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Julie stood before sixty people in a small auditorium with tense shoulders, her stomach in knots, and hands quivering while she held her shaky papers she'd printed at the library before class. She'd worn her white, pink-sleeved jacket to feel more comfortable and had almost brought her gloves.

She was nearly done with her speech but had frozen before the last paragraph, fraught with fear. She'd stuttered and paused multiple times beforehand but had been able to keep momentum; however, in this moment, she focused on all the eyes staring at her throughout the room. It brought her back to one of the worst and most humiliating times in her life— language class.

Well, this time, it felt like thousands were watching and judging her, including the professor sitting in the front row with a meticulous gaze on Julie, a slim older woman with a stark personality.

They all had to think she was pathetic right now, like the kids at Ecruteak, but this was worse. Julie was an adult who couldn't speak before less than a hundred people.

The longer she stood thinking about high school and her flaws, the sicker she felt.

Julie looked down and scanned the last few sentences before shifting her eyes back up and adjusting her collar, lowering that hand and gripping her drawstring. "Th-The illegal poaching of pokémon continues to spread across ev- every region and increasingly threatens, uh…"

Julie had spent two hours last night memorizing her speech, but her mind kept going blank and resetting, casting a brief dizzy spell. She glanced at her paper and took a shaky breath. "Threatens some more than others. Pokémon like ninetales, um... m-most eeveelutions, shinies, and others w-with unique coats are targeted constantly.

Conservation programs have been established to, uh, combat poaching and prevent endangerment, but…" Again, her voice waned; she glanced at rows of faces fixed on her, finding tension she held dearly. She looked back at her paper. "But m-millions are killed unjustly every year with no end in sight. If the numbers continue to rise, we c— we could see the... the total extinction of certain pokémon within the next decade." She lowered her paper and swallowed, eyeing her seat toward the back of the class.

"Thank you. I'll take the essay. You may return to your seat, Julie," the professor said.

Julie set the stapled sheets on her desk and walked up the steps as the professor called another student's name. She sat in her chair at the edge of the mid-section and grabbed her water on the foldout mini table before her. She took the last few sips until it was empty, then took a deep breath and leaned back. Her hands still wavered.

"Good stuff. Liked the subject."

Julie looked to her left. "...I could have done so much better. I prepared for days." She didn't know many people in this class, but a woman sat next to her every class. They'd talked multiple times in and outside of class, rarely initiated by Julie.

Her name was Anna. She was three years older than Julie with a slender, otherwise toned and thick build. She had short black hair, looped earrings, and currently wore a tight red sweater shirt with black shorts, had red painted nails, and subtle lip gloss. She was on her second year at this university.

"Many students try to avoid classes like this. I did in my first year of community college before I felt I was ready to grow some more, but look at you on your first term. You're brave enough to put yourself up there... and I notice you've got a case of the uh's."

"I've had that since middle school."

"No biggie. I had it back in high, and my teacher helped me out after class. Try pausing intentionally when you're speaking and get comfortable with those pauses. It eliminates the more awkward variants and strengthens your credibility in the process. Get me?"

"Thank you..." Julie looked ahead as the next student started their speech.

When class was over at 12:30 p.m., Julie grabbed her white backpack and was one of the first out the door walking down the hall, tossing her bottle into a bin. Plenty of students had stayed behind to talk or discuss their speeches with the professor, but Julie wanted to get to her dexology class across the campus before that started in fifteen minutes.

"Hey, Julie!"

She stopped and turned to see Anna approaching, looking slightly up at her.

"I may have an offer that'll do more for you than this class, and it's not nearly as boring. Couple of friends and I are hosting a party off-campus on Sunday night, three days away. It's nearby. It'll be nothing crazy. Twenty people max…" She bit her lip. "How old are you again?"

"Eighteen."

"Hm." She paused. "I know you're out from Johto, where it's twenty-one, but you could still come. There's gonna be drinks, but I won't let anyone pressure you." She leaned in and winked. "Also won't stop you either. Why don't you gimme your number and think about it?"

