, stabilizing it. After bidding a quick goodbye, Crystal pushed the platform into Ultra Space and closed the wormhole, revealing them to be in the expanse of Ultra Space.

Now that the suit was in Ultra Space, a display activated above the right eye, displaying a current coordinate. “I assume we have a coordinate reader in that helmet? Tell me which direction we need to go then. I might be made of space dust and space metal, but I don’t have a subconscious knowledge of Ultra Space to tell me where we need to go,” Crystal chuckled.

"The coordinates we need are..." Monique paused. "13, 11, 24, 36... and 2, 11, 46, 5." She looked at the display. "Apparently, we are at 4, 13, 9, 2... and 15, 5, 12, 10. So I guess we're not that far?"

The reader then flashed a heading and arrow on the display. It must have recognized my first set or had this programmed in... Monique pointed an arm slightly up and just off to the right. "That way. You lead the way, Crystal."

Monique followed Crystal, holding on tight as she passed through the wormhole. On the other side, she found herself in a city at night on what appeared to be a bustling street. There were plenty of signs, plenty of Pokémon (what a relief), and enough going on that a Zoroark hybrid hiding a big exploring suit would go unnoticed. There were no stars visible above, but that didn’t matter. This was a place where people lived. If she was going to find Kasumi, this at least was progress.

She tried to take in her surroundings surreptitiously, hoping the presence of Crystal would not be too much of an attention-grabber. People milled about, and with her night vision, she noticed that they seemed to mostly be wearing dresses—quite pretty ones at that. The shorter ones were more decked out, some wearing earrings. She picked up that these were actually the men here. Huh.

She started walking down the street, hoping for a sense of where she was. Now that she actually was trying to read all the signs, the first thing that caught her attention was that they all were mirrored, as if she were trying to read them while standing in the mirror in the bathroom. Hmm, she thought. That was the first difference she picked up on.

She stopped in front of what looked like a convenience store, which had products neatly lined on the shelves as well as a series of advertising posters in the window. The first one featured a Miltank along with the word “VENOM”. Venom? Why venom? There were more words, which it took Monique time to mentally un-reverse in her head. “Curdled, Straight from the Farm. Take Some Home Tonight!” Does that mean that…Miltank…make…rotten milk here….and…they…drink it?

Her jaw dropped. What was this place? She looked at the poster and tried to figure out what it could possibly mean. It did, at the very least, have the words “Johto Association of Toxin Farmers”, so she was in a region that she had visited, but...

There were several more posters, each for different things. There was one for a music concert at the Goldenrod Amphitheater, which provided her another clue as to her whereabouts. Another was a public service message: “Keep Your City Dirty” with art of Rattata, Stunky, and Trubbish. The last one advertised a new range of Nightshade and Mushroom Salads.

The sheriff of New Po was still attempting to parse what she was looking at, her stomach churning at the continued thought of Miltank making venom, when her SNAG beeped loudly. Reconnecting… Behind the suit, her eyes grew big. What the...?

The message hit Monique's ears with a thud, if anything could actually hit her ears inside this suit. The voice wasn't GRAY's. And whatever was in control here wanted to cause her SNAG to self-destruct if she didn't pipe up fast.

She took a few seconds. "55 seconds." "50 seconds." Shortly after, she started talking.

"...Monique Kaʻanaʻana, member of Snagem in my home world, here to save my sister who was sent here in an Ultra Space accident. Please let me know how I can help."

It was oddly comforting to know that even here there was a Team Snagem. It was also more than a little repulsive to imagine that somewhere out there, judging by what she had seen on the street, members of this world's Snagem were probably downing glasses of curdled venom.

Well, that's odd. Monique had many questions, but her blunder of forgetting not to take technology like her SNAG to other universes definitely had somehow made the situation much more interesting.

She relayed a message to Crystal, trying to summarize what was going on:

Somehow, I left my SNAG on, and it's reconnected to this world's Team Snagem. They want to see me. They are in the Goldenrod Tunnel. And you're coming with.

