Marcus woke up on his tenth birthday to the smell of pancakes and the crushing weight of impending doom.
"Happy birthday, sweetie!" his mother called from downstairs. "Come down for breakfast before you head to the lab!"
Marcus stared at the ceiling.
He had not slept.
He had spent the entire night formulating seventeen different escape plans, each more desperate than the last. Plan A involved faking his own death. Plan B involved actually dying. Plan C through Q were variations of "run very fast in a direction."
None of them would work. He knew this. Arceus was petty enough to make absolutely sure this happened.
"Coming, Mom," he croaked.
Breakfast was a surreal experience. His parents beamed at him over a stack of Pikachu-shaped pancakes (his mom's specialty), completely unaware that in approximately three hours, their son was going to accidentally unleash what amounted to a natural disaster with a pulse.
"We're so proud of you," his dad said, ruffling his hair. "Our little boy, finally becoming a Pokemon trainer! Do you know which starter you're going to pick?"
Marcus laughed. It came out slightly unhinged.
"Probably not Charmander," he said, because if he was going to have to deal with his six different Charizards from various games materializing, he didn't need a seventh.
"Your mother and I have a gift for you." His dad slid a wrapped box across the table.
Marcus opened it with trembling fingers. Inside was a brand new set of Pokeballs—five standard, one Premier Ball—and a cute little Pokedex case.
"For your journey!" his mom said, eyes misty.
Marcus looked at the six Pokeballs.
He thought about the 4,847 Pokemon about to materialize.
He laughed again. His parents exchanged concerned glances.
The walk to Professor Oak's laboratory felt like a death march.
Pallet Town was beautiful in the morning light. Pidgeys chirped in the trees. A gentle breeze rustled through the grass. Somewhere, a Rattata scurried across the path.
Marcus wondered if any of these Pokemon had any idea that in about forty-five minutes, they were going to meet several literal gods.
He passed Ash Ketchum's house. Through the window, he could see the future Pokemon Master still asleep, his alarm clock flashing 9:45 AM. Classic Ash. Always late.
At least he won't be there for the initial chaos, Marcus thought. Small mercies.
He reached the lab at 9:52 AM.
Professor Oak was already outside, watering some plants with a Squirtle. He looked up and smiled warmly.
"Ah, Marcus! Prompt as always. Gary's already inside—he was quite eager to get first pick of the starters."
Of course Gary was here. Because this situation didn't have enough witnesses.
"Professor," Marcus said, his voice completely steady and not at all cracking, "hypothetically speaking, how structurally sound is this building?"
Oak blinked. "I... I beg your pardon?"
"Like, if something very large were to suddenly appear inside. Or several somethings. Very large somethings. How would the building... hold up? Hypothetically."
The Professor stared at him for a long moment. "Marcus, are you feeling alright? You look a bit pale."
"I'm great. Everything's great. Can we do this outside? The starter selection? Maybe in a very large open field? Preferably one without any flammable materials?"
"The starters are inside, my boy. In their Pokeballs. That's rather the point." Oak chuckled and patted Marcus on the shoulder. "First-day jitters are perfectly normal. Come along."
Marcus was escorted inside.
9:55 AM.
The lab was exactly as he remembered from the games, which made sense given that his current reality was apparently some unholy fusion of every Pokemon game and anime he'd ever experienced. Machines blinked. Bookshelves lined the walls. A large computer dominated one corner.
And there, in the center of the room, on a small table, sat three Pokeballs.
Gary Oak was already there, leaning against the table with the smuggest expression Marcus had ever seen on a ten-year-old's face.
"Well, well, well," Gary said. "Look who finally showed up. Ready to pick whatever scraps I leave behind, Marcus?"
"Gary, I need you to leave."
"Ha! Fat chance. I'm getting first pick and there's nothing you can—"
"GARY. I am asking you, as someone who has never asked you for anything, to please leave this building within the next—" Marcus checked the clock on the wall, "—four minutes."
