Headache…
It felt like someone was chiseling away inside his temples. A dull, heavy pain surged in waves.
Ash struggled to pry his eyelids open. His vision was nothing but blurry moving blobs of color, and it took a long while before he finally managed to focus.
A ceiling he didn't recognize. A few posters stuck up there. A red-and-white ball-shaped pattern.
"Where… am I?"
The voice that came out was dry and unfamiliar… Why did he sound like a ten-year-old kid?
Ash jolted, instinctively raising a hand to touch his throat.
He saw a slender wrist and soft, tender skin.
This isn't my hand!
Panic immediately drowned out the throbbing in his head.
Ash pushed himself upright on the bed and looked around.
The room wasn't big, and it was relatively tidy, but everywhere he looked there was this weird sense of familiarity:
The walls were covered in colorful posters of strange creatures.
On one corner of the desk, several red-and-white spherical toys were piled up.
In the corner stood a half-human-tall Snorlax plush.
Wait?
That plush…
"Pokémon?" The word slipped out of his mouth, his voice trembling even to his own ears.
Pokémon?
Countless fragmented scraps of memory began to surface. He finally understood who he was now.
I transmigrated into… Ash?!
Ten years, ten months, and ten days old. Birthday, May 22.
Pallet Town.
Goal… to become a Pokémon Master?!
The impact of that realization was a bit too much.
Ash practically rolled off the bed and dashed barefoot to the other side of the room.
The icy touch of the floor made his soles twitch, but he had no time to care.
There was a round mirror hanging on the wall. Ash grabbed the frame with both hands.
In the mirror, a boy he didn't recognize was staring back at him in shock.
That fact alone was overwhelming.
The soul of a transmigrator had arrived in the Pokémon world—and become Ash.
"Damn…"
Ash pinched his arm, hard. Clear pain shot through him—it wasn't a dream.
What an absolutely ridiculous plot twist.
"I…"
His gaze darted around the room in a panic.
Finally, his eyes landed on the slightly worn Poké Ball–shaped alarm clock on the desk.
On its round clock face, the hour and minute hands were lazily pointing at—12:12.
On the wall beside it, a calendar hung—April 1st, 1997.
April Fools' Day?
What kind of cosmic joke is this?!
The mental shock seemed to kick his brain into a higher gear, and more memories surfaced.
Fragments of "Ash's" life—those burning expectations about "dreams," "setting off," and "partners"—surged up like a tide and crashed together with the transmigrator's meta knowledge from the anime.
What had been foggy grew clearer and clearer.
Two different sets of memories and perspectives finished merging at this moment.
The transmigrator finally, truly understood: he had become Ash.
"Today is…" Ash heard his own voice floating a little, "the day I go get my starter Pokémon…"
No.
Calm down.
I need to calm down.
Start by counting prime numbers.
"One, two, three, four, five, six…"
…Yeah, no, he wasn't calming down at all.
Following the muscle memory in his head, Ash walked into the bathroom.
Splash.
A handful of cold water over his face, and his mind cleared up quite a bit.
"Huh?"
Now that his head was clearer, Ash suddenly noticed a small screen in the upper left corner of his vision.
The sort of thing you wouldn't even see unless you were focusing.
[Pokémon Master Achievement System · Inactive]
[Would you like to activate it?]
[Yes / No]
… Ash stared blankly at the mirror.
Okay, not a hallucination.
I think I need to understand this world a bit better first.
He scrubbed his face hard.
"…Study," Ash muttered, searching the merged memories. "Need to check a few things…"
As a soon-to-be-traveling rookie Trainer, Ash did know some basic Pokémon knowledge.
For example:
Gastly—born from toxic gas. Ninety-five percent of its "body" is poison gas, and the rest is a soul.
How to deal with it—Gastly isn't hurt by normal physical attacks. When you encounter one, you can blow its body apart with wind, or set it on fire.
…Yeah, something was off with this world. This was not a normal Pokémon world.
Is this the Pokédex version of Pokémon?
And not just the Pokédex?
A fully "realistic" worldbuilding patch?
