One of the items in Scott's room, previously resembling a stuffed animal, jumps into the air, hovering there. It's a yellow, fluffy little bear with white wings that don't seem to need to flap to keep it hovering.

"What??? Who is this? Where did she come from? What is that thing???"

"-sorry, Kero. This is Ellie. Ellie, this is Kero. I'm Scott."

...It talks?

"Uh. Hello."

"...hey."

"This is Cerberus, my new friend. He looks like a stuffed animal, but he's-"

"My true form is way less cute than this. It's ferocious!"

Kero's exclamation about his own ferocity is undercut by the crack in his voice that emerges midway through the word.

"You mentioned that you never heard of California- most people in America have heard of California, I think? Have you heard of America, or of- China, Mexico, France, England, um, India, Japan, Mexico-?"

"No, none of those places. I think I might be from a different world or universe somehow."

Nod.

"A few weeks ago, I would have said pokemon were physically impossible in this universe."

"Hey, don't-"

Kero thinks better of saying that out loud, instead bumping into Scott with his head as a warning. This is a bad idea!

Scott pretends not to notice this.

"Well. I'm glad they're not physically impossible. That would kind of suck."

"No kidding. Poor Sylvie...so is she like a pet, and you're her owner?"

"Kind of? Some people treat their 'mon like that but mine are working pokemon. I'm not huge on the battle circuit but we do some of that, too."

"What do working pokemon do?"

"Help with human jobs. Depends on the type for what exactly they're suited to; flying for couriers and transportation, fighting for construction, rock and ground for mining, grass and water for farming, steel for manufacturing, and so on. Mine help me with my research- I'm studying pokemon evolution and they're all from the eevee line."

"That's a lot of different kinds of things. How many types are there? Flying, fighting, rock, ground, grass, water..."

"Eighteen, in all. Fire, water, grass, normal, electric, flying, bug, poison, fighting, rock, ground, psychic, fairy, dark, ghost, steel, ice, and dragon." She rattles the list off with easy familiarity.

"That's a lot of types.

So if yours are working pokemon, what do they do for you?"

"I mentioned I'm a researcher- sometimes as pokemon grow or when they're exposed to certain stimuli, they undergo a permanent metamorphosis, changing their shape and getting stronger, sometimes even switching their type. We call this evolution. My project is to study the whys and wherefores of this change to understand more about it. All my 'mon are of the eevee line, which means they all started out as the same species, eevee, which is the pokemon with the most possible evolutions out of any that we know about. So I raise eevees until they evolve, keeping track of their diet and habits and personality and so forth and compare them to what they're like afterwards. Cross-reference all of that with the circumstances under which the evolution actually occurred and maybe I'll be able to find some patterns in the data."

"-that's incredible. What have you discovered so far?"

"It's still a little early for any firm conclusions. I do have a hunch that the theory of each individual eevee having a so-called destined evolution is just completely incorrect, it's all down to environmental factors. Which raises some interesting questions when you take that perspective and look at a 'mon like nidoran, which has distinct evolutionary paths between the male and female of the species."

"Are there any pokemon without any evolutions?"

Kero does not interrupt this, because they have clearly moved on to talking about something besides the Cards. Thank Clow.