Gary's smug expression flickered with confusion. "What? Why would I—"
"Because something very bad is about to happen and I don't want you to die."
Silence.
Professor Oak cleared his throat. "Marcus, I really think you should sit down—"
9:58 AM.
Marcus could feel it starting. A tingling at the base of his skull. A warmth spreading through his chest. The sensation of thousands—THOUSANDS—of bonds pulling at his soul, stretching across dimensions, reaching for him.
"Oh no," he whispered.
"What?" Gary demanded. "What's 'oh no'? Why are you backing toward the door?"
9:59 AM.
The air began to shimmer.
Professor Oak's coffee mug started rattling on his desk.
Outside, every Pidgey in Pallet Town simultaneously took flight, fleeing in a massive swarm that blocked out the sun for a solid thirty seconds.
"Fascinating," Oak murmured, reaching for a notebook. "Some kind of localized atmospheric phenomenon—"
"EVERYONE GET DOWN!"
10:00 AM.
Later, survivors would describe the sound as "what happens when you play every Pokemon cry simultaneously while standing inside a thunderstorm that's also on fire."
Marcus experienced it differently.
He experienced it as four thousand, eight hundred, and forty-seven individual "hellos."
The first wave was the small ones.
Rattatas, Pidgeys, Caterpies, Weedles—hundreds of them, materializing in a cascading wave of light and sound. They filled the laboratory floor like a furry, feathery, buggy carpet. Gary screamed and jumped onto the table. Oak was buried up to his waist in Wooloo.
"WHAT IS HAPPENING?!" Gary shrieked.
"I TRIED TO WARN YOU!"
The second wave was the medium ones.
Arcanines, Rapidashes, Gyaradoses—wait, those didn't fit in the lab. They materialized partially, their massive bodies crashing through walls and ceiling alike. Marcus watched a Gyarados—one of his twelve, he recognized this one from his SoulSilver playthrough—burst through the roof and roar with confusion at finding itself suddenly in a small town instead of the Lake of Rage.
The Rapidashes set the bookshelf on fire. Three different Arcanines tried to lick Marcus's face simultaneously, which meant he was briefly drowning in dog drool.
"MARCUS!" Professor Oak's voice came from somewhere beneath the pile of flaming dogs and confused water serpents. "WHAT DID YOU DO?!"
"I PLAYED TOO MANY GAMES, PROFESSOR!"
The third wave was the big ones.
Snorlaxes. Seven of them. They didn't materialize so much as EXIST suddenly, their combined weight causing the floor of the laboratory to crack and begin sinking into the earth. One of them yawned, and the resulting wind knocked Gary off the table.
Onixes. Four. They burst from the ground like stone serpents, their roars shaking the foundation of every building in a half-mile radius.
A Wailord.
"Oh NO—" Marcus managed, before the Wailord materialized directly above the laboratory and gravity remembered it existed.
The resulting crash could be heard in Viridian City.
But that wasn't the scary part.
The scary part started when Marcus, crawling out from beneath a pile of Pikachus (seventeen of them, all nuzzling him with varying degrees of electrical discharge), looked up and saw the sky turning colors.
Red and blue spirals. Swirling clouds of impossible geometry. The very fabric of reality starting to stretch and warp.
"Oh no," Marcus whispered again, because he'd just remembered something very, very important.
Pokedex entries were lore accurate.
Which meant his Pokemon weren't just powerful in the "high stats, good moves" sense.
They were powerful in the "LITERALLY CAPABLE OF ENDING REALITY" sense.
GROUDON AND KYOGRE MATERIALIZED SIMULTANEOUSLY.
The sun immediately intensified to approximately "surface of the actual sun" temperatures while a tsunami began forming off the coast of Cinnabar Island. Marcus watched as his Groudon—the one from Ruby, his first legendary, caught with his last Ultra Ball when he was eleven years old—roared its primal fury at finding itself suddenly occupying the same general area as its eternal rival.
Kyogre responded by summoning a hurricane.
