Princess Celestia blinked her eyes once and groaned. The lids felt like they were heavy enough to be made of lead. Her muscles by contrast seemed to be made of jelly, twitching and quivering uselessly in spite of the evident heat. Her stomach was weak, her heartrate elevated. And on top of everything else, the princess had a pounding headache. She hadn’t felt this bad in… centuries, maybe even more. Alicorn immune systems were nothing to trifle with.

“Nrgh…” Celestia managed to force one eye to at least crack open. “Wha time is…”

Her question trailed off as sunlight flooded through the small opening, her brain slowly managing to process the visual data. Luna had raised the sun for her. That was nice. She must have sensed her sister’s strange illness and taken it upon herself to deal with today’s work. That meant that Celestia could follow her body’s overwhelming urges and lay back down against her soft, comfy rock and…

Wait. Rock?

Celestia’s one opened eye trailed lazily down towards what she saw at the base of her head. Yes, there was no mistaking it. Unless she was hallucinating – and the princess was fairly certain even in her current state that she wasn’t – the diarch of Equestria was indeed resting her head against a common grey rock. Forcing the eye open still further, she made the rather disconcerting discovery that she was also lying sprawled out on a grassy knoll beside what appeared to be a small dirt road. A far cry from her usual silken accommodations at the palace, but not exactly uncomfortable. A nice enough place to take a nap, she decided, lowering her head back down and sealing her eye shut against the warm afternoon sun.

It took about ten seconds for a shot of adrenaline to jumpstart Celestia’s thoroughly muddled brain into realization: she wasn’t supposed to be here. Normally the thought of transgressing standard procedure ever so slightly wouldn’t have bothered the princess, or perhaps even elicited a few chuckles, but at that moment she realized that she genuinely didn’t know where she was. Though her body protested every movement, Celestia used the adrenaline stimulant to force her neck to crane upwards and give her a look around.

She was, as she had discerned earlier, indeed lying down on a grassy hill. Beyond it were many more such rolling hills, and in one direction the vaguest outline of a forest. Apart from that and the dirt road just down the hill, Celestia could make out no distinguishing features. Her present location was warm, comfortable, and pleasant. She might have thought herself in any one of a thousand such places in beautiful Equestria, save for one fact.

The sun above wasn’t hers.

Celestia had had a primal connection to the vast source of Equus’ light and life for thousands of years. She knew it at least as intimately as any mother knew her foal, and better than many of those. She had lived with that connection as a semiconscious part of herself for many lifetimes. And now the feeling was gone. There was a sun overhead, no doubt, warm and yellow and friendly like her star. But there could be no question that it was not the same.

Groggy, weak, and thoroughly confused, Celestia struggled to make sense of what she was seeing. The sun was there, but she hadn’t caused it to rise. It shined light and heat down on her, but it wasn’t that which was used to. In her present state, it took the princess a few minutes of increasingly-frantic mental processing to come to the rather alarming conclusion: if this was not her star, than this must not be her world.

The princess was not unfamiliar with the concept of other worlds. Since Starswirl’s time it had been known that separate dimensions existed, with their own creatures and strange rules. Indeed, she had visited more than one herself, even engaging in a romantic tryst with a certain grey stallion from….

Painfully, Celestia shook her head to clear away painful memories. Reminiscing would do her no good at this juncture. She needed to learn where she was, how she had gotten here. More importantly, how could she get back?

Wracking her fuddled brain for several minutes, she at last managed to turn up what she believed to be an explanation. She vaguely recalled attending an exhibition of her former student. Princess Twilight had wanted to show… what was it again? Celestia considered, looking around, until the flash of the sun against a crystalline pebble caught her eye and jogged her memory. Twilight had wanted to show her a mirror. Yes, that was it. She’d said she wanted to recreate Starswirl’s mirror, only larger. More reliable. With more precise control over where it sent a pony. She’d been saying something about immense potential benefits of reliable interdimensional travel… Celestia had taken a close look at her former apprentice’s invention… there had been a flash… and…

Try as she might, Celestia couldn’t remember anything more.

The effort of all this thinking was giving the princess what seemed to her to be the mother of all headaches, but she pressed on as best she could. Now she knew something about why she was here, she just had to figure out what to do next. She needed to find civilization, find help. Her purple eyes turned to the small dirt road. Following that seemed a good idea. Celestia nodded weakly. Yes, a good enough start. She would do that.

Summoning her strength, Celestia began to push herself upwards. Almost immediately, her legs turned to pudding, wiggling and collapsing out from under her. She hit the ground with a painful thud. Breathing heavily, her eyes slowly wandered back towards the rock.

Well, maybe she could leave after a nap.

