[spoiler]Just a little something that I dreamed up last night. By far the most lucid dream I've had in a long time.

Prologue: The Game

My world is not your world.

On the world known to it's inhabitants as Terra Secondus, all land is found on the ring-shaped continent of Paldam, with the Sea of Paldam nestled in the middle of the torus of earth. The Ring is split between the Inner Ring, where rests Civilization, and the Outer Ring, where lies only ruins of the Pagoda Wars. Both are separated by the Mountain Range, it's name varying depending on who you ask.

At the point where the Ring is thin and flat enough to allow a canal to be built lies the metropolis of Viaduct. Built at the beginning of the Pagoda Wars as a passage for ships built in Inner Ring ports to reach their enemies on the Outer Ring, the merchant lords of Viaduct soon found themselves with a great deal of power, which they turned into trade. Now, no goods travel through the Inner Ring before moving through the ports of the huge metropolis.

It was not all well and good as most citizens had hoped, however. The horrors of the Pagoda Wars would not be so easily forgotten. So they rose, teeming masses of darkness, some taking forms in mockery of the humans whose rage and sorrow spawned them. By the time anyone had realized that stories of city ruins teeming with moving shadows were not folktale, the creatures, soon named the Dark, had already come cralling across the mountains, bringing about the Second Pagoda Wars.

This was nearly seventy years ago. Today, the Dark are contained in the otherworldly realm from whence they came by wondrous technology. Walls surround every city in the Inner Ring, while the Outer Ring is still considered a ruined no man's land.

While most of the world would best forget the horrors that beat on their door, the Merchant Council of Viaduct has created a grisly reminder to the consequences of crime: The Great Game.

The Game, as most have come to call it, is a worldwide event where a set number of criminals of all stripes are brought to the west wall of Viaduct. There, they are let lose, with one goal: circumvent the Outer Ring, and reach the east wall of Viaduct. The contestants are given a day's head start. Then, the "net" that keeps the Dark on their side of reality is lifted behind them for just a moment, releasing a horde of terrors that will chase the criminals until they are all dead, or when they finish the circuit. Thus far, none have accomplished this goal.

That is, until the net let slip through something beside the Dark. Something that Emily Turner would find to be her salvation. Something she came to call... Pokémon.