IN PALLET TOWN.
"PLEASE STOP!" Marcus screamed, but his voice was lost in the wind that had suddenly reached "category 5" intensity.
Then Rayquaza showed up.
The great green serpent descended from the stratosphere with a thunderous cry, immediately inserting itself between Groudon and Kyogre with the energy of a tired parent separating fighting children. The weather normalized—sort of—leaving behind only light scattered showers and a lingering heat wave.
Marcus would have been relieved, except that's when the Dialgas noticed the Palkias.
The thing about having multiple Dialgas and Palkias was that each one represented a different game, a different timeline, and they did NOT appreciate finding themselves in the same space.
Time started doing... things.
Marcus experienced three Tuesdays simultaneously. He watched Professor Oak age fifty years, then de-age into a toddler, then snap back to normal while screaming. A Rattata evolved into a Raticate, then devolved back, then evolved again, caught in a loop of temporal confusion.
The Palkias responded to this temporal tantrum by trying to expand space to accommodate everything, which resulted in the laboratory becoming somehow both infinitely large and impossibly small at the same time.
Marcus was pretty sure he could see colors that didn't exist.
"GIRATINA!" he screamed, hoping desperately that the one Pokemon capable of stabilizing distortion would listen to him.
The shadow appeared first. Then the great platinum serpent emerged from a tear in reality, its red eyes surveying the chaos with what Marcus could only interpret as amusement.
Right. Giratina had been watching this whole thing from the Distortion World. Of course it was entertained.
"PLEASE FIX THIS!"
Giratina tilted its head, considering. Then, with a sound like reality hitting the snooze button, it did... something. The temporal loops stopped. Space normalized. The laboratory was still destroyed, and there was still a Wailord on top of it, but at least Marcus could experience time linearly again.
"Thank you," Marcus gasped.
Giratina made a noise that sounded suspiciously like laughter and then vanished back into its home dimension.
Because of course it didn't stick around to help with the cleanup.
Marcus stood in the epicenter of what had once been Professor Oak's laboratory.
Around him, 4,847 Pokemon milled about in various states of confusion, excitement, or in the case of the seventeen Pikachus, aggressive affection. The Snorlaxes had found a meadow and were already sleeping. The Gyaradoses had relocated to a nearby lake and were having some kind of territorial dispute that was creating localized tidal waves. His army of Magikarp flopped uselessly in the grass.
Gary Oak was suspended thirty feet in the air, caught in the telekinetic grip of a Mewtwo who had apparently decided the loud human was annoying.
Professor Oak was sitting on the ground, covered in soot and Wooloo wool, his eyes vacant, a single tear rolling down his cheek as he watched a Mew and a Celebi play tag above his ruined life's work.
And in the distance, growing closer, Marcus could hear the sounds of screaming civilians.
"This is fine," Marcus said to himself. "This is completely fine. I can handle this."
A Machamp walked up and handed him what appeared to be the remains of his six-Pokeball gift set, now crushed flat.
"Okay. Okay okay okay." Marcus took a deep breath. "EVERYONE! ATTENTION!"
4,847 Pokemon ignored him.
"PLEASE?"
Nothing.
A Loudred—one of his three—wandered over, looking helpful.
Marcus had an idea.
"Hey buddy. Can you... amplify my voice?"
The Loudred seemed to understand. It positioned itself behind Marcus and made a noise like speakers powering up.
"ATTENTION ALL POKEMON!" Marcus's voice boomed across Pallet Town, Viridian City, and most of Route 1. "I AM YOUR TRAINER! YOU ALL KNOW ME! WE HAVE HISTORY! I NEED EVERYONE TO PLEASE CALM DOWN AND STOP DESTROYING THINGS!"
Silence.
4,847 pairs of eyes turned to look at him.
And then, miracle of miracles, the chaos began to subside. Groudon and Kyogre stopped glaring at each other (mostly). The Dialgas and Palkias retreated to opposite ends of the newly expanded reality bubble that had once been Pallet Town. The Mewtwo dropped Gary into a conveniently placed pile of Mareep.
