The girl near the bar whips her head around to look at the newcomers. "You don't know what's going on either, huh?" she sighs.

"Either? I don't know if that's reassuring or not."

"I was walking into a store for Potions and Pokéballs and I found this instead."

"Potions and what?"

"Pokéballs." She pats her belt. "A couple of mine are threatening to wear out."

"I think we have a failure to communicate. I literally do not know what you mean."

"Po-ké-balls. The balls. That you keep Pokémon in. Because otherwise it would be hard to get some of them through doors or whatever?" She plucks one of the balls off her belt and waves it around. "These things?"

"O-kay," Ann says. It does not sound like she understood anything.

While the two of them have been talking Sabrina has walked up to the bar. She kicks it to see what happens.

Sabrina practically jumps, and turns around. "You two saw that, right?"

"Yeah, a napkin just appeared out of nowhere!"

Ann walks up to her sister and pokes her. "You did this. I have no idea how, but you did this. So, you go touch it."

I didn't mean to startle you, says a new napkin.

"Who is 'I'?" Ann says slowly.

"No, let's instead get back to the part where you're a talking bar. I-I don't even know where to start. Where did you come from, how do you make stuff appear out of thin air? Where did the door go, how can we get back?"

Unfortunately, I don't have a perfect memory and can't tell you anything about how I began to exist. I have always been able to make things appear and it comes very naturally to me. Your door will reappear in time but neither you nor I can control how much time.

"My name's Bella. I don't know, I'm already here without knowing how I could have gotten here or having any way to find out besides asking the bar questions, I'm not sure how taking a drink would make anything worse. Not really thirsty enough to try it yet though."

"Charmed to meet you. I'm Ann and this," she says and points to the other girl, "is my sister Sabrina. You don't know how you got here either? Hey Bar, do you have something to do with that?"

"Psychic what? You keep using that strange jargon, I have no clue what you're actually talking about."

"She's a Mienshao, it's a kind of Pokémon. Her name is Juu. I have five others of different kinds. I got one from my mom and the others I caught or traded."

"Okay, but where did you catch them?"

"And what's a Pokémon?"

"Just - out in the wild. Wherever, except usually not in the middle of cities. Pokémon are creatures that can move around but aren't humans."

"Just... How do you not know what an animal is? Bar? And Bella's world? Does she have her own personal world or something?"

"Uh, some people eat some kinds of Pokémon, but I don't, most people don't. Some of them give milk or eggs or other edible stuff but I wouldn't eat an actually butchered 'mon. We eat plants - not plantlike 'mon, just regular plants. And 'mon are generally not as smart as humans, although they vary a lot, and they can make attacks and they're tougher and stronger and they evolve and they work with Pokéballs." She puts Juu back in her ball and the ball back on her belt.

"For the record, where we live most humans eat some animals, and I don't think there are many animals nobody's tried eating. Animals can be smart too, I think there was a woman who taught a gorilla to sign, that's the smartest I know of. Of course most species of animal are universally dumb. And as far as I remember most living things in the planet are bugs, both in number and mass, and they have too tiny brains to have anything else but instincts."

"That's all well and good, but there are so many more important things. Like attacks? Evolve? How do Pokéballs work? Please explain."

"Uh, I don't know how Pokéballs work, I'm not an engineer, I tried making my own out of an Apricorn once but it didn't work. Pokémon fight a lot - each other, mostly, if one attacks an undefended human the human's in a lot of trouble so we try really hard to avoid that - and they do it with, well, attacks, which are more powerful and often flashier than the kind of thing you learn if you go to a martial arts class for humans. I mean, some 'mon do things humans can learn as martial arts, but they're better and more natural at it, and humans cannot breathe fire. My 'mon are all already fully evolved so I can't really show you it happening, but -" She releases another creature, pets it, and says, "This is Dusk, and this," she taps a few buttons on her watch and displays the screen, "is one of his baby pictures. He evolved and now he's an Umbreon instead of an Eevee."

"They look so different... Only a few animals change shape that drastically. It's called metamorphosis, and I don't think anything that has any kind of skeleton can-"

"I have six, which is the most anybody can have active at once unless they're herd 'mon or extremely tame or something. What they can do is... pretty vague. Rachis can carry me around flying? Branch and Fireflower carry me around on the ground? Zag can swim?"

"No, I meant like attacks and such. Can you show us?"

