Tefiren was here again, in this place, still playing this game.
...Which was fine, of course. More than fine - it was perfect! This was exactly what he wanted! There was nothing he'd wished for more, when he'd brilliantly won the last game all by himself with his clever deductions and his cunning tricks, than to find himself back here, ready to win all over again, just like he always did.
[[Tefiren, your victory last game had extremely little do to with your tricks or deductions and really wasn't only about you, you know.]]
And even if he did lose - not that he would, he was the best at this game, at every game! - he wouldn't really lose at all in this place; he'd just be sent right back here to play it again. This was the best kind of game, one that just kept going and going, always new and exciting each time! There were no downsides to it, nothing missing that he'd rather have, not in the slightest.
[[Yeah, he's gone right back to pretending I don't exist. As well as a certain other someone. I suppose we'll see how long it takes for him to acknowledge me again this time.]]
Well, maybe there was one small downside, for now. The new game hadn't started yet! What was the point of all the players meeting each other here if they weren't even playing? Talking to people only mattered when it was part of the game.
At the outskirts of the group that was beginning to form, Tefiren thought a tree out of the ground with practiced ease - see, he was so good at this, he belonged here - and squatted in its branches, surveying the other players below. (It was a whole different kind of tree from last game, obviously; he wasn't predictable.)
Most of them were new and interesting kinds of Pokémon that hadn't even been in the last game, but there was still a lot of that Human species around, for some reason, just like there'd been several of before. He was pretty sure most of these Humans were different ones this time, except... was that the same messy Human from before - looking messier than ever - who'd had the trick to talk to...? Well, not like that mattered, of course. That Human wouldn't be so predictable as to use the same trick again this time. It seemed like he was stuck here playing this game over and over, just like Tefiren - why didn't he look more excited about that? Ridiculous.
Another of the Humans was carrying a weirdly-straight tree branch, like she was at least smart enough to realise Humans weren't very strong and have a trick to make up for it. Aside from the few Humans, the rest of the Pokémon came in all sorts of different shapes and sizes. A couple of them looked like they could fly like him - obviously the best, most basic trick to have in any game! Some of them looked fiery or zappy, like a couple of the players last time; in fact, one looked a bit like a weird and tiny Raichu. One of the bigger fiery ones had some of that loose extra fur that reminded Tefiren a bit of the Raichu from last time, too. There was a Tyrunt, a species he actually recognised. And then there was a - what was that Pokémon called again? Something-zolt? - that had turned its bottom half into a fish! An interesting trick, to be sure, but Tefiren didn't think it seemed like a very useful one.
[[Shh, technically Tefiren probably wouldn't actually have had Tyrunt and Somethingzolt on his Hoenn-precursor prehistoric island, but dammit, they're fossil Pokémon too, let me have this, it's hard enough thinking up epithets for him to use for everyone as it is given that he refuses to learn people's names.]]
Tefiren humphed and withdrew further into the boughs of his tree. None of this actually mattered, he reminded himself. He was only trying to judge everyone's tricks based on their appearance out of habit from his old game, that game that was inferior to this one in every single way. People's tricks in this game could have nothing at all to do with what they looked like they could do - that was what made this game so exciting! So unpredictable! So worth playing over and over again, forever!
He just wished it would start already.