A single Shuckle waddled up to Marcus's feet and looked up at him with an expression that contained absolutely no thoughts whatsoever.
"Hey, Kenneth," Marcus said weakly.
Kenneth said nothing, because Kenneth was a Shuckle.
But somehow, it helped.
CURRENT SITUATION REPORT:
Location: What used to be Pallet Town (now approximately 3x larger due to spatial anomalies)
Casualties: Professor Oak's sanity, Gary's ego, one (1) laboratory, several trees
Active Legendaries: 40+ (currently in various states of territorial dispute)
Weather Status: Unstable (Groudon and Kyogre are behaving, but nobody's making any sudden moves)
Time Status: Mostly linear (occasional Tuesday loops in the eastern sector)
Kenneth Status: Vibing
Marcus looked at the chaos around him, then looked at the ruined Pokeballs in his hand, then looked at the massive crowd of Pokemon who were all, apparently, bonded to his soul.
"I need a bigger bag," he said.
And that's when he noticed the dust cloud approaching from Route 1.
A very late, very confused Ash Ketchum was sprinting toward the laboratory, his Pikachu—the one, the only, the actual main character's Pikachu—on his shoulder.
"PROFESSOR OAK!" Ash was shouting. "I'M HERE! I'M READY FOR MY STARTER! Sorry I'm late, my alarm didn't—"
He stopped.
He stared.
He looked at the destroyed lab. The Wailord. The Gyaradoses. The literal GODS standing around looking confused. The army of Pikachus that were currently eyeing his Pikachu with intense interest.
Ash's Pikachu looked at the seventeen other Pikachus.
The seventeen other Pikachus looked at Ash's Pikachu.
"Pika?" said Ash's Pikachu, nervously.
"PIKA," said seventeen voices in unison.
Ash looked at Marcus.
Marcus looked at Ash.
"I can explain," Marcus said.
"WHO ARE YOU?!" Ash screamed.
Before Marcus could answer, a Pokedex that had somehow survived the destruction beeped from somewhere in the rubble.
"MACARGO," it announced helpfully, as one of Marcus's fire snails oozed past. "THE LAVA POKEMON. ITS BODY TEMPERATURE IS APPROXIMATELY 18,000 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT. HOTTER THAN THE SURFACE OF THE SUN."
The Macargo sneezed.
Three trees caught fire.
"Fun fact," the Pokedex continued, "exposure to Macargo's body heat can cause immediate third-degree burns within a radius of—"
Marcus threw a rock at it.
The thing about having lore-accurate Pokemon, Marcus was rapidly discovering, was that the Pokedex entries were TERRIFYING when you actually thought about them.
His Gardevoir could create BLACK HOLES when it wanted to protect him.
His Tyranitar could level MOUNTAINS.
His Magcargo were basically walking nuclear reactors.
And don't even get him started on Alakazam. According to the Pokedex, that thing had an IQ of 5,000. It was probably smarter than every human who had ever lived. Combined.
Marcus's Alakazam was currently solving a Rubik's cube it had found in Oak's rubble in approximately 0.3 seconds while simultaneously having what appeared to be a telepathic philosophical debate with his Metagross about the nature of existence.
Meanwhile, his Lanturn was wandering around producing enough electrical energy to power every city on the planet.
His Pidgeot was creating SONIC BOOMS just by flying in circles.
And somewhere in the distance, his Haunter had possessed a tree and was making it dance, because Haunters thought that was funny.
"I never realized," Marcus whispered to himself, watching a Machamp casually lift a boulder the size of a house to help clear debris, "how BUSTED all of these Pokemon actually are."
His Ditto transformed into a perfect copy of him and gave a thumbs up.
His OTHER Ditto transformed into Arceus, just to flex.
"Please don't do that," Marcus told it. "The real one is already mad at me."
