@Light Yagami: The other trainer was specifically mentioned in chapter 3.
Chapter 5
The two trainers walked cautiously through the dim, misty, foggy, precarious, twisting, turning, treeish forest with little other than a passing adjective to keep them company. It was unusual that there were so few Pokémon around. They had only passed a caterpie and a weedle thus far, both of which were captured by Sarah with little effort. Gary had not had as much luck. According to the doctor in Viridian City, his Pidgey's brain might have been permanently damaged during the landing accident.
"Don't worry," said Sarah reassuringly, "I'm sure you'll find another Pokemon that you can catch without fighting."
It was getting to be evening, and Sarah began to look for a place to set up camp. When they came across a nice, flat area, Sarah began to gather some mushrooms, and instructed Gary to get some dry wood for a fire. At first, he was reluctant, but Sarah wore him down with her deft persuasion skills. The discussion went something like this:
"I don't feel like doing it."
"Do it anyway."
"Okay."
Nothing interesting happened while Gary was gathering wood, but the process will be narrated nonetheless because these chapters are too short. Upon finding a decently sized log, Gary picked it up to test how well it could be used in the fire. The problem with testing the suitability of larger pieces of wood is that they are harder to break, which is the standard way of seeing how dry the inside is. Younger, greener wood tends to...oh forget it, I guess I'll just skip ahead to the next interesting part.
The gigantic ball of white-hot flame seared the tree, nearly starting a forest fire. Sarah shouted at the boy who stood at the opposite end of the clearing, "What the heck's wrong with you?! And how did you get a charmander who's that small and can use fire blast?!"
The boy snickered in an almost sadistic manner before replying, "If you must know, I stole a TM from some guy in Pewter city after I beat him senseless with a rusty crowbar. Now we're going to have a Pokémon battle, and the loser has to give the winner all their money and their future firstborn."
"What makes you think I'll accept those terms, anyway? Just who on Earth do you think you are?"
"The name's Jimmy, Yami no Jimmy. It's Japanese, and it means 'Jimmy of the darkne...'"
Sarah interjected, "But you sound like you're from New Jersey!"
"Shut up! I'm Japanese, dammit!"
"Whatever you say. At any rate, I don't feel like having my Pokémon fight yours."
"Say what?"
Gary spoke up, "Isn't that against the rules or something, Sarah?"
Sarah looked at the two of them with a disturbed and perplexed look on her face, "It's a free country, guys! You can't just go around and force people to put their Pokémon in harm's way!"
Gary replied, "I don't follow."
Jimmy agreed, saying, "I'm with your sidekick. Seems like he's the only one of you two who's got his head on straight."
Sarah thought to herself, 'Man, sounds like this guy doesn't want to quit, we should just leave now. But then again, what if he has his charmander shoot fire at us? I guess I better think of something quick...'
Just then, a freak tear in the fabric of time and space appeared just behind Jimmy and his charmander, sucking them both into the screaming void. The temporal anomaly closed itself as quickly as it came, prompting Sarah to say, "Well, that was a simple solution. Let's get moving, we've still got a mile or two to go before we reach Pewter City."
As they were walking, some particularly inane thoughts occurred to our hero (who, in case you've forgotten, is in fact Gary). That Jimmy fellow seemed to be a very strong trainer, and he could have proven useful to have around. Gary still had his arch-nemesis to worry about, and he figured that she would be less likely to stab him in the back if someone like Jimmy were around. Besides, Jimmy said he was Japanese, and therefore is a deep, insightful person who is worth knowing. "You know," said Gary, "that guy back there didn't seem half bad to me."
"Are you high on something?"
"Well, it justs seems like a shame he had to leave so quickly, I kind of wish he were still around."
Coincidentally, just as Gary finished saying that sentence, another rip in the fabric of time and space opened before them, dropping Jimmy onto the ground, now without his charmander. He didn't appear quite right in the head, and was babbling exhaustedly and incoherently about how cold it was and how many decades the journey felt like.
"Oh, that's just great," complained Sarah, "Just when we had gotten rid of you, too. Why don't you just go back to where you came from?"
Jimmy let out a cry of alarm at this, and said, "No...wait...you don't get it! Don't send me back there!"
He would have continued, but a hole in the universe once again opened and sucked him in. The two trainers just blinked. Around a minute later, Sarah said, "I think something's gotten really weird about this forest, and it doesn't make much sense scientifically. We should probably see if this kind of thing works every time, and then write down our findings somewhere. So, try saying you wish he were back."
"Um...I wish he were back?"
Predictably, the rip in time instantly dropped Jimmy back in front of them. This time, Jimmy pleaded them not to say anything. But of course, Sarah said, "I wish he would go away."
