The architecture and fashion here is definitely bizarre, but it was already obvious he was far away, both from Johto and from civilization in general. The sooner he can figure out where he is, the sooner he can get somewhere with a reputable contest system.

Ruby steps out of the carriage and heads towards the immigration building. He has no intention of staying here, but this should give him the information to find out where he needs to travel to.

The woman at the front desk is blonde, chipper, and - for whatever reason - wearing realistic cat ears, 

”Hello!” she chirps. “How may I help you?”

“I arrived in the area unexpectedly, and don’t know where I am. I was hoping you would have a map, and maybe a public phone.”

“We aren’t nearly well funded enough to have instant communication, but we do have plenty of cartography!”

She gestures at a wall with four maps, framed and arranged in a grid - one labeled 'Frosch', one labeled 'The Land of Beer', one labeled 'The Empire', and one labeled 'The World'. Each one has a cheerful little 'you are here!' dot, indicating the location of the office, and each one is completely unfamiliar.

The map of the world, in particular, shows three major continents - or five, depending on how you count the weird one with three distinct sections, connected by narrow bands of land, and an internal ocean - instead of some more familiar number.

When they deny having the funfing for a phone, Ruby holds out hope that this backwater town simply lacks in funds in general, and prepares for a long transit back to civilization. When he sees the map, however, that hope dies; there’s just no way they would be so out of touch by accident; this is either some elaborate ruse, or he’s much farther from home than he thought. He’d been meaning to run from home, but that was to participate in the Hoenn contest circuit, not to hang out in some primative alternate reality.

Almost desperately, he looks for some sign that things aren’t as bad as he fears, looking for some sign on the map of a location with a higher population density, and thus more advanced technology, than his current locale. His thoughts go back to the day before he left Johto with his mom, and the night spent at the edge of illex forest. He’s known the move would be a big deal, but he hadn’t expected this.

Their population density seems weirdly uniform throughout the globe! Cities and villages are pretty evenly distributed - a little less common in deserts, a little more common in fertile plains, but not by that much. 

Are there any bigger cities near here?

Nope!

This is kinda concerning for his plans. Sure, he hadn't wanted to stick around, but his method for doing that would have been to run around the Hoenn region performing for contest ribbons. Now it looks increasingly likely that that's no longer going to be possible.

Still, it's not all downsides. All his Pokémon are probably going to be exotic here, and there are probably many Pokémon he's never even heard of that he can get to perform with. Ruby turns towards the map of Frosch, looking for the Pokémon center, and the Contest building, if it has one.

As the city of Frosch remains a city and not a theme park, and is correspondingly sized, the building labels are in exquisitely small print.

If he’s dedicated to the task of map perusal, he can still eventually discern a building labeled ‘Center for Goblin Paegentry’, and another building nearby it labeled ‘Center for Goblin Control and Miscellany’. 

He isn't, not really. If there's a Pokémon center here, he thinks, it's definitely going to be well labeled; a contest hall might well not be, but if there isn't even a center things are clearly different enough from the norm that he can't simply assume. There's clearly something important that's going to happen, but if it had been willing to explain it probably would have from the start. Instead, Ruby turns back to the front desk, and addresses the women with the odd skitty headband.

"Excuse, me, but what kind of lodging does Frosch have, and where would I find it?"

(Is it, really, a headband? It must be hiding under her hair, if so.)

“We have several rent-free instances of government housing!” she chirps. “But whatever you’ve heard about us nasty foreigners, we’re still plenty hospitable to children! We’d all die out, otherwise - you can knock on any door you like and get whatever you need, lodging or food otherwise.”

(He's not going to comment on it. His hat has been mistaken for hair more than once, and he's certainly not one to criticize someone for following through on their aesthetics.)

That's a weird way of phrasing it, honestly, but it's hard to tell if that's another translation glitch like he had earlier or something to genuinely be concerned about; if the former, it would probably be fairly rude to comment, while in unlikely the latter it might not be the best idea to.

"Where would you recommend, or where would I go for a recommendation?"

“You can stay at my residence, if you’d like!” beams the catgirl receptionist. “My wife should be home, and she’s making Sauerbraten, tonight - and I’m sure that we could spare an extra portion!”

This is honestly kinda weird; this isn’t that much more so than Johto, in that regard, but Johto is one of the most welcoming in the world on that scale. He does need a place to stay while he gets up to date on the fashion trends of this world so he knows just how to blow their minds, however, so it’s certainly convenient.

”If that’s convenient, sure. Where do you live?”

“The big, pale house with golden metalwork and the daffodils, just three blocks away - turn right as you go out of the office, then turn left when you hit an intersection, and then turn left again, and it should be on your right!”

When he sees the house, Ruby feels better about his decision. It’s hardly how he would design or decorate a house, but it’s far less ugly than most hotels in Johto; even if the rooms inside probably aren’t nearly a match for modern convenience, the external appeal of a residence is an important part of a location’s mood. Besides, he can always move out if he changed his mind. It’d be astonishing if there was anything even remotely as difficult to deal with as his dad on that, and he had been preparing to ditch the genuine article.

So steeled, Ruby steps up and knocks on the front door.

A woman - taller and darker skinned than most of the other people he’s seen here, wearing a modest yellow dress in lieu of anything Viking chic - opens the door. She seems just as excessively cheerful as her wife.

“Oh! A new face! How the heavens must bless me, today, to show me such novel hearts by my hearth, to lend me their grace and their cheer! - come in, we have plenty, come in! I will add potatoes to the pot.”

That’s definitely obsessively cheerful. If Ruby had rigorous self awareness, he might equate this drive with his own focus on beauty, but that doesn’t rank highly among his many virtues. 

“Hello. I’m Ruby.” He thinks back for a moment, then continues. “I stopped by the... immigration center, looking for a place to stay for a bit, and your wife suggested I come here.”

She leaves the door open for him, and starts drifting to the house’s kitchen, gesticulating to punctuate her statements.

”Ah, so you have seen my beautiful Sabine - what grace! What passion! I have good taste, you must agree.”

“I didn’t actually meet her for that long, but she’s certainly passionate.” It’s not just the work, either, slthough she did seem enthusiastic on that score; wearing a Skitty ears headband is fsr from common back home, and from what he could tell from the streets its not the current trend here either.

”Speaking of which, do you have rules about Pokémon here? Nana, Ruru, and Coco are very well behaved, but I know some people have places off limits to even contest ‘mons.”

“... pardon?” says the woman-who-hasn’t-introduced-herself, turning around to look at him.

“I do contests.” He says, as if this was helpful. Then, a thought occurs.

”Is it translating that as the name of a species again? It was doing that before.”

“... you are saying ‘goblin’, child; goblins are the fruit of goblin fonts, alongside goblin fruit, and they are the creations of witches. Goblins are not a ‘species’, my grace of the heavens, any more than plants or stones are, they are a kind of thing. You have three goblins, which you enter paegents with, and you would know if they may enter here as well?”

“Huh, this really isn’t translating well, that's annoying. Maybe this will clear things up."

He reaches for his belt in a smooth motion and, with the speed and grace of a long practiced action, pulls off three red and white spheres. He then tosses them into the air with a flourish, and calls out, "Ruru! Nana! Coco!"

Out of the balls comes a strange red light, which solidifies into a adorable catlike creature , which begins playing with its own tail, a luxuriously combed grey dog, and a... something.