Professor Oak had finally recovered enough to speak. He approached Marcus with the careful gait of a man who had seen too much and understood too little.
"Marcus Chen," he said slowly. "How."
"It's a long story, Professor."
"I have time. Apparently, I have several EXTRA Tuesdays now." Oak's eye twitched. "The Dialgas added them. I can FEEL them, Marcus. I can feel the extra Tuesdays."
"I'm... sorry?"
"SORRY?" Oak's voice cracked. "Do you see that?" He pointed at the Wailord, which had somehow become the foundation for a new ecosystem, with smaller Pokemon already building nests on its back. "That's a WAILORD. ON MY LABORATORY. Do you know what the Pokedex says about Wailords?"
"They're... big?"
"THEY'RE FORTY-SEVEN FEET LONG AND WEIGH NEARLY NINE HUNDRED POUNDS. THIS ONE APPEARS TO BE EVEN LARGER." Oak grabbed Marcus by the shoulders. "How do we MOVE it?!"
"I... don't know?"
"And THAT—" Oak pointed at a Gardevoir that was casually warping space around itself to create a small pocket dimension, "—THAT just created a HOLE in REALITY because it wanted somewhere quiet to sit! What happens when it gets ANGRY?!"
"Black holes, probably."
Oak made a noise like a man whose grip on sanity had been stretched to its absolute limit.
"I'm going to lie down," he said. "I'm going to lie down, and when I wake up, this will all have been a dream brought on by bad Pinap Berries."
"Professor—"
"DREAM. PINAP BERRIES."
Oak walked away, somehow finding a clear path through the sea of Pokemon, and disappeared into the ruins of his home.
Marcus watched him go.
Then he looked at his Pokemon—ALL of his Pokemon—and sighed.
"Okay," he said. "New plan. I need to figure out how to actually... manage all of you. Starting with food."
His Snorlaxes' ears perked up.
"Not yet! I need to FIND food first!"
The ears drooped.
Marcus did some mental math. Seven Snorlaxes, each capable of eating 900 pounds of food per day according to the Pokedex. Plus the rest of his Pokemon. He was looking at...
He was looking at a grocery bill that would bankrupt most small nations.
"I'm going to need a sponsorship," he muttered. "Or possibly a small country."
One of his Alakazams telepathed a suggestion directly into his brain.
"We could simply take what we need. No force on this planet could stop us."
"WE'RE NOT BECOMING SUPERVILLAINS!"
"It was merely a suggestion."
"A BAD one!"
The Alakazam shrugged—an impressive feat for something without visible shoulders—and went back to solving complex mathematical equations in its head.
Ash Ketchum was still standing at the entrance to the disaster zone, his Pikachu on his shoulder, his mouth hanging open.
Marcus approached him carefully.
"Hey. Ash, right?"
"How do you know my name?"
Because you're the protagonist of a multimedia franchise worth billions of dollars, Marcus thought.
"Small town," Marcus said. "Everyone knows everyone."
"Oh." Ash shook his head, seeming to snap out of his daze. "What... what happened here? Did Team Rocket attack? Is Professor Oak okay?"
"Professor Oak is having a small mental breakdown, but he'll be fine. And no, Team Rocket didn't attack." Marcus paused. "This is all my fault, actually."
"YOUR fault? How?!"
"I... had a lot of Pokemon."
"A LOT?!" Ash gestured wildly at the sea of creatures around them. "This isn't a lot! This is... this is... I don't even know what this is!"
"Yeah, that's fair."
Ash's Pikachu was being approached by Marcus's seventeen Pikachus, who seemed to be welcoming it into their collective. Marcus watched nervously as they communicated in a series of "pika" sounds that he couldn't interpret.
"Are they... are they going to fight?" Ash asked.
"I don't think so? Mine are pretty friendly." Marcus paused. "Mostly. A few of them have competitive natures but—"
A small scuffle broke out. Electricity crackled. Ash's Pikachu emerged victorious, standing on top of a pile of defeated Pikachus with its tiny fists raised in triumph.
