Chapter Text
“Congratulations you have completed your rebirth and have regained your previous memories. Welcome to the CSS. Would you like help navigating your menu? Tap Y or N.”
This was the screen that greeted me as I opened my eyes. I stared at it for a moment before letting out a soft groan and rubbing my forehead. Well...fuck...I guess that wasn’t a dream at all then...at least I was ‘regaining’ memories and not replacing a different soul. That would be really fucking awkward and hard to explain...
Right so list of things to do...figure out the time, date, and where I am if possible. Which meant I needed to find my glasses cause wow do I have awful vision. I can just make out the shape of objects and things close by but colors and fine details are pretty much a blur. That being the case, I should have glasses somewhere around here. I squinted at the side table next to the bed which thankfully had what I needed and I slipped them on.
I blinked as my vision sharpened and I could see around the room a lot better. Thank god. Oh and hey a clock right next to where my glasses were! Even better. Okay so the time is...6:00 AM...according to my barely processed other memories, I have about two hours before my parents want me downstairs for breakfast.
So next a calendar...let’s see here...I glanced around the room and spotted a desk covered with drawings of different people and...huh. Some kind of creatures? I stood up from the bed and walked over to the desk to have a closer look
”Is that a...Growlithe? And a Roserade?” I murmured confused. Well...I guess that meant I was in the Pokemon universe? I flipped the drawings over to see if there were captions or a date on the back of them and found zip.
Well...that’s helpful...I set the drawings down before exploring further around the room. Potted plants were clustered around the window and there were several more amateur paintings of other Pokemon on the walls. It was easy to tell what hobbies I was interested in before I regained my memories.
There didn’t appear to be a calendar or map anywhere nearby but that’s okay. I could always just ask my parents for the date at least...finding out what region or whatever I’m in might be a biiit harder though depending on my current age....which means I should probably sit down and go through my memories to figure out my name, age, and all that.
I found a stuffed chair close to the plants and was about to do just that when the pop-up window caught my attention again. It really looked a lot like a pop up screen I’d see in a R...P...G... Oh you have got to be kidding me...
I settled into the chair and stared at the screen for a moment longer before finally reaching out and touching the Y button. A new window popped up and welp. That all but confirmed it for me. Turns out my new ability is Gamer based which...honestly isn’t terrible all things considered. I made sure I was comfortable and then got to reading.
“Welcome to the CSS aka The Character Status System. The CSS has been designed by Luck and Chance in the style of a tabletop role-playing game character creation sheet. It has been tailored to fit the universe you are currently in and will be updated as you go through life. You can open and close the CSS at any time by thinking ‘Status Window’ and ‘Status Close.’
The help here will be going over the basics to this system. Detailed explanations of stats and skills will come up as they are put into use in reality. After all, an experienced gamer such as yourself should be able to figure it out yes?”
Well I should hope I can figure them out as I go...I’ve played enough tabletops and rpgs to know the basics to stats at least. Depending on the system though it could get really complicated or simple though so I’d have to look at the character sheet to know for sure.
“Now the first thing you should know is the sheet is split in multiple tabs to help keep track of these things specifically: your skills & stats, action points, features, edges, extra things such as recipes, your inventory, and combat related abilities.
To go more into detail...your various skills are split into three categories. First there are the body skills which are acrobatics, athletics, combat, intimidate, stealth, and survival. As you can tell these have to do with physical aspects of yourself.
Next is the mind skills which are related to guile, perception, and your areas of education. Those areas would be general knowledge, medicine, occult knowledge, pokemon knowledge, and technology. We’ll go into more detail as that comes up.
Lastly is the spirit category which has four skills: charm, command, focus, and intuition. It’s difficult to explain these but think of them as your leadership skills.
Skill proficiency is as follows: Pathetic - Rank 1, Untrained - Rank 2, Novice - Rank 3, Adept - Rank 4, Expert - Rank 5 after level 6, Master - Rank 6 after level 12, and Virtuoso - rank 8 after level 20. Do you understand? Press Y to continue or N for a repeat of this explanation.”
I paused and leaned back to take all that in. “So...definitely in the Pokemon world if I have a knowledge skill attached to that...well this is going to be interesting...do I start with any skills or...hm...” I sat back up and pressed Y to continue scrolling through the help.
A few minutes later I had read through everything to do with each tab and was finally shown my sheet. So my name is Berry, I’m 10 years old, I’m currently level 1, and have 5 Action Points or AP. From what the help said these would be used to activate certain features & edges in and out of combat.
Turns out edges are basically skill upgrades along with two other uses. One is for learning techniques related to crafting, training, or combat. And the other is to get abilities. I have three to use at the moment and one already picked for me.
I tapped it in the menu and read through the description. “Mystic Senses allows you to use Intuition instead of Charm, Guile, or Intimidate when interacting with Pokemon. Requires: Novice Intuition. Warning: you may not gain an Elemental Connection so long as you have Mystic Senses.”
So it seems all edges and features have skill requirements and could make it impossible to gain certain edges or features...not a huge loss since I have no idea what Elemental Connections are but good to know nonetheless.
Moving on...features are used to specialize my commands in battles, way of training myself and pokemon everyday, and how I raise my pokemon...it seems they are also used to train class specializations as well. Looks like two of them are already used thanks to previous actions...I tapped a finger against my chin in thought as I looked the sheet over.