Monique started scanning the street scene, looking to match the map appearing in her vision with the unfamiliar city. On her last trip to the Goldenrod City area, she hadn't had a need to use the Tunnel. A lit sign with an arrow pointed down to a portal and a set of escalators. There were advertisements on both sides and several people going down, while others came back up with shopping bags.

The tunnel was dark but apparently open, reminding Monique of the lower sectors of Flower City. But instead of Sub Rosa, down here were a myriad of shops selling kinda bizarre clothes, a few eateries (one of which Monique noticed selled "Burnt Chicken"), and a bookstore. The place smelled slightly of a metallic, chemical odor.

The beeping of her SNAG made her stop in front of an unassuming-looking business. Megan's Berries, the sign above the window read. Was this the place? She walked inside, wondering what exactly awaited her and hoping this was not a trap.

The bell on the other side of the door would chime as Monique entered, the warm air from within gracing her. Inside was a rather modestly sized shop that was packed full of merchandise including numerous potted berry trees, grow lights situated over them to replace the sunlight they could not get down here. Besides the live plants there were all kinds of berry based goods ranging from dried berries, to ready-to-eat Pokeblocks, fresh poffins, and even preserves made from berries. If you could make something out of berries you could probably find it here.

Their presence would not go unnoticed as the voice of a woman called out. "Hello! Welcome! I'll be right there!" The voice called from somewhere in the back, beyond all the stuff between them and the check out counter. Soon enough a person would arrive, the owner of the voice, a woman. Sporting blue chitinous skin, blonde hair, and a large horn-like protrusion on her forehead the woman was clearly a hybrid, likely a Heracross one. She would greet them with a smile and a bow before speaking. "Welcome to Megan's Berries! I'm Larrie! How can I help you?" She asked, thrilled to see some guests.

Crystal followed Monique in, sniffing the air in the place. It certainly had a pleasant scent in the air, better than the underground venue they had just left, and potentially the best she had smelt so far during this trip. The hybrids eyes scanned the area, noting the dried fruits and everything that was made out of them. The jam and preserves especially looked good to her, igniting a sweet tooth that only seemed to come out around her malasadas normally.

The name of Larrie caused her ears to twitch back over towards Monique and the apparent Heracross hybrid, her mind jumping back to what they were here for in the first place. Larrie... very similar to Larrimore. And if this was where they had to go to meet up with Snagem here, there was a high chance that A), this was this reality's version of Larri, and B) this woman here could very well be one of the members of the team. Oh, how badly she wanted to take out her journal and begin writing about this reality, and the differences here. But, that might wait until they were actually at this Snagem's HQ. At least there might be less questions there about why she would be taking notes. "Ah, hello. We-, er, I'm just browsing right now. My friend here, though, is looking for something specific." Crystal would give Larrie a pleasant smile, curious to where this would head with Monique. "Though, I am mildly curious about the identity of this Megan person that owns, I presume, owns the place."

“Su-!” Crystal would clear her throat after she nearly blurted out Sub’s name, not expecting to see him spontaneously and so soon. The differences were almost so minor between their Sub and this one, she could almost swear that theirs found out about this little adventure and followed just to chew Crystal out. Again. Taking a moment to calm herself and think rationally, she rubbed the back of her head as the lioness began to explain. “Sorry. You remind me a lot of someone from home. Yeah, you would have it on the head. We’re not from around here, and we’re trying to find my friend’s sister. Her… device apparently pinged us to come here?” The hybrid’s ears twitched and she looked down to the floor, thinking for a moment and reflecting on how poorly her last travel had been. Maybe to avoid something like that potentially happening again, considering that someone else’s goal was riding on this introduction, she probably should offer to be more open this time?

“Uh, gomenasai for being rude. We should have introduced ourselves first. This is Monique-” she gestured, uncrossing her arms from under her shawl to motion to her teammate, “And… for now, at least, you can call me Sundaria. Just how much of a potentially insane story would you two like to hear,” she sighed, becoming a bit more worried about how this would wind up. “Unless you’d like to explain the story anyways, Monique?”