"Uh, okay..." Julie pulled out her cell and exchanged numbers.

"I'll text you tomorrow with more details and see where your head is."

Julie watched her walk past and pulled up her backpack, going down the hall after her.

---

After sitting through dexology and regional history, Julie was done for the day at 3:30 p.m. She sat alone at a corner table in a small sub shop on campus that she went to sometimes and swallowed the last bite of her meat and cheese sandwich. She washed it down with a sip of her cup of zero-sugar Violet Cola through its straw.

She leaned back in her chair and tuned out the generic mainstream music playing while reading an article on her phone on the official 'WorldOrigins.com' site. It was about the discovery of new ruins and past societies from thousands of years old through recent and exciting technological advancements in modern underwater archaeology.

Julie skipped out on Veela when she desired thorough and in-depth reading sessions:

'Archaeologists discovered the ruins last week roughly twenty miles north of the Kanto Ocean. It sits at a staggering eighty feet deep on the cold, dark ocean floor,' it read.

Julie scrolled through pictures the divers had taken underwater of dilapidated or collapsed stone structures spread for hundreds of miles and other shots in submerged caves of rock art on its walls, some of which were fading. It consisted of various pokémon, with some being pregnant or feeding, humans beside specific pokémon as if companions, and others depicted as ferocious or being actively hunted by humans.

A large painting taking up a decent portion of a cavern wall showed a tyrantrum towering over a large group of people who threw spears, shot arrows, and what appeared to be large rocks at the pokémon.

Beside it was the tyrantrum lying lifeless on the ground with black lines in its side she assumed were arrows while the group cheered. One person stood atop the massive pokémon, having conquered it.

This was the kind of stuff Julie lived to learn about:

'Discovered paintings display civilizations befriending and taming various pokémon such as lycanroc, ninetales, dragonite; ponyta, weavile, and more. Others show pokémon they hunted, such as kabutops, ursaring; tauros, pinsir, and zangoose.'

Through what Julie had read over the years, humans and pokémon shared a closer bond once upon a time. They respected each other— genuinely co-existed and built relationships solely off time and trust without the prospect of captivity, although violent incidents were also at their peak due to humans hunting them and vice versa.

Humans and pokémons were also romantically involved in that time period for countless years, so why had it never gotten as bad as things were in the modern era?

Julie scrolled some more:

'As also shown on the ancient paintings, tyrantrum, kabutops, and omastar alone were responsible for the deaths of thousands of humans annually in past eras.'

What a terrifying era to live in, where pokémon knew they could pursue and trouble humans without the threat of capture or consequence other than revenge.

'Fortunately for us, Lanyard existed. Through the creation of the common pokéball later in history due to his astounding technological breakthrough, humans could seek and tame any pokémon they desired, which hadn't been the case beforehand, telling by the great loss of human life.

Pokémon had attempted to halt the process of domestication, even growing alarmingly aggressive as humans were taming even the most dominant species in nature, from their mates to their young. It was a rightful response to a reasonable threat. However, after two years plus of persistence from the indomitable spirit of man and countless deaths endured during a slow war, the aspect created a general subservience and sense of defeat in pokémon toward humanity.'

"And scientists had the audacity to bring back fossilized pokémon. Their very instincts have to be angry," Julie said.

Restored fossils included kabuto and omanyte. Fortunately, they had yet to find a way to restore tyrunt. Living in the same timeline tyrantrum existed in would shake the modern human's core. That pokémon was unstoppable back then and had resided mainly in Kalos, where it ruled the land and preyed primarily on aurorus. If a puny human took one down, they were revered as a legend.

To be fair, paleontologists were the ones who found most fossils; citizens that found fossils couldn't resurrect them without the proper technology. Resurrected fossils were kept in containment for studying and testing, so no individual owned them.

