A/N:Welcome to my newest SI! I've already posted several chapters of it on Spacebattles, but I figured it'd be a good idea to share it here as well. If you haven't heard of Jumpchain, let me give you a bit of a rundown:

Basically, it's a Choose Your Own Adventure multi-crossover self-insert writing challenge, but with dice. You pick a setting (Pokemon is the traditional starting point), roll dice to determine where you start, your starting age, and your background (which affects your skills and abilities), then spend 1000 points on various advantages or skills you want—and if you want more points to spend, you can take a couple of flaws or challenges to make things interesting! Once you're done in a setting, you have a choice of going home to IRL, staying in the setting for the rest of your days, or going to a new "jump". The goal is to reach the final jump of either DBZ or Warhammer 40k, complete that, and get a "spark", which basically equates to godhood. If you're interested, just google "Pokemon Jumpchain", and if you see a reddit post mentioning CYOA then you've found it—read the image with the rules, and get to writing.

That being said, I'm taking a few liberties with the usual setup and rules to make things more interesting, but not straying TOO much. And don't worry about Call of the Force—I'm still working on that, too. With that out of the way, let's see how well I fare in the greatest fanfic challenge of all time, Jumpchain!

...I'm not optimistic.

Hello there! You seem to have stumbled into my little spinning dartboard game. Who am I? No one of importance.

Well, actually, that's not completely true.

Okay, okay, it's not true at all.

Basically, I'm what you'd call a self-made god (Small "g"). I used to be more or less like you, until some random omnipotent being took me from my old life and started me on a jumpchain for his own damn amusement. And now that I'm done with jumping and have my spark, I'm getting bored enough with godhood that I've decided to play that role this time, also for my own damn amusement. But if you guys want to read along, go ahead—I'll make sure to keep my victim's life interesting enough to please you guys.

Yes. That's right, fanfic readers. I break the fourth wall. One of the perks of being a god (BTW, you, yes you, the guy with the bag of Cheetos and no pants. Put the pants back on, now. I've seen some terrible shit in my time as a jumper and even I'm kind of disturbed by that. And yes, I can see you through your screen).

Aaaanyway, the problem with choosing someone to jump is that there are surprisingly quite a large number of people who'd be enjoyable to watch, so I used my newfound omniscience to make a list. Unfortunately, that list still had a shitload of people on it, so I made the biggest dartboard ever and am about to throw one and see who the unlucky bastard/bitch is...

Oh.

Oh boy. This one is going to be so much fun. Let's have a look at our contestant, shall we?

31-going-on-32, life stalled, no job, total virgin, and a life full of first-world-problems that collectively made him wish for something interesting to happen to him (what a dumb wish that is, heheheh).

Now, even as a small-g god, I could easily just toss him right into Warhammer 40k and see him get immediately ripped apart by demons and whatnot. But since all the jumpchain people are so darn rigid with their rules, I'll humor them and give him the traditional Pokemon start. With a teeeeeensy little twist. Here, I'll give you the rundown of his start, because while I'm a dickish god, I'm a benevolent dickish god and I'm nice like that.

START DETAILS:

Region: Unova

Age: 13

Background/Identity: Poke-Raised (Yes, it's custom, but functionally identical to the Hermit start aside from the life details. Oh, and he won't remember a damn thing about his old life until the end of this first jump; you don't approve, screw you, I'm a god, deal with it).

Abandoned as an infant, you were found by wild pokemon and raised among them in a wildlife preserve (a la the Kangaskhan Kid in the original anime). You have come to learn a lot about survival skills, and you get along very well with wild pokemon. However, as your contact with other humans thus far has been limited to the occasional ranger or rogue trainer, your social skills are rather stunted and you have trouble with humans, let alone cities. Deciding to go explore the world and learn more about human society at the urging of a pokemon ranger who works at the preserve, you bid farewell to your adoptive family-save for one of your adoptive siblings, who followed you as you left, intent on joining you on your journey.

Starter: Chimchar

Skills/Abilities:

Survival Training — You gain an innate knowledge of survival skills; you can survive just about anywhere.

PokeGlot — You can talk to Pokemon! They're smart enough to hold a conversation, trained ones being smarter, but they don't think the way humans do. You also pick up new languages very quickly.

Ranger — You gain insight into the instincts of wild pokemon, as well as tracking skills.

Combat Training — You gain mastery of hand-to-hand combat. You can also keep your cool in a fight.

Physical Fitness — You gain a body that is healthy and strong. Not Captain America strong, but close.

Freerunning — You can pull off acrobatic feats that very few humans and not many pokemon could match.