It would seem I start with Adept Perception, Novice Intuition, Pathetic Guile, Pathetic Combat, and Pathetic Athletics...well that explains the art and plants at least. I’m not worried about those three being at the lowest rank...I wasn’t the most active person in my previous life either. Or much of a liar for that matter...
So next would be my Features...looks like I started down the path for two different classes by accident. Chronicler and Channeler...chronicler sounds straightforward enough but what the fluff is Channeler? I tapped it in my Features menu and a message popped up.
“Channeler allows you to communicate intentions, emotions, and motivations with a friendly Pokemon and have them understood. You may also do this with a hostile Pokemon but be warned it will be extremely difficult unless you have Expert Intuition.
You may channel a number of Pokemon at a time equal to your Intuition rank. A Pokemon stops being Channeled once it is more than 20 meters from the Channeler. This is the first Feature of the class line and requires Mystic Senses.”
So this would make it easier to understand Pokemon in other words. Huh. Okay I could get behind that and roll with it. So next would be Chronicler which read about as I expected.
“Chroniclers are those who have an eye for detail and wish to remember things for the future. They record details and profiles for various places, moves, people, or pokemon they see in whatever medium they wish. Be it through photos, drawings, a handwritten journal, etc. Their class skill is Perception and requires Novice rank to gain the first feature.
Chronicler: selecting this feature gives you the choice to start a Profile, Technique, or Travel Archive. Profile Archives give you a +2 targeting social skill checks (Guile, Charm, Command, Intimidate, and Intuition) against the recorded Pokemon or Trainers within its pages.
Technique Archives allow you to record moves you see in battle and your pokemon gain a +2 evasion against them. Last up are Travel Archives. You may gain either the Keen Eye or Perception ability in a location recorded within this archive and get a +2 bonus to perception skill checks.”
According to the pop up, I had accidentally chosen Profile Archive by drawing various pokemon and classmates in my neighborhood before I regained my memories. Which didn’t seem so bad and could prove useful as time went on. So that left me with two Feature points to use as I pleased...and why not use those to continue down the class lines?
I selected an empty feature slot and a huge list popped up. Okaaaay...so this might take longer than I thought...a closer look showed the list split into eight categories: General Features, Introductory Classes, Battling Style Classes, Specialist Classes, Professional Classes, Fighter Classes, Elemental Classes, and Supernatural Classes.
Right...I made a mental note to look at all of them when I had more time and quickly searched through for Chronicler. A glance through the list of features for it showed I could only take one at the moment.
“Archival Training - Rank 1 of 2. Requires Chronicler. Each rank you gain a different archive.”
Well...it couldn’t hurt to have both the Travel and Profile archives...the perception bonus in specific locations would be helpful. I’m not sure how often I will be in battle yet so I think I can wait on the Technique archive for now. Well...that knocked one point out then.
So next would be...Channeler. A little more searching and I found I have two options for this skill tree. Shared Senses and Battle Synchronization. I guess I’ll have to check each of them to see which would be the most helpful to me right now...
“Shared Senses. Requires Channeler. Bind 1 AP to use this Feature. Target: A Channeled Pokemon. You Imprint the target so long as you have this feature bound. You receive all sensory information being sensed by Imprinted Pokemon. Imprinted Pokemon are not subject to the distance limit on Channeling. You may only Imprint one Pokemon at a time. A Pokemon stops being Imprinted once the Channeling ends.
Warning: sharing senses with the same Pokemon may end up eventually changing your perception and way of sensing things over time. Be very careful with this Feature.”
Good to know about that last bit...I think this could prove to be more helpful out of the two. But I should check the other feature just to be safe. Let’s see...this one is related to battling so I’m not sure how often I’ll be using it...
“Battle Synchronization. Requires Channeler. Can be used three times in one battle. Cannot be used in League sanctioned battles. For one round whenever a Channeled Pokemon successfully hits a foe, all Channeled Pokemon gain +1 accuracy and +1 Evasion against that particular foe for the duration of the battle.”
Hmm...this also sounds pretty useful actually. I think I’d use Shared Senses more often right now so that’s what I will pick. But I should definitely keep Battle Synchronization in mind for the future. Who knows what kind of situations I might end up in that could make use of that.
Alright so with that decision out of the way...next are edges. This will be harder since I’m not sure what to specialize further in Skillswise. I’m probably going to need Survival if I’m going to travel a lot...and Medicine would be helpful for battling...Pokemon Knowledge wouldn’t go amiss either since I don’t know as much as I’d like on my own.
So I think raising those three to Novice - Rank 3 would be useful for now. And then I can look further into the other edges as I go. That seems the best plan for now...thankfully I can pull these menus up at any time. Which means I can make a more detailed leveling plan at a later date when I understand the system a lot better.
For now I should really figure out the date and where I am. I’ll worry about everything else to do with the system later. I closed out of my sheet and stretched before checking the time again.
Reading through all the information on the CSS and using my points had taken...approximately an hour and a half. Not surprising considering how much information I just absorbed. Hopefully my parents wouldn’t be too surprised if I went downstairs early and had a wander around the house. I really hope it won’t take long to process my memories and figure out what’s ‘normal’ for me...