The only once fossilized pokémon traversing the world's oceans today was tirtouga. It had been brought back from extinction by Unovan scientists forty years ago and reproduced through monitored and enclosed breeding practices. When the species had multiplied enough, scientists, with world government approval, allowed them to rejoin nature.

Strict laws were set for the first twenty years following their release, including a strict no-capture law. They'd loosened over time and were now a staple in Unova and the Accord's cuisine, ironically enough. While messed up, tirtouga and carracosta were nowhere near extinction.

It made Julie grin to know some of what she'd learned in high school alongside self-teaching came in handy— and that she was an avid reader.

However, it made her wonder if Professor Lanyard's creation was a mistake. He played a role in taming the wild and making the world safer to live in for both species, but the respect humanity once had for pokémon degraded exponentially as the years passed.

What would the culture lead to? Would it get worse?

Julie wanted to go back to when people were legally marrying pokémon a hundred years ago. It was a morally sound, loving, and mutual commitment. Then she could be with Midnight. It was all she wanted. Instead, she had to keep an illegal secret that would disgust most people, and rightfully so, considering the amount of abuse pokémon now went through at the hands of humanity.

Julie adored Midnight, and he adored her, but the eyes of contemporary society saw no exceptions. She was an abuser and Midnight a victim. He had no say in the matter, and Julie's say was as worthless as she would become to everyone.

The people alive from older generations who had married their pokémon from when it was legal over thirty years ago were protected under law. They couldn't be separated from their partner, and Julie would enjoy talking to one of them, although the ones married to bipedals could also be against her and Midnight's relationship. Marriage to quadrupeds had been classified as taboo over fifty years ago, so most people still alive were married to bipedals.

She scrolled through some more photos of old tools carved from rock used likely for hunting, cutting, and more, all laid out on a cloth on a boat's deck. The divers must have extracted them for further research. Julie would definitely keep up with the progress they made. She sighed and looked up from her phone.

A couple of students stood in line; one pointed out almost every available sauce behind the glass to the employee.

Some others sat alone or with friends.

Julie anticipated going back to her room with Midnight. She still thought about him off and on during classes and grinned whenever she imagined them snuggling. She'd left him with food and water to get through the hours she was gone, but it'd be nice if she could bring him to her classes.

The school didn't allow it because it could distract students from their studies.

Julie pressed back to her internet's front page to several trending articles pop up. Some were about famous singers and their upcoming albums, others were upcoming high-budget films and popular streamers who had recently been banned from Tevx for violating the terms of service. There were even a few clickbait ones about the imminent end of the universe that she scrolled past.

Julie stopped at one detailing the mysterious disappearances of over thirty owned pokémon within the last week around multiple areas in Castelia City. Trainers had banded together and gotten vocal about it, even filing ranger reports and discussing who or what gang or hidden organization could be responsible.

So far, the Global Union had been silent on the topic. It was an international organization responsible for enforcing peace and security measures on a global scale and bringing regions together. The GU's headquarters were located in Unova.

"Unfortunate..." Julie didn't keep up with happenings and news in Castelia City. It was far, nearly an hour away on foot, and she rarely visited.

Julie tapped the article and scanned over the first few paragraphs. "Unovanish?" she mumbled.

It was a company that had surfaced recently. It took the responsibility of ridding obnoxious wild pokémon from Castelia to make the city cleaner and safer for its citizens while relocating the captured pokémon back to their natural habitats. The article stated that they didn't confiscate owned pokémon without proof of it being guilty of committing a crime.

Maybe she'd read up on that another time and form an opinion after knowing more details. Fortunately, Julie didn't live in the big city. The college was located at its outskirts, so she wouldn't have to worry about Midnight going missing unless it came near the university.

She'd be devasted and without closure as to what those people could be doing to or with him: sex trafficking was huge and common worldwide as an underground scheme utilizing unregistered pokéballs due to sexual relations with quadrupedal pokémon being outlawed. Ability extraction and organ harvesting were lucrative underground businesses too.