Pokemon Moves (Replaces Aura) — You can use pokemon moves! You start out with just four, but you can learn more and improve their effectiveness through training.

Gear:

50 Pokedollars

Flaws:

Marked — Something has caused the local criminal group to mark you as a target. They will relentlessly hunt you down.

Hunted — A side effect of my sending you into to this world has caused a Legendary Pokemon to take notice. If it finds you it will kill you, and it can't be caught even with a Master Ball.

Well there you have it. This should be rather interesting. BTW, I'll be talking ~((like this))~ from time to time in this story. Oh, and one last thing: Captain Cheetos, PUT THOSE PANTS BACK ON RIGHT NOW, or you're next. And you won't be getting no damn Pokemon start, if you know what I mean.

WHITE MOUNTAIN RANGE NATIONAL PARK & POKEMON WILDLIFE RESERVE

Between Nacrene City and White Forest, Unova

I awaken with a groan and a bit of confusion. Where am I? What are these furry things pressed against me? What—

~((Whoops! Hehe, forgot to wipe his old memories. There we go!))~

Huh? Oh, that's right. My troop decided to sleep in this cave last night and I slept in my usual spot, snuggled between Mom and my brother Heart-Blaze. I carefully stand up to stretch and yawn, hoping to avoid waking anyone else up. Looking out the mouth of the cave, I see the sun rising over the land below, where the forest at the foot of the mountain range meets what the humans call Pinwheel Forest. I sit there for a while, occasionally scratching myself; today is the day that human ranger said he'd come over.

Now, I know I wasn't born into the troop; Mom found me as a... human hatchling? Baby! Yeah, that's what they call them. Since the humans who gave birth to me weren't anywhere to be found, she adopted me. But this has been my whole life; as far as I'm concerned, I'm a chimchar like Heart-Blaze, even though I'll never be an Infernape like Mom and Dad. The only connections I really have to humans are the rags I wear (Mom took some sheets off of some human camper's clothesline. Humans don't have fur of their own to keep them warm in winter; if not for that detail, I wouldn't bother with clothes at all) and a little bit of the human language one of the human park rangers taught me.

Mom and Dad and all the other Infernapes in the troop told us kids not to go near humans, except for the rangers—and Mom and Dad in particular didn't want me going near them for fear of them taking me away, at least at first. Thankfully, the rangers realized I already had a family and let me stay, but from time to time they'd visit to check on me; one of them started teaching me to talk like a human. It's weird how many sounds humans use to communicate, but for some reason I picked it up real fast.

-"Good morning, Little-Fire!"-

I turn at Dad's voice; he's the troop leader, so he's Dad to most of us kids. He's also the one who chooses our names; Little-Fire is the one he gave me. He wraps me in a hug—which I return, until he starts mussing up my head-fur, which I hate. I manage to pull away while he chuckles at me.

-"Ugh! Daaaaad!"-

-"Sorry, my boy, I couldn't resist. Did you rest well?"-

-"Yeah, I guess. Blaze kept kicking me in his sleep like he always does, though..."-

I look over to my brother, still shifting in his sleep even though the rest of the troop is already waking up; Mom looks a bit annoyed by his lack of response to her usual attempts to shake him awake. She gives Dad a look, then both turn to me, Dad breaking the silence.

-"Well, since it's your turn to wake him up, might as well get a bit of revenge out of it!"-

I grin mischievously, clambering over to him as quietly as I can... then promptly wake him up with a playful Fire Kick to the rump.

-"AAAAHHHH! Druddigon attack! Run before he eats—"-

He stops panicking long enough to see me rolling around on my back, laughing and kicking my feet in the air.

-"That's not funny, Fire!"-

I can't stop laughing even though I know I ought to. -"Hahaha! Look out, Blaze, a Druddigon's gonna eat you! Hahahahaha!"-

With a growl, he leaps on me and we start our usual morning rough-house routine until Mom makes us stop to help the troop go foraging for berries. For us fire-and-fight-types, sparring comes before breakfast—followed by more sparring, then more eating, then whatever else needs doing until the next time we eat or spar before we find a place to sleep. I hear that humans live a lot more complicated lives than us; half of me is curious about that, but to be perfectly honest, I can't imagine anything better than what I have now. Which is why I feel more than a little nervous today. I am officially thirteen summers old, at least based on when Mom found me. Thirteen summers; that's when chimchar are supposed to leave the troop to form their own troops. For me, though, that means something a bit different, something I've been both anticipating and dreading the moment I found out about it.

It means that I'll have to leave the troop and try to explore the humans' troop lands. Which means that I'll have to give up a lot of what it means to be a pokemon...

