Joke's on you!

"Incredible…" slipped past my lips, as I looked down at the contents of the bag I had found myself carrying when I woke up to my new surroundings.

New surroundings as in: I didn't know where I was but I had a pretty damn good idea, if all of this wasn't some elaborate prank or delusion founded on a drug high. Not that I took drugs. That shit is nasty.

However, the longer I contemplated that idea of mine about my whereabouts the more it gained in believability. After all, it wasn't every day that you came across five Pokéballs of all things. Or to be more exact Ultraballs. Their yellow, black and white colouring giving them away but anyway. Here I stood, five Ultraballs, a Pokédex in its most original red protection hull, a rope, a set of clothes and a pouch filled with cool berries. I kid you not, those berries actually were cool!

And even though I still believed in some parts of my mind, the ones that usually were responsible for rational thinking amongst other things, I couldn't help but hope for all that is holy out there that this was in fact not a dream but reality.

With a grin on my face, I picked up one of those unreal-real looking Ultraballs and turned its smooth and metallic surface around in my hand for a second, marvelling at the cool texture of the object, before turning its small form so that the small of the two buttons pointed towards me.

Then I pressed the button. At once, the ball grew in my hand until it filled it like a big apple, which ended up being the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I began laughing uncontrollably, be that in glee, happiness, incredulity or shock. I couldn't tell.

Again and again I pressed the small button, focused like a manic on their obsession, until at last I calmed down.

Still chuckling at the technical miracle I had just witnessed, I sat on the grassy ground I had woken up upon once more, and put the small sphere aside for now.

Taking into my hand the red, computer like object that was the model of the oldest Pokédex, I opened the object and watched as it came alive immediately. Starting up, the small screen flickered to life, giving me the option to choose between different applications.

One seemed to be a map, which I was sure to check out later, while the others seemed to be both related to Pokémon and myself.

While I was immensely curious what the application had in store for me concerning Pokémon, I was just as curious about my very own identity. After all, this body was way shorter than I was used to, not to mention the lack of a scruffy beard adorning my features.

Surprisingly though, I actually had to confirm my identity upon the Pokédex both through a retina-and voice scanner, which told me that I should really look after the Pokédex, as it seemed to function as my actual method of identification and way to pay for things by the looks of it.

Upon entering the app fully, I saw what I had already feared somewhat. I was not inside my body anymore but was now once again a child by the name of Jason, whom I knew nothing of, all things considered. After all, I grew up playing the Pokémon games, which later transformed into a passion for the hardcore rom hacks like Pokémon radical red and Pokémon inclement emerald, amongst others of course.

However, I actually had never gotten to finish either game, as I hadn't had the time to fully commit to either of them, and only just reached the elite four in radical red and reached around the fifth or sixth gym in inclement emerald.

Still, I had loved those games, which had challenged me so damn much, especially at the beginning. After all, I had never played the games competitively and only finished the 'pve' games so to speak, meaning I had to learn a lot when I first started them.

And now here I was, in a position to truly start one such journey on my own, which was pretty damn insane if you think about it.

Closing the application, I switched to the one for the map, which took a second to load onto screen before it appeared in quite good quality. After all, this wasn't the newest version of the Pokédex, so my expectations hadn't been very high, but so far I was pleasantly surprised by the small red gadget.

Quickly I realised that I was in a landscape I had seen hundreds upon hundreds of times whenever I was checking for the locations of different Pokémon to hunt down, namely the map of the Kanto region. A region I both loved and hated.

I loved it because it was the one I grew up with, besides the Hoenn and Johto regions, and it held very fond memories for me, even though those were only digital. But still.

Hated it, because I had checked every inch and overturned every damn rock in this place, leaving me with barely anything new uncover.

But once that thought struck me I realised how stupid I was being. After all, it was one thing to experience something in 2D on a screen and another thing entirely to actually live said experience.

Right away, the manic grin I had had on my face returned once I realised that fact, while my very own soul practically screamed at me to go out and dive right into it.

However, before I would do that though, I had a small problem that only just occurred to me. Pokémon. I needed at least one if I wanted to compete for the league, let alone the fact that I didn't know what kind of Pokémon world this was. I sincerely hoped for a less brutal version than just my old world with Pokémon inside of it.

But if it still happened to be such a world, I would need the protection my very own Pokémon would provide me.

With a hum I closed the map, absently noting down the fact that I was somewhere around route 1 of all places, before opening the actual Pokédex app in the hopes to have some kind of epiphany.

And lo and behold, I had struck the motherload. Looking over to the small spheres laid out next to me upon my backpack, I felt adrenaline coursing through my veins.

One of my Ultraballs seemed to already hold a Pokémon, which meant only one thing. It was mine!

With a shaking hand and a grin on my face I turned over each ball, looking for some way of determining which one was full besides the empty ones until I actually found a tell.

On the spheres were two buttons. One big one in the middle, with which the ball would open, and a small one right next to it, with which one shrunk and grew the sphere into its desired size. Right above said button though was a small bar that glowed faintly red, while the others were the colour of the sphere's shell, namely black and beige. The red glow reminded me faintly of the red beam with which the Pokémon were always sucked into the Ultraball, which meant that the red glow could actually be the Pokémon in its light-like form.

Putting those contemplations away for later, I picked the sphere up and let it grow in size, until it once again sat comfortably in my palm. The palm that was still shaking slightly.

After all, I was unsure what was about to happen. Would the Pokémon be violent? Friendly? Scared? I had no idea of knowing and I had enough life experience to know that a scared animal usually was a dangerous animal.

Still, something inside of me assured me that all would be well, like an instinct I didn't know I possessed when it came to Pokémon and thus simply pressed the release button before I could change my mind.

With a small click the Ultraball sprung open and out surged a red, laser like beam as if it were alive, in nothing but seconds taking on a form only around 3ft away.

And upon seeing what got released I was both incredibly excited and actually scared for both my mental and physical well-being.

Its only response to my current state of being, frozen with a massive grin on my face, however was only grin back as if sharing a joke only itself knew about while saying its name I both loved and hated, which was happening a lot lately it seemed.

"Gasssstly…" and with that I broke out of my state of frozen shock and began to laugh uproariously and boisterously, alongside my new companion to boot. This was going to be awesome!