As if you didn't already know, Jimmy then left by the same method as the previous occurrences. For the next five minutes or so, Gary and Sarah alternated between saying "Back," and "Away," each cycle resulting in an ungodly number of centuries that Jimmy spent in the void. After this five minutes had passed, a bodiless and unfamiliar voice suddenly made itself heard, "Pardon the interruption, but you two have been abusing the system for longer than our organization can allow. I am afraid you will have to be removed from the plotline. If you will please hold still for a moment, you will be escorted through the fourth wall to your reassigned location. Have a nice day."
Gary didn't find anything particularly unsettling about the announcement, but Sarah was completely confused. "Plotline? Fourth wall? Who are you, anyway?"
There was no answer, for at that moment a new, larger hole in the space-time continuum opened up beneath the feet of the two trainers and Pidgey, causing them to slip into the unpleasant realm of nonexistence. They seemed to fall for hours, not being able to see, hear, or feel anything whatsoever. After an indefinable amount of time, they landed on a hard surface, and all their senses were returned to them. They were in a sparse room, which contained a sign on one wall that read, "Room 216: Plothole Debris Storage. No Important Elements Permitted."
Sarah stepped back a pace after reading the sign, and spoke without disguising how worried she was, "What's going on here?"
A voice came from behind that said, "You are outside the narrative, there is no more pretending in here."
Gary and Sarah turned to face the source of the voice, who appeared as a male teenager with a paper bag over his head. He continued, "This is the machine behind the shadow that is existence. Flimsy things such as reality, physics, logic, and canon are controlled from here."
Sarah blinked, not knowing what to make of this person. She asked him cautiously, "Just who are you, anyway?"
"Oh, pardon my rudeness, I should be taking this mask off, I have nothing to hide from you two."
The strange fellow removed the paper bag, revealing a pitch black sphere with a white question mark in the middle. "I have no real name, but you can call me Anon if you like."
Sarah blinked again, being even more confused. Anon continued, "You see, I am the mastermind behind your lives and the lives of everyone you know. The reason you see me here is because I am a self-insert of sorts. Normally I would not resort to something as petty as projecting myself in the story, but since the narration has followed you past the fourth wall, it could not be avoided."
"I still don't understand," said Sarah, "Just where are we?"
"This room specifically is where the plotholes drop off what they pick up. You see, sometimes it proves necessary that certain elements of reality should be placed here once it is clear that their usefulness is gone. Look around, see anyone you recognize?"
Gary glanced around the room, and then said excitedly, "Hey, look! It's that guy I threw the rocks at in Viridian City! I wondered where he had gone to!"
Anon chuckled and said, "Yes, there was no further reason for him to exist in the narrative, so I opened up a plothole and brought him here."
Sarah then asked, "But what about Jimmy? He said that he just hung around in the void for several millenia, or something."
"To be honest, I just left him outside because I find him obnoxious, but that is not important right now. The important thing is that I do not know how or why Jimmy got sucked into those plotholes, other than that it has something to do with you two."
"So you weren't the one who made Jimmy leave reality?"
"Of course not. With a charmander like that, I could have used him in an epic battle, why would I remove him from the story prematurely? The odds are that he went in and out of the plotholes because the two of you desired that he do so."
Gary said, "So we can send people here whenever we want? This changes everything."
Sarah interrupted, "Hold on, there's no way we could do something like that just by wanting it to happen!"
Anon concurred, "Of course not, and that is where the mystery lies. There are some around here who say that it is the work of a higher power who happens to be on your side, but I am skeptical of that. At any rate, the reason I brought you two here is so that I could explain the whole situation to you. Now that you know the truth, will you promise not to wish that anyone be sent here again? Say yes, and you may return to the story."
After conferring among themselves for a bit, Gary and Sarah replied, "Yes."
"Wonderful, now if you will step over here, I can have you sent back."
Anon led them over to a rusty pod that looked barely big enough to hold two people. It was a special vehicle for returning prematurely removed plot elements. "It is not a particularly comfortable vessel," said Anon, "but I could turn it into a metaphor if you like."
Gary asked, "Can a metaphor be a Ferrari?"
"Absolutely," replied Anon as he snapped his fingers, turning the unattractive piece of scrap metal into a devastatingly stylish car. After he tossed the keys to Gary, the two trainers and the perpetually befuddled Pidgey got in the car and started the engine. As soon as the engine kicked in, the trainers found themselves inexplicably standing in the middle of Pewter City.
"Wow," said Sarah, "That was the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me."
"No kidding," replied Gary.
Sarah looked at her watch, noticing that not a minute had passed since when they last stood in Viridian Forest. She spoke again, "After seeing something like that, I can't help but wonder what we should be doing now that we know the truth."
"I think we should go to the Gym and make our Pokémon fight other Pokémon."
"I'm going to guess that you didn't think what we saw was of any real consequence."
"What's a consequence?"
"Never mind."
To be continued.
