"Sounds frustrating."

Nod nod. "What else do you want to know? Maybe I have better answers to some of it."

"Besides stuff about magical girls what's different?"

"Other than magical girls and swarms, I mentioned we have animals not Pokémon? We have hundreds of hundreds of hundreds of hundreds of kinds of animals; how many kinds of Pokémon are there?"

"...hundreds, but not hundreds of hundreds."

"Wow, that's so few! How did they all start? Were there more before?" 

"We're not sure. There are fossils of old Pokémon, but there might have been about the same number of kinds that have just changed over time."

"Do you have--" she takes a stab at explaining evolution, leaning heavily on diagrams.

"I think that's a botany and microbiology thing. The principle makes some sense with Pokémon, maybe some of them used to be bigger or bluer or whatever, but you mostly don't hear about it applied to them."

"Weird! What about . . . hmm. Humans and plants and animals where I'm from are made of small pieces called "cells", too small to see, and each "cell" has stuff in it that says what kind of cell it is, and that's what makes different people have different colors of eyes and be taller or shorter and look like their parents and stuff. Do you have that?"

"Yes, we have that. Cells and DNA."

"Do Pokémon have DNA?"

"Sure they do."

"That is less strange than if they didn't but it's still strange they're so different from everything else! Do you know if humans are closer cousins to plants or to Pokémon?"

"To Pokémon, I'm pretty sure, but we're definitely less related to them than they are to each other."

Nod. "Okay. I don't have more Pokémon questions . . . . Can you tell me about the government here?"

"Uh, the current mayor is part of the Infrastructure Party and keeps tearing up the streets to update the plumbing?"

"I mean more, what kind of government, how is it chosen, what laws are there that aren't obvious?"

"Well, there are laws to do with Pokémon, which I guess wouldn't be obvious. We vote on mayors."

"Each city has a mayor? Is there a government for all the cities? What are the laws about Pokémon?"

"All the cities in the whole world? I think they have meetings sometimes, but not really a government... there's a regional council, and the Elite Four but they're not really a government, more like, uh, emergency services. Uh, you need to have your 'mon well controlled in city limits, you can't battle them anywhere that isn't outfitted and insured for the grade of attacks they're going to use - little scuffle battles in the street aren't a big deal but if you start slinging fire or something you need to be in a real arena or out in an undeveloped area - leaving city limits on foot without a team is own-risk, you're responsible for what your 'mon do - so please don't go around doing anything, you are currently legally my Pokémon."

"Those are good laws. I won't do anything that could cause a problem, I don't want to make trouble for you. What are the Elite Four?"

"Champion trainers."

"So their Pokémon are strong and trained well and good at emergency response? Okay. I did emergency response work for a couple years when I was in school."

"What kinds of emergencies? How do you handle them without Pokémon?"