The two follow after her.

"So, how can I get my hands on one of those?"

"Uh, you can catch them or buy them or get them as presents - I'm really attached to all six of mine, though."

"In your world, right? First we'd need access to it. And currency. Did you come here through the door too or is there some other method?"

"Through the door. I thought it was a shop."

"That was implied, yes. I was just making sure. So somehow the door leads to both your world and ours. Ann, do you think it's time we grill the Bar some more, maybe check if the door has come back?"

"So now we just need to keep ourselves entertained, the door will come back sooner or later. Bella, you don't happen to have a deck of cards or something like that with you?"

"Nice. Do you know the rules to Kalooki or Cassino?"

"Nnnnnope. And I'm betting you don't know Cloyster Catch or Ten Bugs."

"Never heard of them. In that case we have two options, are you in the mood for learning or explaining?"

"I'll learn something, why not."

"I think so."

I also serve food, mentions the bar, when she approaches, but only the first beverage is free.

"Oh, food, even better. Can I please see the menu?"

"Okay, then a chicken sandwich with Parmesan cheese, please. I have cash. Actually I'll also take my free drink. Jasmine tea if I can choose what I get."

"That's nice. I'm bored again."

"Oh come on, this is where I draw the line. There's no such thing as a categorically harmless thing. You can strangle a person with almost anything, you can break a glass and use it as a knife, you can bludgeon a person to death with anything hard. A candy bar can be used as a killing weapon if the victim is allergic to nuts."

There is still a difference between a knife and a candy bar, which I enforce when selling things.

"Okay, can you sell me a Pokémon?"

"The way you talk about it sounds like it's not super useful. It'd just end up as Lucy's cuddle buddy, and if Lucy needs a cuddle buddy she can already dogsit. What I want is results."

"What kind of results do you need a 'mon for?"

"Good things! I want to stop racism, enforce equality, stop all wars in Middle East, and that'd be only the beginning. There's so much you can do with something your enemies don't know you have."

"Uh, even if there are literally no other Pokémon anywhere that is a major job for one trainer."

"Let me rephrase that. There's so much you can do with something your enemies don't know you have, enough creativity and the right amount of ruthlessness."

"I'm not going to help you get a 'mon so you can run around killing people, I'd need way more context to endorse that."

"Oh please. Name one major social reform that has happened without any bloodshed."

"Sabrina, she comes from an alternate history that doesn't have animals. I don't think we have the same social issues."

"It doesn't change the human nature. Besides, when they have a world where everyone has a dangerous thing with them wherever they go there's bound to be even more violence than we do."

"Yeah, violence between 'mon. Civilized people don't attack squishy humans."

"Well, if we lived in a world that only has civilized people, that would be fine and dandy. Unfortunately Utopia means 'no place'."

"You might have to save your puns for a time when we aren't apparently under some kind of magic translation effect."

"Okay, how about 'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.'? The world is not perfect, and sometimes violence is the only answer."

"Okay, but you are literally a random person I met in a bar. I don't know anything about what you've got going on at home. I might come through myself and have a look around and see if I could do helpful things if I could rely on the door to let me go home when I wanted, but I can't."

"Aaaargh! I hate people like you!"

"Look, Bella, is there any way we could convince you? Sabrina has a mean temper, but she really does have everyone's best interests in mind."

"You hate people who don't give deadly weapons to screaming strangers in magic bars? What the hell kind of people do you like? I'm not feeling very convinced right now! I mean, maybe Bar can give me a course in your world's history and current events and you can lay out a plan besides - what the hell does 'enforce equality' even mean - but I can't afford to stay here forever, I can't collect on my allowance or win tournaments while time's paused, and I might have other things to do with my runway than that specific possible thing I could maybe do with access to a magic bar."

"Dusk!" exclaims Bella, and Dusk leaps out of her arms and kicks Sabrina's approaching fist hard enough to break a finger, then lands on the floor; Bella has fallen backwards in her own attempt to dodge and has her hand on her belt.

"He's mine. I can put him away if you'll stop her from hitting me."

"Ow, my hand! Let go, that hurts!"

"You idiot, what was that? I just said you have people's best interests in mind, and you immediately made me a liar!"

"I'll let you go when you're in a holding cell to cool off," the Security woman tells Sabrina. "You, put your creature away."

Bella opens up Dusk's ball and calls him back out of the woman's hand.

