“I’m bored.”

  “We know, Lucas.”

  “There’s nothing to do! I never thought ferries could be this boring.”

  “At least we’re not in a storm any longer.”

  “Noo, now we’re just getting to the point where it’s so cold it’s not worth going outside. Just look at Ted moping around!”

  “Hey! I’m not moping.”

  “I hate to say it Ted, but you are. Don’t grumble at me, you know I’m right.”

  “Fine, maybe I am moping. It’s too cold for this, I don’t know how you Sinnohites handle it.”

  “We were forged in the harsh winters, our ancestors had to hunt Mamoswine for their fur! It’s in our blood, our DNA!”

  “I’m not even from this world, so don’t go calling me a Sinnohite.”

  “My point still stands.”

  “Well, what do you want to do then, Lucas? We can’t train, can’t battle, there’s really nothing else to do but sit around and tell stories.”

  “That’s a great idea!”

  “Huh?”

  “Let’s all tell a story! The person with the best story wins!”

  “...”

  “...”

  “Please?”

  “Fine. But you have to go first.”

  “Sweet!”

  /^\

  In the olden days, back when Sinnoh was still called Hisui and Jubilife City was yet a village, people didn’t have electricity like we do now. They needed oil for their lamps and stoves, and needed vast quantities of it to light their houses and keep away the wild Pokémon at night.

  The best source of this oil was, of course, Wailmer, and even better - Wailords. A single Wailord could keep the entire town supplied with oil for an entire week, and it was in such high demand for all the outlying villages that expeditions were sent out almost every day. Most never caught anything, but when they did, it was a massive celebration, for that meant the town would live another week.

  Of course, the people didn’t know the harm they were doing.

  Wailords take ages to evolve, and with all of the Wailords being hunted and killed, they were ruining the carefully balanced ecosystem of the ocean.

  With all of the Wailords being killed, other Pokémon like Wishiwashi had huge population spikes, which caused a lot of problems.

  One day, when it was misty and the ocean was dark, one of the young children who were paid to sit and stare out at the ocean to look for Wailord let out a huge cry.

  Apparently they were paid to sit there, but my mom told me that if I didn’t eat my veggies she would make me go and look for Wailord instead of getting to watch TV, so maybe it was a punishment?

  I mean, I don’t really get it, if you were being punished, wouldn’t that make you not want to-

  Lucas.

  Oh! Right!

  Anyways, they screamed that the biggest Wailord they had ever seen had just popped up out of the ocean!

  All of the fishermen piled into their boats, but the waves suddenly turned choppy, and most people decided it wasn’t safe enough to try and catch a Wailord.

  But not one boat. They decided that they wanted, no, needed to catch the biggest Wailord, and rowed out into the stormy sea.

  They were tossed up and down, and all around, and barely managed to survive long enough to make it to where the sighting had been.

  And when they got there, sure enough, they saw a massive Wailord, which was glowing green! They threw their harpoons and spears at it, but they all went straight through the Wailord, not harming it in the slightest.

  And then the awful truth was revealed in a flash of lightning! The Wailord wasn’t being harmed by the harpoons because it wasn’t alive.

  It was just the bones of a Wailord, swimming in the sea.

  All of a sudden, ghostly green fish and bird Pokémon that nobody had ever seen before appeared in the seas and skies, swimming and flying around the fishermen.

  The Wailord, some call it the Wailost, stared at the fishermen for a long moment, then swam back out to sea with all the other Pokémon, disappearing forever.

  When the fishermen returned, they told the story to all of the disbelieving people of Jubilife. Everybody thought they’d drank too much sake before they’d left, but within a couple of days, all of the fishermen who had seen the Wailost fell deathly ill, and died.

  Everybody realized the harm they were doing by hunting the Wailords, and so they stopped the practice altogether, and soon enough, the ocean went back to normal, and the Wailost was never seen again.

  This, by the way, is why whenever a bunch of people get together to mourn, they call it wailing.

  I don’t think that’s why-

  And that’s why it’s called wailing!

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  /^\

  “I mean… I guess that was scary?”

  “It’s not supposed to be like, scary scary, more like a warning of the dangers of overfishing.”

  “Yeah, you hear those kinds of stories a lot in Hoenn as well.”

  “Well, what about you Ted? What’s your story?”

  “Fine. You want a scary story? I’ll tell you a scary story. And unlike the Wailost, this one is true.”

  “Oh yeah? Bet.”

  “What does that even mea- whatever. Alright fine, here we go.”

  /^\

  In a world that’s a lot like ours, there was a city. Not the cities like we know them today, which are all spread out across the landscape. This city was created to be one large complex, where everybody could live and work next to each other in harmony.

  The city was a beacon of progress, and electricity was its lifeblood.

  Kilometers upon kilometers of cables and wires snaked like veins through the walls, floors, and ceilings of the city, bringing power to all of the people who needed it.

  If you could see the city at night, it was beautiful. There was a small hill that a person could hike to, and sit and stare as the lights turned on one-by-one, illuminating the night like a celebration - every night.

  But there was a problem with this world that few people knew about.