Ability extraction was the act of either taking a pokémon's life or keeping them as indefinite hostages to drain their ability stores and create addictive and often volatile drugs from them that took hundreds of thousands of lives annually. Different types had different effects on the mind and body; certain types were more in-demand and valuable than others, psychic and dark being the highest-grossing, so authority urged trainers in big cities to keep their pokémon especially close if they fell in those categories.

Julie couldn't imagine how helpless those trainers felt.

In Johto and the rest of the Accord, which were rumored to indulge the most in ability drugs and explicit content involving trafficking, poké and human traffickers were arrested, but the organizations behind it stayed in business because of the insurmountable money and demand present in that field.

Unovanish didn't seem like anything to worry about on a large scale so far, though. Knowing this world, that was subject to change, but she wouldn't send it to her mother and throw her into hysteria. However, Julie would try to keep track of its development.

She pressed back and saw one more article that caught her eye pertaining to the Cherubi's that she opened. She'd seen countless articles popping up in recent weeks about the chain but had yet to read any. She may as well see what the fuss was about while on her article binge.

Upon it loading, Julie started skimming the words. The article discussed Cherubi's runaway success and media attention with the introduction of its revolutionary Rubicard. They predicted other businesses to copy, so Julie was prepared to carry multiple reward cards in the future.

She closed the app and saw her home screen, which displayed her and Midnight with the backdrop of the ocean as her wallpaper. She'd snapped it on the ferry the first day they left for Unova.

She took one last sip of her soda and covered her mouth to conceal a burp before getting up and throwing her cup and sandwich wrapper away.

She was then out the door with her backpack. She'd given her one from high school to charity and bought a new one from the merchandise store on campus. It had a cute mini badge at the top of the bag; on it was the university's logo: an intertwined 'CCU.' The C's were dark blue, while the U was snow white. It stood for 'Castelia City University.'

She went downstairs among more restaurants, students, and their well-behaved pokémon in the large indoor food court. She stopped at a restaurant on the way out and waited in line to buy a small mixed berry salad that Midnight liked, then was out walking the grounds under a gentle sky.

The climate was usually tepid outside of frigid winters, which was a perfect break from Goldenrod.

Julie should spend more time at the court, honestly. A corridor led north at the end of the court to a bowling alley and huge arcade, but she didn't have anyone to do those activities with. Playing air hockey or bowling with Alyssa sounded fun. It was too bad they'd chosen such different paths in life. Julie missed spending time with her.

The dorms were by the library, far east of the food court and gym that were a few buildings over.

The campus was massive and allowed anyone to enter as it was public, but that was fine with it being in a good area. Security also regularly patrolled as a deterrent to delinquent activity. There were roads around the north and south entrances of the campus that vehicles could use, along with parking garages, as no car could drive onto the main campus.

Around Julie was tile, neatly planted greenery, lamp posts with flags hanging from them displaying the school's logo, buildings with multiple stories, and students everywhere she looked. They came and left structures, many done for the day and heading to dorms or the food court. Others had late schedules, so they were off to their next class.

A group of high school students on a trip in burgundy uniforms followed a tour guide, who stopped before the two-story Physics and Astronomy building. The guide explained the classes it taught and programs it ran while the students listened intently, with some raising their hands.

People sat under tents, beckoning any passing student who dared to look their way to advertise new programs on campus or to fill existing ones. Pokémon like gardevoir and simisage stood aside them, handing out detailed sheets that told of their building locations, schedule, and starting dates. They sometimes cried to grab attention and held out the papers that students either ignored, took out of pressure, or genuine interest.

A couple of food trucks sat in a designated area near the campus center, where long lines of students stood to order.

Others sat at the offered wooden outdoor tables while eating. A purrloin lay sprawled across one of the tables while napping in the sun, pidove sat atop roofs or lamp posts, some by or under vacant tables pecking at fallen scraps, and a mincinno with a gray tail resembling a pachirisu's approached students who were eating and cried before them.