"Can't we just go home?"

"The door's gone," says the Security lady. "You couldn't go home anyway. I'm giving your friend six hours subjective in the cell and then she can be on her way; you can do whatever you like as long as it doesn't involve picking fights in the main bar." Her feet touch the ground briefly and she takes off again, flying at a sedate walking distance towards the door whence she came with Sabrina's wrist still in her grip.

"What a thrilling track record," mutters Bella, getting up. "It clearly doesn't matter if I want to press charges, though, and six hours isn't bad."

"I'm still really really sorry, but I think I need to check if they'll let me talk her out of doing more stupid things. She doesn't usually stay angry this. Umm... Explosively for long, but just to make sure. Also, she's my sister and oldest friend, I don't want to leave her alone in an unfamiliar place, I hope you understand?"

"I won't keep you."

Sabrina has been stashed in a cell with a transparent front wall. The lady who put her there is sitting behind a desk with a fashion magazine. "You can keep her company unless that causes some kind of problem," says Security Lady.

"No problem, I can behave myself. Can she hear me through the wall?"

"Yep."

"No."

"Really?"

Sabrina sighs. "You know what it was all about."

"Talking didn't get you what you want, so you decided to try your fists? That was really mature of you. I can see how you'd think that would work, it has worked so well thus far."

"What do you want me to say? I was frustrated and it just… boiled over."

"Uh-huh, keep talking."

"Look, I know it wasn't the most rational thing to do, but for a moment I just had so many ideas."

"But that's not relevant, I know. I'm sorry I was an ass. And before you say anything I was going to apologize to Bella anyway. Besides, I don't think it would have worked."

"Hm? What do you mean?"

"The critter would have been dangerous, so I would've had to keep it away from Lucy. And you know her, she would have found it eventually and then she'd do what she always does with things she finds interesting."

"Hug it to death?"

"Yes, but this time it could have been her death and not the critter's."

"Yeah, but I don't think I could have taken the risk. And she'd hate us if we kept secrets."

"Yeah, you might be right."

Another yawn.

"Do you want to take a nap? I can just sit here and think of what I did wrong."

"I don't really care."

So Ann sleeps and Sabrina stares at the walls, takes catnaps and thinks of what she did wrong until their six hours are up.

The security lady does something inscrutable and the transparent wall disappears. "Free to go," she says. "Don't let me catch you trying to punch people in the main bar again. Keep it upstairs or out back."

"I'll be good, and sorry for the inconvenience."

Bella is reading something the bar gave her. One of her Pokémon is drinking a bowl of something slushy. She looks up warily when Sabrina and Ann come out but doesn't address them.

"Oh you're still here! I didn't think... Oh yeah. Magic bar. It was six hours subjective, wasn't it."

"I accept your apology. It hasn't been six hours for me yet, but I'm probably going to hang out for a long time."

"Well, I think it was nice meeting you, even if it could have gone better."

"It definitely could have. Good bye, have a nice life. We're leaving before the door disappears again."

"Bye."

And the sisters leave through the door.

"What do you mean again? Lucy, where did the bathroom go?"

"The bathroom's where it's always been. This is Milliways. It's magic, and so cool."

"Magic? What?"

"Oh, are you a friend of Ann's? Hi, I'm Lucy, her sister. I don't think we've met."

"Actually, I have no idea who she is. Have we met? I'm usually good with faces."

"As far as I know I have no biological siblings. Lucy, do you have any idea what's going on?"

"No, but I bet it's magic. Magic is cool. Also, you should get a drink. Everything the Bar makes is automatically awesome, and the first one's free."

"The Bar..?"

"The Bar," says Bella, patting the bar. "She's neat. And she does produce free drinks, first time you're here."

"You just give her the order and it'll appear. C'mon, try it."

"An alternate universe Ann? Wow. How well do you know her? What was she like? How was she different? Oh yeah, what's your name?"

"Uh, I didn't know her very well, sorry. She was in here with a person called Sabrina, who tried to punch me, which kind of cut down on socialization opportunities. I'm Bella."

"Sabrina tried to hit you? She wouldn't do that. Sabrina's the nice one."

"How about that time with Nate?"

"I didn't insult Ann."

"So you aren't an ass."

"If you say so. I'm sorry, Bella, Lucy can be a handful. I can drag her away if she's disturbing you."