-"HUMAN TRAINER! HIDE!"-

The shout came from a Monferno who had been keeping watch from the treetops; without a second to spare, we all climb up into the trees ourselves, remaining still as stone. The human in question is rather rough-looking, and obviously knows that this isn't his troop's territory. Under normal circumstances, an intruder would be dealt with by the whole troop attacking until they ran off, but human trainers were different; they have what we call hold-berries, because they throw the berry-shaped objects at you and you disappear into it, held prisoner until the human decides to let you out. Humans call them Pokeballs, according to the human rangers. They said that most trainers aren't bad, but that any trainer coming here was against the rules of the human troops around our territory.

Unfortunately, one of the younger kids accidentally falls out of the tree, right in the line of sight of the trainer.

"Well, well! Looks like I hit the jackpot already!"

The whole troop gets ready to attack the human—hold-berry or not, every member in the troop is both friend and family, and we don't let anything happen to each other if we can help it! The trainer starts to throw the hold-berry... only for a weird tentacle-thing to fly out of the bushes, wrap around the hold-berry, and pull it away.

"Hold it right there! You're under arrest!"

Another human steps out of the woods, taking the hold-berry and putting it into his back-pouch—er, backpack. The tentacle thing is one of those human-vine things—whips, I think. We all breathe a sigh of relief, because we know this human.

The intruder tries to run, only for the ranger to use his whip to grab the guy's legs and make him faceplant the ground, hard; the ranger walks over and takes some hold-vines—handcuffs, I think they're called—and puts them on the intruder's wrists before speaking into the talk-thing and calling for the rest of his troop to take the intruder away. With the danger over, we all leave the trees and greet the ranger.

The kid who fell immediately runs over to him, climbing on his head and shouting in joy. -"Rick! It's Rick!"-

Rick laughs in response. "Okay, okay, you're welcome! It's nice to see you too!" He looks around, then spots me. "Oh! Kenny! There you are!"

I don't know where he got it, but he calls me "Ken" or "Kenny" because he can't understand how we speak well enough to know my real name. I move over to him and hug his knees. "Rick! You come in nick time!"

"In the nick of time, kiddo." He chuckles a bit. I sometimes forget that humans use those weird "linking" sounds between words.

"Okay, okay, in THE nick OF time. You humans have too many sounds when you talk," I say, shaking my head. "Are you here to say goodbye? You know it's my day to leave the troop..."

"Actually, that's only half the reason. The other half is in my backpack..." He takes the backpack off and sets it in front of him, opening the main pouch to reveal... clothes?

I tilt my head in confusion. "Uhhh... what do you like me to do with those?"

"In that sentence, it's want, not like," he says, handing the clothes to me. "As for what I want you to do with them... well, if you're going to go on a journey, you'll need to dress like we do. Humans don't wear rags."

"But I'm not really human!" I say with a frown. After a few minutes, I realize that he won't take no for an answer—besides, rangers may not be from our troop, but they're honorary troop members and you don't refuse a gift from a troop member. Sighing, I take off my rags and start putting on the clothes, ignoring the wide-eyed look he gets and how quickly he turns around (another weird thing about humans that I don't get is their obsession with hiding themselves). It takes a bit for me to figure it out, but I finally get "dressed", and stand upright. The clothes consisted of a red... armless upper-rag, a blue over-top-rag with arms, black leg-rags, and orange foot-rags. Most of it doesn't bother me too much... but Arceus, does it feel weird having these things on my back feet.

"Hey, don't worry, Kenny! You look great!"

Says you, I think to myself. I'm taking these awful foot-traps off me the second you're out of sight.

That thought stops me in my mental tracks; this really is it, isn't it? I turn to the rest of the troop, squatting down to their level one last time and hugging each of them in turn. I give Mom and Dad an extra-long hug. Mom cries a bit and I can't help but tear up a little too.

-"You'll always be our baby, Little-Fire."-

-"And you'll always be my mother. I'll make the best troop ever, and I'll come back and visit one day—I promise."-

Blaze hops over with a sad grin before turning to Mom and Dad, giving them hugs of his own. Normally, the Thirteenth Summer was a journey you did on your own, but from time to time it was done in pairs; Blaze refused to let me go unless he got to go with me.

-"Your mother and I are so proud of you two. Keep your brother safe, Heart-Blaze."-

-"I won't leave his side for a minute, Dad."-

A few more tear-filled goodbye hugs later, I stand upright again; Blaze jumps onto my shoulder, and together we follow Rick as he leads us out of the park and into the human-troop lands.

Well, I hope I've piqued your interest in Jumpchain with this. If you want to write a new and different kind of fic, try it out sometime. In the meantime, read and review if you can!