Cyel stirred awake again, not from the hum of fans or the blinking lights of her battlestation, but from a subtle ding—a notification chime from her Steam Deck, freshly connected and resting on the arm of her chair.
She blinked, rubbed her eyes, and leaned forward. The console glowed faintly in the dim light, showing a clean UI overlay she hadn't seen just a few hours ago:
Network: PokeGearNet Backbone — Established
Access Tier: Tier 1 City + Route Uplink
Nodes: Cerulean, Pewter, Vermilion, Goldenrod, Jubilife, Nimbasa, Lumiose, Hammerlocke, Mesagoza — Connected
Latency: Variable
Protocol Sync: Stable
"…You beautiful Frankenstein of a network," she muttered, a crooked smile forming as she picked up the Deck. "I knew piggybacking on the Pokégear backbone would work. Built-in infrastructure, just waiting for someone with enough RAM and reckless ambition."
She tapped over to her monitoring terminal and whistled low.
The Porygon-1s had mapped most of the regional backbones now, including defunct League lines, old Ranger feeds, and even some underground emergency relay towers that had gone unused since the Orre incident. They weren't fast—but they were reliable. And adaptable.
But the real progress was Porygon-2.
Her lead dev was flying now, moving across sectors with modular scripts being built and deployed mid-packet. Cyel watched it in real-time: one moment, it was indexing Cerulean's old Ranger Callline node, the next it was scraping formatting styles from Johto's Technical School repositories and converting them into full theme packs for Pokenet:Online.
She didn't even need to intervene. The AI was adapting as it went, guided by a simple instruction: Make it work, everywhere.
She glanced back to the Steam Deck. The shell interface had become an elegant hub, with network pings from nearly every major city lighting up in soft green.
Pewter City: 3 Users Online
Goldenrod: 5 Users Online
Jubilife: 7 Users Online
Lumiose City: 11 Users Online
Nimbasa: 4 Users Online
Hammerlocke: 6 Users Online
Mesagoza: 9 Users Online
Threads were starting to populate.
A question about how to safely migrate Togepi from Johto to Kalos.
A debate about regional myths between a user from Paldea and another from Unova.
Someone from Galar had made an entire post demanding to know if Dynamax could be used on Rotom appliances. (That one was flagged as a "Joke" thread, but also got 42 replies.)
And then there was the one from ChampionOfMyths.
Cyel blinked, leaning forward.
"If you know the name Huisi, then we need to talk. There's more buried under Sinnoh than people realize..."
She stared for a moment. The interface wasn't just working—it was spreading. The culture she missed from her last life? The long, winding forum threads and rabbit-hole knowledge posts?
They were already happening.
Her heart pounded as she tabbed over to her admin terminal and pushed a full integration command:
Deploying Steam Deck Patch:
Cyel looked over to her left at the steam deck on the stand. A soft chime echoed again as the Steam Deck vibrated gently in its dock. A glowing pixel-art Poké Ball icon flickered onto the screen, labeled simply:
"Pokenet:Online [Root Access]"
Cyel raised an eyebrow. The "game" had auto-installed itself during the integration patch—more of a front-facing GUI skin than anything else, but packed with full terminal backend hooks, real-time thread updates, and live network monitoring. It was like having a miniaturized command center disguised as a PokéNav app.
She tapped it open.
Immediately, the screen split into three panes:
Live Forum Feed: Already cycling through new threads from across regions.
Admin Console: Showing packet integrity, server load balancing, and Porygon AI movement.
Network Overlay Map: Routes, cities, and remote towers flickering online in cascading green pulses.
"Goldenrod Gym – Online"
"Vermilion City Pokémon Center – Node Registered"
"Victory Road (Kanto Side) – Partial Connection Established"
"Route 8, Galar – Signal Weak but Active"
"Lake Acuity– Unexpected Node Sync. Classifying…"
Cyel laughed quietly, then leaned back in her chair, resting her hands behind her head.
"Okay, okay. That's cooler than I expected."
Porygon-2 blinked into view on the virtual overlay, spinning in an idle animation like it was waiting for a challenge.
The AI pinged her with a server message:
[INFO] Direct Admin Access Interface Successfully Launched via Steam Deck
Welcome back, Cyel.
Users currently browsing: 92
Total registered users: 308
Uptime: 7h 11m
And just like that… the numbers were rising.
"I really could use a Rotom." Cyel mutters as her Iphone alarm starts to go off.
Cyel groaned, dragging a hand across her face as the cheery, too-bright jingle of her iPhone alarm cut through the quiet hum of fans and digital static.
"Ugh. Of course it's Misty Day…"
She tapped the screen to silence the alarm, but didn't move just yet—still watching as the green flickers on her overlay pulsed like a heartbeat. Porygon-2 bobbed gently in the corner of the interface, flashing a small status notification:
[SCHEDULE SYNC] Reminder: Cerulean Gym Visit – 30 mins ETA
Cyel stood, stretching.
The network was live. Porygon-2 was thriving. People were posting, debating, laughing, connecting across regional borders.
And she'd built the doorway that let it happen.
She threw on her coat, grabbed the Steam Deck from its stand, and slipped it into her Silph Co bag.
As she stepped out the door, her last glance at the console showed a new thread already climbing the ranks:
Is Yellow Back in Kanto?