"But I want to talk to her! People here are so interesting, last time I spoke to a girl who was married to a merperson."

"I don't mind as long as nobody's going to try to hit me. The security lady was out here really fast, anyway. So what's your world like? Mine has Pokémon, apparently that's unusual."

"My world has Pokémon instead of animals," clarifies Bella.

"Ooh, okay. That means you don't have kangaroos or puppies. What's it like, not having puppies? They're tiny and cute and people keep them as pets, and then they grow up to be less tiny but still cute. Some get allergic to their dogs and have to give them away. I think that was most of the relevant things about them. Ann, what do you think?"

"Dogs are domesticated from another kind of animal and have had a basically symbiotic relationship with humans for a long while; they give us protection and company and get food and shelter. They're also smart, for animals, highly social and can be trained to do several things including herding, attacking people, working as blind person's aid and sniffing out drugs and bombs."

"Pokémon of one kind or another can do all those things."

"Hmm. If Poké-things are not animals, there must be something that an animal can do but a Poké-thing can't. What's the strangest thing an animal can do... Squirt blood out of their eyes? I think something does that."

"Iiiii don't think any 'mon squirt blood out of their eyes. Ew."

"Some snakes first strangle their prey and then dislodge their jaw and eat it whole. Because snakes are long and thin you can see if that kind of snake has recently eaten because there's a huge bulge in the middle of it."

"Animals eat each other? I guess some 'mon do that. Not most of them, though."

"A world of mostly herbivores sounds very strange. Bigger and bigger predators is an obvious niche to fill, and even when the herbivores have ways to defend themselves there's always something that can and will eat them, even humans with our big brains and weapons. I find it hard to imagine, either what the most defenseless Pokémon can do makes it more efficient to compete for food rather than eat the Pokémon or you have less than a few dozen species all together."

"There's hundreds of species. But even a species that's often prey can beat something that would like to eat it under the right conditions. Size barely matters."

"That's hard to believe. In our ...World? In our world power definitely correlates with size. There's nothing a two pound rabbit can do against a hundred pound wolf, other than run away."

"I'm a lot bigger than, say, Dusk, but if he didn't like me he could easily kill me. Branch is a lot smaller than an Onix, but grass-type attacks are particularly powerful against rock- and ground-type 'mon."

"Type? What does that mean?"

"Oh - 'mon have different, well, types, of characteristics. What type or types a 'mon is affects their defenses and correlates with their offenses. Like - Fireflower's an easy example. She's fire-type, so she can learn lots of possible fire attacks on top of a few others, and she's defensively strong against other fire attacks, weak against water, etcetera. There's a chart."

"Oh, does it have something to do with how they've evolved? Animals are sorted by the very distant ancestors they've evolved from."

"Uhhhh... I don't know exactly how we're being translated, here, but I don't think you're coming across clearly."

"What do you find unclear? Evolution? It is a relatively new theory and not trivially obvious, it's only been around for something like 150 years for us."

"The word is translating, but the thing it's translating as is... uh... trivially obvious."

"Okay, let's define the terms. In short evolution is small cumulative changes in animal populations over a long period of time that results in individuals in different populations no longer being able to procreate and thus creating new species. There is, of course more to it, but it's not obvious unless you live for hundreds of thousands of years and habitually observe a certain group of animals."

"...Okay. The word 'evolution' in my language refers to individual Pokémon literally glowing and changing shapes under certain conditions often related to having a lot of combat experience but sometimes otherwise. Also, different species of 'mon can have baby 'mon together as long as they're in the same egg group. And all of them can have baby 'mon with Ditto."

"Wow, that's super obvious, and also really cool! Do you have a video of it happening? What does a Ditto look like? Does its name mean "likewise" in your language too?

"I don't have a video on me. Ditto look like pink blobs with faces. And no, Pokémon in general are almost all named after the vocalizations they produce, but it's really cute that it's translating like that, considering that Ditto transform into other things."

"People where you live must have really bad imaginations, because that's a silly way to name things. what if a cat was called 'meow' or a dog was called 'bark'. And to say the name of a bird you'd have to sing its song. Okay, that'd actually be pretty fun, and as a bonus you'd always be able to recognize what bird is singing."

"It's not completely consistent. Some of them don't really make wordlike sounds - although most do. Chatot are mimics and they got their name some other way. But it works fine for most of them."