Many hours and quite a few hazy dreams later, a better-rested but still very weak Celestia wandered meanderingly down the dirt path. Her pace was slow and sedate and she had shed all her regalia, allowing her to conserve precious energy. Lacking any other landmarks and finding any kind of magic quite beyond her, she had decided to walk towards the forest she had seen, many miles away. Through the light early morning mist she wandered, for how long she didn’t know. It seemed a matter of hours to her, but with her fogged perceptions and the unknown rotational length of this planet, she could not be certain.

It was just as Celestia was beginning to consider finding another spot on the grass and lying down for another nap that she spotted movement through the mist. Instantly she was on her guard, lowering her head and leveling her horn at whatever it was that approached. More intimidation tactic than actual threat, as the princess didn’t feel up to fighting off a bratty unicorn foal at the moment.

The movement continued, and drew closer, eventually revealing itself to be a trio of beings, all bipedal. Two were tall creatures wearing white clothing, with grey gloves and boots. Each had a large, red symbol stamped across the chest of their apparent uniforms. One had a long, curling wave of magenta hair coming out of her head, the other’s hair was shorter, and looked bluish-purple, perhaps periwinkle. The third biped was much shorter, looking like nothing so much as an off-white cat standing on two legs, with a metallic golden crest atop its head.

When the trio spotted her in return, there was immediate activity amongst them. They broke out in a sudden frantic burst of noise, appearing to squabble with each other. The magenta-haired female and cat seemed the loudest, alternatively yelling at each other in a language Celestia either couldn’t understand or couldn’t make out and gesturing at the princess. It was therefore a great surprise to her when the third, quietest figure of the trio brushed past the other two, holding hands up for silence.

This man walked towards Celestia, a friendly smile on his face. She kept he horn pointed at him and growled in what she thought to be an intimidating manner. The man paused, put his hands up to show that they were empty, and then continued walking towards. Unable to run and not feeling like a feeble fight, she let him come close. When he was almost upon her, he reached out his hand and…

Scratched behind her ears?

Celestia almost melted on the spot. A warm, relaxed sensation flooded through her body as the man gently scratched behind her quickly-folded ears. Her legs wobbled, threatening to become jelly again, and she let out an involuntary coo of pleasure. It was embarrassing and undignified, but she truly couldn’t think of anything better to do at that moment. It just felt so nice!

The strange man continued his behavior for almost a minute, stopping him being the last thing Celestia wanted to do. In the end, it was a great growl from her stomach that halted the scratching. The princess realized, to her dismay, that in addition to everything else she was quite hungry. But the man in front of her only smiled and held up a finger. He reached behind himself and soon returned with one hand full of large, brown pellets. These, he offered to her.

Celestia looked at them curiously. They didn’t look like any of the food she normally ate. Sniffing, she determined that they smelled strange, but not unappetizing. It was these, she soon decided, or eating strange wild grass. Another growl from her stomach sealed the decision. She reached down and took a cautious bite.

Dear gods above, it was delicious! Without the slightest concern for royal dignity, Celestia practically buried her face in the man’s hand, scarfing down every last one of the strange brown things in seconds. She even licked his grey glove a few times, just to make sure she had ingested every last crumb.

“Thank you, sir,” she mumbled weakly, her mouth extremely full. “I promise that your kindness will not go unrewarded.”

Celestia couldn’t tell whether or not the man understood her, for the next thing he did was reach behind himself again and pull out a strange red and white orb. Divided into even halves by a black line connected to a white button, the princess drew a complete blank on what it was. The man pushed the button with one finger and the ball abruptly doubled in size. He offered it to her, smiling broadly.

Celestia swallowed the last of her small meal and cocked her head. This ball didn’t look like any kind of food. A quick sniff confirmed that it was artificial, and definitely not edible. She turned her purple eyes up at the man, confused, but he only smiled, nodded, and offered it again. Celestia looked back down, puzzled as to what she was supposed to be doing. Perhaps this was some kind of greeting ritual?

Ah well, there couldn’t be any harm in it, right?

Absent any other ideas, Celestia reached down and gently tapped the orb’s white button with her nose. Immediately, it popped open to reveal a mirrored inside and-

Waitwhattheheckisthisfeeling-

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!

James of Team Rocket watched as the Poke Ball in his hand absorbed the strange Pokemon in a burst of white light. He, Jessie, and Meowth watched carefully as the red and white ball wiggled frantically in his hands, red light flashing over the button. The suspense lasted for almost half a minute, the Pokemon inside putting up an unusual struggle for something that had apparently gone willingly.

And then, abruptly, it was over. The Poke Ball dinged and flashed, signaling a successful capture.

“Yes!” James thrust the ball into the air, to cheers from his teammates. “I caught… whatever this is!”