The world of Pokémon is a vast one, full of new lands to explore, new Pokémon 
to befriend, and new adventures to be had. For many young Trainers, their 
introduction to this world comes at the age of ten, when they receive their 
first Pokémon from a League official. The Trainers are to travel around their 
home Region, fighting others and challenging Gym Leaders in order to obtain 
Badges, symbols of ability. Many Trainers seek to become League Champions, 
the first step to the ultimate goal: to understand the mysterious creatures 
completely and become…Pokémon Masters!

For many Pokémon Trainers, their quest ends at a League Headquarters, for 
only the best of the best can fight in the Regional Tournaments, and many are 
just not that good. But some Trainers do end up in the tournaments, and that 
is where the new Champion is chosen. This brings not only pride and power, 
but a desire to continually improve themselves, to transcend the boundaries 
of ordinary Pokémon battling and learn the secrets of Pokémon. And it all 
starts with a young boy or girl, their first Gym Badge in hand, Pokémon by 
their sides and a fire burning in their heart.

This is where our story begins, in 2007, with a girl from the Kanto Region 
starting out from Pewter City, having just earned the Boulder Badge from the 
local Gym Leader, Brock. But soon she will have an encounter that will change 
her life…forever.
It is time…for the awakening.
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“Leaf, dodge that attack, then use Vine Whip!”

Leaf the Bulbasaur avoided the Squirtle’s Water Gun attack, and then released 
the vines from her back. They slammed into the other Pokémon, knocking it 
against the far wall of the cavern.

Emerald Saki grinned. Leaf had a tendency to goof off most of the time, but 
put her in a battle and she would fight aggressively. Even for a low level 
Pokémon Leaf was one tough cookie.  “Seems like your Squirtle is unable to 
fight,” she said, giving the other Trainer a look of confidence. “Looks like 
I win.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” the male Trainer returned, recalling his Pokémon back 
into its Pokeball. In the half-light of Mt. Moon it was hard to make out his 
race, although Emerald knew he was either Hispanic or a very tan Caucasian. 
“Alright, I think I own you money. How’s five hundred sound?” 

“Sounds good,” Emerald replied, taking the five one hundred Poke dollar bills 
from the boy. “I gotta go. Thanks for the battle!” She gave the boy a nod of 
thanks and ran off, Leaf right behind her.

Emerald was a rather strange Trainer. She was a tomboy who preferred Pokémon 
Battles to Contests, traveled with a katana, the sword used by Japanese 
samurai, had a natural talent with hover boards, and loved Fossil Pokémon and 
other prehistoric creatures.

Other than that Emerald was your ordinary girl. She had brown hair and green 
eyes, and her clothes were normal for her age: a green T-shirt, red skirt 
over dark green shorts, a light green bandana with a Pokeball print, and dark 
green finger-less gloves. It revealed nothing, although Emerald had nothing 
to reveal anyway. After all, she was only ten. 

Emerald was currently at a good place in her life. She was just starting out 
on her journey in the Kanto League, and with her brand-new Boulder Badge 
safely pinned to her bandana, she felt like she could take on the world. 

Her Pokémon team only consisted of three members: Leaf, her Kabuto, Stream 
and Jasmine, a.k.a. Jazz, the Absol, who right now was wearing a harness 
attached to a hover board laden with camping gear, following her Trainer 
through the mountain. Emerald was hoping to catch a Scyther somewhere along 
the road, but right now she needed to get through Mt. Moon in one piece.

That was easier said than done. The southern part of Mt. Moon was a maze of 
corridors and passages, with tunnels often leading to dead ends. She had come 
in here once with her father, paleontologist Malachite Saki, and her cousin, 
Pewter City Gym Leader Brock, but they had just gone as far as a huge 
paleontological dig near the first floor. It was dangerous, yet it was the 
only way to Cerulean City and the next Gym until they completed the tunnel 
through the smaller northern side. Emerald knew that the place could be 
deadly if you didn’t pay attention to the signs pointing Trainers in the 
right direction, but she was also intrigued by the tales of Aerodactyl 
fossils in the side tunnels. 

“So, are we going where the other Trainers have been, or are we heading down 
the road less traveled?” Leaf asked when they came to a fork in the cave. 
Both Leaf and Jazz had the power of human speech, and Emerald found that it 
made things less challenging when she needed to attend to their needs. 

“Yeah, where to, Em?” Jazz quipped, scratching behind her face horn with her 
right hind foot.

“Well, let’s see,” Emerald replied, reaching into her fanny pack for a map of 
the cave system and a flashlight. She sat down on a rock and spread the map 
out in front of her, shining the light on it to make up for the weak light 
that the oil lanterns in the walls provided . “Ok, we’re here,” she said, 
pointing to a split in the path, “and this left fork is the way to Cerulean 
City, but the right fork…hey.”

The rest of the caves were on the map, but only the start of the path to 
their right had been drawn in. “Weird,” Jazz remarked.

“So, it looks like no one’s ever been down there,” Emerald mused, twirling 
her long hair in her right hand.  She folded the map up and replaced it in 
her pack. “Come on, guys. I got a feeling that there’s something of interest 
to check out.”

They walked down the right fork for what seemed like an eternity before 
coming to a huge open space, with enormous stalactites and stalagmites 
reaching for each other, some forming pillars of stone when they met. There 
was no other exit to the room other than the one they had just come through.

On the far wall was a large crack in the stone, and as Emerald approached she 
could see a bulge in the wall, like there was something in there. She 
rummaged in her pack for a special device her father had given her before she 
had left home: a hand-held scanner that, using sonar, detected the shape of a 
fossil in rock. Emerald turned it on and pressed it against the wall, 
watching the screen for the fossil.

