"Me either, I think I still have her." She holds out her hand. "So it looks like you can't, at least not till I disengage you."

"And that should wait." Sigh. "I should get some sort of job and not sleep on your couch and eat your food forever. But I don't know what jobs there are or if I would need, what's the word, papers that say who I am."

"Identification. Usually for people around our age it'd be a trainer card but you obviously can't get one of those... You also don't have to worry about the couch or the food, it's fine."

"Maybe I can help you look for legendaries."

"Maybe, though I don't think we've exhausted the potential represented by you alone in your status as not technically a legendary."

"Yes, I definitely want to try more things with that. Do you still want my kind of magic if you can get it?"

"...I think so but I need to think about it, and maybe discuss the side effects more when you've had more practice with the language to be really sure I understand them all."

"Makes sense. What else do you want to do before then? I probably shouldn't go places without you yet but I can practice the language with books when you're busy."

"I need to do basic 'mon maintenance but I can do that without getting too far from the house. The traveling was all about finding legendaries, I can skip it while there's something more important to do."

"Right. What are the more important things? Do you have experiments you want us to try or do you just mean waiting while I practice the language some more?"

"Mostly the language, but also following up on anything you wind up being able to tell me about your technology that we ought to have here, or using your magic if you psychic something that needs handling."

"Alright. Hmm, technology. You have cellphones, do you have the Internet? It's a big group of computers that any computer can talk to and put words and pictures and moving pictures where anyone can see it."

"Yes, we have that."

Margaret lists some more recent innovations, mostly in medicine but a few in consumer goods and electronics.

Bella hasn't already heard of all of them, and looks them up when she's sure she has the description close enough to find the right thing on a search. Usually there's a local equivalent, even if it's implemented differently.

"I'm a little surprised how close our technology is. We could have been hundreds of years different either way. I guess we don't have anything like Pokéballs, so you're ahead."

"Well, those are derived from apricorns - I mean you don't need to pick an apricorn anymore to manufacture one, but we had the example to go by, do you have those?" She pulls up a picture of an apricorn.

"No . . . is that some kind of plant?"

"Yup. Grows on trees. There's a few different cultivars."

"Woah. We don't have any plants that can do anything like Pokéballs. I would have said it was impossible without really high technology, before I came here. I wonder what about me and Pokémon makes it work that isn't true of humans here. And if it would work on a normal human from my world."

"I don't know if it's apricorns being special or Pokémon being special or both, but if you don't have Pokémon you'd certainly never have noticed anything like an apricorn. I don't know why you count as a Pokémon though."

"Do you think a doctor or a scientist could figure it out? Would it be a good idea to ask one?"

"There's scientists who'd probably love a look at you, should I start hunting for some who'll talk to us?"

"I'd like that if it's okay with you."

"I'll look some up." She navigates the internet from her watch.