Ash pulled up two more bits of information from his memory:
Gyarados: average length 6.5 meters, weight 2.5 tons.
Onix: average length 8.8 meters, weight 30 tons.
Turning these over in his head, Ash walked into the study.
He booted up the computer…
And started searching the net.
"Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos, Alola, Galar…"
Ash thought about the timeline.
Sure, the Pokémon IP has that meme about a ten-year-old kid who's been traveling for twenty years, so he obviously couldn't just copy the anime's plot 1:1 to understand this world.
But the general storyline still had reference value.
"Kanto Elite Four… Dragon Master Lance."
"…Champions of other regions… Steven, Cynthia, Alder, Diantha, Leon…"
He browsed through the world's information.
Most of what he found was superficial public info, with basically no attempt to hide anything.
"Incredible…"
…but alongside that, Ash also remembered some much less pleasant news:
Team Rocket's Giovanni was in the middle of creating Mewtwo.
Team Magma's Maxie wanted to awaken Groudon.
Team Aqua's Archie wanted to awaken Kyogre.
Team Galactic's Cyrus wanted to awaken Dialga and Palkia and remake the world.
Team Plasma's Ghetsis and the others… were only trying to take over the world, so compared to the rest they barely ranked.
Team Flare's Lysandre thought all other people and Pokémon were in the way and wanted to wipe them out to create his so-called "ideal world."
What?
You're bringing up Team Skull? Team Yell? Team Star?
…Putting them in the same row as those guys felt a bit excessive, didn't it?
They didn't quite deserve the death penalty.
Ash couldn't shake the feeling that the world was kind of doomed… and then he remembered Eternatus, Necrozma, and Arceus.
Yeah. Lying flat clearly wasn't an option.
His gaze shifted to the upper left corner of his vision again.
[Yes / No]
Of course—[Yes].
If he didn't put in some effort, he'd probably just die.
In this mashed-up world, the villains were all mashed together too.
Those people all loved cooking up apocalyptic schemes.
Without the strength to get involved, he might just get randomly wiped off the map someday.
[System booting…]
[Name: Ash]
[Age: 10]
[Owned Pokémon: None]
[Achievement: First Journey Begins (Incomplete)]
Ash skimmed the interface. A lot of panels were still locked.
Right now, the achievement system seemed to be the main "questline."
[Achievement: Catch Your First Pokémon (Incomplete)]
[Achievement: First Trainer Battle (Incomplete)]
[Achievement: …]
"Sleep," Ash muttered, glancing at the moon outside the window.
The very first thing he needed to do was verify how much this world overlapped with the one he knew, and where it diverged.
So when he went to receive his starter Pokémon, he couldn't go early.
He had to be late, and then see whether he got Pikachu or something else.
That would determine what he did next.
After all, he'd just tested his body when he was moving around earlier.
He couldn't touch the ceiling even when he jumped, and holding a glass of water felt a bit heavy.
Which proved he did not have the anime Ash's insane "super rookie" physical stats.
All those exaggerated feats the original anime Ash pulled off—right now, there was no way he could do any of that.
Author's Other Work (Promo)
"Yu-Gi-Oh: DT Card Lore"
Hehehe (⑅˃◡˂⑅)
The spirit world behind Yu-Gi-Oh—Planet DT.
A hundred-year war spanning eleven great calamities,
from mortal wars all the way up to battles of creator gods and demons.
First Calamity — Alien Invasion · Evol of the Worms
Second Calamity — Lord of Chaos · Fabled Realm
Third Calamity — Frozen Planet · Ice Barrier Dragons
Fourth Calamity — War of Despair · Infernity's Assault
Fifth Calamity — Celestial Purge · Sun-Engine Machina
Sixth Calamity — March of the Dead · Infectious Undead
Seventh Calamity — Star-Forged God · Sophia
Eighth Calamity — False Soul's Binding · Shaddoll Core
Ninth Calamity — Macrostructure Ignition · Qliphort's Ascension
Tenth Calamity — Disastrous Void Dream · Infernoid
Eleventh Calamity — Star-Forged God · Tierra
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