"Pika!" it declared.
Marcus's Pikachus accepted their defeat with grace and immediately began treating Ash's Pikachu as their new leader.
"Well," Marcus said. "I guess that's... good?"
By noon, a crowd had gathered.
News traveled fast in small towns, and "something insane happened at Professor Oak's lab" was apparently enough to bring people from three towns over. Marcus could see trainers, researchers, reporters, and what appeared to be a very nervous-looking Officer Jenny.
"Everyone stay back!" Jenny was shouting through a megaphone. "The situation is... is..."
She trailed off as a Rayquaza flew overhead, casting a shadow large enough to cover half of Pallet Town.
"The situation is above my pay grade!" she finished. "Way, way above!"
Marcus needed to do something. He couldn't just let chaos reign forever. These were HIS Pokemon. They were HIS responsibility.
He took a deep breath.
"Alakazam!"
One of his five Alakazams appeared instantly at his side, because of course it did. IQ of 5,000. It probably knew he was going to call before he did.
"I need help organizing... everything. Can you coordinate with the other psychic types? We need some kind of system here."
"Already done," Alakazam telepathed. "The psychic collective has established a preliminary organizational structure. The flying types are patrolling the perimeter. The water types have claimed the nearby lake and are establishing territorial boundaries. The fire types have been asked to remain in designated heat-safe zones."
"That's... that's great. What about the legendaries?"
"They have agreed to a temporary truce pending further discussions. The Dialgas and Palkias are maintaining their distance. Giratina is observing from the Distortion World, as is its nature. The weather trio have established a rotation system for atmospheric control."
Marcus blinked. "Wait, they're cooperating?"
"They are all bonded to you. We have discussed the situation amongst ourselves. While the circumstances of our manifestation are... unusual... we are your Pokemon. We remember our journeys with you. Our battles. Our victories."
The Alakazam paused.
"Even the three hundred and forty-seven Magikarp remember."
"Oh." Marcus felt something warm in his chest. "You all... you actually remember?"
"Of course. The bonds formed between trainer and Pokemon transcend mortality, after all." The Alakazam's eyes glinted with what might have been humor. "That is why we are in this situation to begin with."
Marcus laughed. It was slightly hysterical, but it was genuine.
"Okay. Okay!" He clapped his hands together. "So we can actually make this work. We just need space, food, and for nobody to panic about the multiple god-tier entities currently hanging out in rural Kanto."
"The Elite Four have been notified of the situation," Alakazam informed him. "Champion Lance is en route. Estimated arrival: forty-seven minutes."
"Of course he is."
"Additionally, representatives from Silph Co., the Pokemon League, the International Pokemon Research Association, and seventeen different news organizations are attempting to reach the area. I have taken the liberty of creating a psychic barrier to control access."
"Good thinking."
"I have an IQ of 5,000. My thinking is always good."
Marcus couldn't argue with that.
STATUS UPDATE:
Professor Oak: Lying down, questioning reality
Gary: Still stuck in Mareep pile, too scared to move
Ash: Making friends with 17 Pikachus
Officer Jenny: Having a breakdown
Champion Lance: En route
Marcus: Surprisingly handling it
Kenneth the Shuckle: Still vibing
Lore-Accurate Threat Assessment:
Gardevoir: Can create black holes ✓Magcargo: Hotter than the sun ✓Tyranitar: Mountain destroyer ✓Alakazam: Smarter than all humans combined ✓Machamp: 1,000 punches in 2 seconds ✓Lanturn: Can power civilizations ✓Wailord: Bigger than your house ✓Everything else: Also terrifying ✓
Current Plan: Don't panic
Success Rate: Pending
[A/N: Next chapter—Champion Lance arrives! World governments start freaking out! And Marcus discovers that having 40+ legendaries means having 40+ OPINIONS about how things should be run! Don't forget to comment which lore-accurate Pokemon ability you want to see cause problems next!]