  Its protectors had stopped their duties, and the few people who did know about them, didn’t know why they had disappeared.

  Some say they were captured, forced to stop protecting the world.

  Others say that they had grown tired of their duties, and had simply… stopped.

  But whatever the reason, the lack of the protectors started to let things in.

  Things? What kind of things?

  I’m getting to that.

  At first, researchers had just figured that they had found new Pokémon species. It happens regularly enough that it went by with little fanfare.

  But then these Pokémon, these… monsters started spreading havoc and dissent across the world.

  People’s minds were changed, poisoned by the Pokémon who puppeted them around from the shadows. Leaders and politicians started making unpopular choices that caused their populations to start rioting against their commands.

  Some regions just stopped all together, and whoever tried travelling there would just… halt in place. One person managed to live stream their reaction, and they mentioned a smell, and you could see in real-time how they just lost their will to do anything. The last thing anybody saw before the stream died was a speeding flash of white.

  And then there were the areas that were just destroyed altogether. Massive Pokémon, unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, causing devastation wherever they went and leaving ruins behind them.

  The people of the city though, were safe - or so they thought. After all, no strange Pokémon had been sighted near them, and while they worried about the state of the world, they were happy to keep their heads down and keep working away at their jobs.

  None of them noticed the cables.

  It started slowly. A thin cable here, a strand of wiring there.

  In a city that was swaddled in cables, who noticed one more?

  Then the cables started getting thicker. One as thick as your pinky finger. Then one as thick as your wrist.

  They were found in strange places as well, laying across hallways or emerging from the ground like roots.

  But this was the city of progress, and everybody figured it was just some new experiment, or a new way of improving the infrastructure.

  As the world outside got more chaotic, people luxuriated in the fact that they seemed to be the last bastion of safety.

  And then the blackouts started.

  At first it was understandable. After all, the city was getting bigger and bigger, and the generators could only produce so much power.

  They were small, at first. A couple of minutes here, a few seconds there.

  As the cables started getting thicker, the blackouts grew worse.

  Power was soon being lost every couple of days, then every other day, and while people fretted and worried, they were also not too concerned.

  After all, it couldn’t happen here, they said.

  We’re safe.

  Storms started becoming more common, lightning and thunder striking the city almost every night.

  It was only close to the end when people started realizing something was wrong.

  Weird structures were seen growing in the most concentrated parts of the cables.

  They looked almost like pyramids, but made entirely of cables and copper, stretching up towards the sky.

  At the top of each one, was a spiked crystal that shimmered with electricity.

  “Is this an art piece?” People asked. “I don’t get it, if so.”

  “It’s in poor taste.” They said.

  By that point it was too late to do anything.

  The lights of the city had lost their wonderful allure. One night, a young man and his partner climbed the small hill outside of the city at sunset to see them turn on.

  As the sun set, all of the lights of the city turned on - one by one.

  And once they were all on, in a single second they shut off. A blackout, again.

  But those spiked crystals began glowing with light and electricity, new stars where the old ones had been snuffed out.

  And then they started moving, and the horrible truth was revealed.

  The lights of the city never turned back on again, but some still say they can see those crystals, those monsters, growing taller and taller, and the ruins of the city are choked with cables as thick as trees.

  /^\

  “Jesus… is that really a true story?”

  “Lucas! When did you start using that?”

  “What, Jesus? You say it all the time. It’s like saying ‘Arceus,’ right?”

  “Well, no- yes- it’s complicated. Just… keep to Arceus, okay?”

  “Fine. But is it true?”

  “Who can say, really.”

  “God, that's such a cop-out answer.”

  “Lucas! Stop using my swears! It’s really weird!”

  “Whatever. But what happened to all the people if it was true?”

  “Most of them died. Some managed to escape to other cities, at least for a little while. And others… other’s managed to escape to safety, to other places. Maybe some time I’ll tell you another story about the spaces in-between.”

  “In between what?”

  “Dimensions. Worlds. “

  “That doesn’t exist… does it?”

  “Lucas, my very presence in this world proves that it does.”

  “Yeah but you’re an exception Alina.”

  “... Thanks?”

  “Anyway, it’s just a story I’ve heard, after all.”

  “Right. Speaking of, it’s your turn for a story Alina.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “...”

  “...”

  “...”

  “Well?”

  “I’m thinking!”

  “Surely you have to have a story in there somewhere?”

  “I’m still busy thinking of that last one, okay?”

  “...”

  “...”

  “Okay, I think I have something. Ted, you mentioned the In-Between, right? What’s it look like? Uh, I mean, in your stories.”

  “Supposedly it looks like nothing at all, just a big empty void. There are spots of color though, like soap bubbles, except the closer you look at them, you realize the’re entire worlds.”

  “Wow, that’s pretty. Now, let me tell you a story about a place like that where I’m from. It’s gonna be a little hard without visual aids, but let me try.”

  /^\

  Imagine you’re walking through a liminal place, somewhere that’s disconnected from both time and space.

  There’s no windows here, no view of the outside world, just an endless maze of rooms with yellowed, peeling wallpaper and the constant drone of fluorescent lights…