It did this three times, with most ignoring or glancing at its pleas until it reached a lone boy reading passages from a textbook, who handed it a couple of farfetch'd nuggets after looking around. It ate both quickly and grinned while hopping off its paws, thanking him with a "mino mino."

A flock of ducklett swam in a large fountain nearby that shot water into the air and showered them with it while they ruffled their feathers and cleaned themselves.

Students sat on the ledge encompassing it, laughing with friends or their partners, and some writing in notebooks.

Lillipup wandered the grounds aimlessly, giving students the challenge of not kicking or stepping on them as they trotted carelessly through crowds and between legs.

A group of joltik resided by a fenced electrical substation near the campus' exit to feed off the powerful electricity it emitted.

Wild pokémon often hung out on campus and were accepted as long as they behaved. Students weren't allowed to feed them, and signs and security enforced it.

Julie never got tired of watching the beauty in what surrounded her. It felt great to be in an upscale environment with people who cared about their education; it brought her motivation daily.

As she neared the campus' center, she saw several buildings ahead, including the store to buy university merchandise that sold branded clothing and accessories. There was also a help center, conference center, textbook store, and a large indoor Training Center in the vicinity.

The university's massive stadium that hosted sports events watched by millions was up north on the campus. Julie could attend the next one some weeks away with a student discount and could even take Midnight, but thousands would be in those bleachers, so she'd pass.

The Training Center reminded Julie that she needed to train Midnight for another hour this week. She'd gone twice already. It wouldn't be a huge deal if she missed a day, as no one watched her like that.

In the vacant middle area that the buildings surrounded was a raised platform holding a bigger-than-life-sized samurott statue standing on all fours with an open mouth pointed to the sky as if howling.

Benches sat against its base that students sat on to study or hang out, and others who took pictures, likely guests.

The statue was Castelia University's official mascot and was seen in annual sports events against other colleges. The samurott's armor represented the college's strong and adequate educational system; its howl signified the university's fiercely competitive nature.

Julie wanted to visit the merch store to buy a plush of it for her room.

In around five minutes, the dorms fell into view, styled like apartment complexes with multiple four-story brick buildings.

Julie currently passed a huge grassy open field that students sat on, some on blankets. A couple of owned pokémon and some children frolicked about while their parents studied. Julie had sat out there with Midnight to study once, and while it was nice to get some sun, she still preferred her room.

Julie sped up slightly until reaching her building. After walking all day with her backpack on, she wanted to rest her shoulders and legs. It had helped to keep her in shape during her time here, along with her occasionally using the campus' gym.

She went through the glass doors and passed the laundry room, greeting some familiar faces before taking the elevator to the third floor. There were security cameras posted above every elevator monitoring the halls.

All Julie had to do tonight was study and start some assignments, which she was glad to be doing in her room with Midnight instead of at the library. That speech today had drained her social battery.

She walked down the hall and took her key out of her pocket, arriving at her door and unlocking it. She opened it to her umbreon sitting on the bed's edge, staring at her with full eyes and erect ears. "Awe, cutie. I missed you today." Julie shut the door, put her backpack down, and shook off her boots.

She then went to the mattress and set the plastic bowl on the bed, kneeling on the floor before him to take his cheeks into her hands.

Midnight let her rub and push them together and kiss his head. "Mbre," he mumbled, nuzzling her hand as she released him.

Julie looked back at his double-sided bowl of water and dried berries she'd left him, which he had eaten all of. "Have an appetite? I bought you a berry bowl from the court." She avoided feeding him PokéChow. Her mother stuck to it, but Julie tried to give Midnight a tastier and healthier diet when possible.

Midnight swayed his tail a little and grinned after her words. "Umbreon." He thanked her.

Julie popped the lid and patted his head, running her hands over his ears as she left for the restroom. "Enjoy that. I'm going to go shower and repaint my nails a lighter blue. Then we can snuggle study."