The scanner beeped once and an image appeared onscreen. It was a baby 
Aerodactyl, perfectly preserved with all the bones there. Emerald smiled. Now 
I can have those scientists on Cinnabar Island revive an Aerodactyl for me, 
she thought.

Suddenly the little scanner emitted a long succession of shrill beeps, close 
together so that they sounded like one large beep. At the same time the 
screen start flickering, until it finally blinked out. “What the…” Emerald 
muttered, slapping it against her palm. She switched it on and off a few 
times. Nothing. It had just stopped working.

“That was odd,” Leaf said, looking at her Trainer. “Didn’t you just put new 
batteries in there?”

“Yeah, so why did it just short out?” Emerald replied, putting it back into 
her fanny pack. She took off her specially designed backpack, which was of 
hammers and other excavation tools. “We better work quickly. I really don’t 
want to stay here longer then possible.”

Getting the fossil out took longer than expected. Once Emerald had exposed 
the bones, slowly chipping away the rock, she and Leaf worked together to 
remove them from the stone. After each individual fossil was liberated, 
Emerald cleaned it off with pure spring water from a one gallon jug, then 
carefully dried and coated it with Gorilla Glue to keep the bone intact 
before laying it on a plastic sheet to dry. She did this every time she 
removed a bone, so the process was slow, but Emerald had lots of experience 
with excavating fossils. She had learned patience from working with her 
father on digs.

Three hours later, Emerald had extracted every part but the skull. She slowly 
pushed her fingers behind the cranium and nose, then pulled gently on it, 
ears alert for the sound of snapping which indicated that the fossil was 
breaking. Emerald heard no such sound, however, and the skull came away 
cleanly in her hands. She washed and glued it, placing it beside the others.

“Hey, Emerald, what’s that?” Jazz asked, and the human turned around to see 
something strange. Where the Aerodactyl skull had been was a green, glowing 
object. “What the hell?” she swore, stepping closer to it.

A quick examination revealed that it was some kind of crystal, and that it 
seemed to be part of a larger mass behind the rock. Hefting her geological 
hammer in her hands, Emerald stepped backwards a bit before swinging her 
hammer overhead in a large arc, bringing it down squarely on the rock 
covering the gem.

The rock cracked, then shattered into tiny pieces, leaving the crystal 
exposed. It was about the size of the home plate at a baseball diamond and 
roughly the same shape, but it glowed with a bright green light. Emerald 
removed it from the rock, and was surprised at how light it was. Incised on 
the gem was a stylized M.

Emerald wasn’t sure what to do with it, so she put the crystal down next to 
the fossil she had just dug up and dug around in her backpack for plaster of 
Paris, strips of gauze, plastic wrap and a collapsible bucket. She wrapped 
the bones with the plastic, mixed the water from the jug in the bucket with 
the plaster and dipped the gauze into the mixture. Emerald covered the bones 
with the gauze, making sure that no part was exposed.

When she was done she cleaned up and rummaged in the stuff lashed to her 
hover board for the sticks she had saved. Emerald built a small fire and laid 
the bundled Aerodactyl bones by it to dry. She also put the crystal by the 
fire, although she didn’t know why. It just seemed like a good idea. She 
checked her watch and was surprised to find it was nine o’clock. She would 
have to sleep here tonight.

Emerald made herself an easy stew of potato and Tauros beef for supper, which 
she shared with Jasmine. Leaf, who was a vegetarian, munched on a few Oran 
berries. After Emerald had cleaned up the soup pot and unrolled her sleeping 
bag the three cuddled up together, exhausted.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Emerald awoke in the middle of the night, her eyes scanning the area. After 
she, her father and the rest of the scientists involved in a Middle East dig 
had been attacked by terrorists while they had been sleeping, Emerald had 
learned to sleep lightly when camping, just in case there were hostile humans 
or Pokémon about. But there was nothing that indicated something was wrong.

But something had changed. The strange crystal was glowing even brighter, 
outshining the glow of the dying fire. Emerald cautiously approached it, 
placing a hand on the smooth surface.

“Emerald? What’s happing?” Leaf asked as she and Jasmine came up behind her. 
Emerald just shook her head. “I don’t know,” she replied.

Without warning the crystal gave off a burst of light, forming into a 
vertical column of rainbow hue. And then, in the rainbow, a humanoid figure 
made of white light appeared. The rainbow column disappeared, taking the 
crystal with it and leaving the white being behind. It stood there in front 
of Emerald and the astonished Pokémon before collapsing in a heap on the cave 
floor. The whiteness dissipated, and Emerald gasped.

A robot was lying on the ground, its grey and blue armor glinting in the 
light from the fire. It had a three point crown on its head, shoulders that 
looked like jet engines and fins on its legs. Small wings protruded from its 
back, giving it a flight-worthy appearance. Emerald knelt down next to it, 
her gaze not moving from its face.

The robot opened the slits where its eyes would be, and Emerald was shocked 
to see it had bright blue optics. It gazed up at her with a curious 
expression, like it didn’t know what a human was.

Emerald took one of the robot’s hands. “Are you okay?” she asked, squeezing 
it tightly.

“Where am I?” it whispered, blinking. It tried to sit up but collapsed back 
to the ground. Emerald helped it up and allowed it to lean on her shoulder. 
“What planet is this?”

“Earth. This is Planet Earth.”

“Earth? That planet is not in my databanks. What sector are you in?”

“I have no clue what you’re talking about. All I know is that I found you in 
the rock.”

“Then that means…oh, my head. I can’t think. Nothing computes at all.”

“Then maybe you need my help.”

“Help? From an organic being?”

“Yeah. Why don’t you rest right now? When morning comes maybe you’ll be in 
better shape to talk.”

“Okay.”