The last thing Tanaka Hiroshi remembered was the vending machine.
It wasn't even a dramatic death, which somehow made it worse. He hadn't been hit by a truck. He hadn't been stabbed by a random assailant. He hadn't even choked on something interesting like a high-end wagyu beef steak or an exotic foreign delicacy.
No. Tanaka Hiroshi, twenty-six years old, systems administrator, died because a vending machine fell on him.
He had been walking home from his dead-end job at a company whose name he could barely remember through his post-mortem haze. It was raining. Not a dramatic thunderstorm, just a miserable Tuesday drizzle that seeped into his bones and made his cheap suit cling to his skin in the most uncomfortable way possible. His umbrella had broken that morning—one of the spokes had snapped, leaving it looking like a wounded bat—and he hadn't bothered to buy a new one because that would require effort and optimism, two things Hiroshi had been running dangerously low on for approximately three years.
He had stopped at the vending machine outside the convenience store because he wanted coffee. Hot coffee. The kind that came in those small cans and tasted vaguely of disappointment and artificial sweetener. It was the highlight of his day, which said everything that needed to be said about the state of his life.
The vending machine had eaten his coins.
This was not unusual. Vending machines had a personal vendetta against Hiroshi. He was convinced of this. Every vending machine he had ever encountered seemed to develop sudden mechanical failures specifically when he approached. Coins would get stuck. Products would hang tantalizingly on their spirals, refusing to drop. Buttons would become unresponsive. It was a curse. He had accepted this.
What he had not accepted—what he could never have anticipated—was the vending machine deciding to end their long-running feud permanently.
Later investigation would reveal that the bolts securing the machine to the wall had been slowly loosening for months. The building's maintenance staff had been cutting corners. There was a slight slope to the ground that nobody had noticed. The rain had made the concrete slick. It was a perfect storm of negligence and bad luck.
But in the moment, all Hiroshi knew was that he had kicked the machine in frustration—not even hard, just a sad little tap of his worn-out dress shoe against the metal—and then the world had tilted.
He had looked up.
The vending machine had looked down.
There was a moment of mutual understanding between them. An acknowledgment that this was it. The finale of their bitter rivalry.
Then approximately three hundred kilograms of metal, glass, and unsold coffee cans had introduced itself to Hiroshi's skull.
Death, Hiroshi discovered, was boring.
He had expected something. Anything. A tunnel of light. A parade of his ancestors looking disappointed in him. A deity of some kind ready to either welcome him to paradise or condemn him to punishment. Maybe even just peaceful oblivion—the sweet release of non-existence that philosophers had been promising for millennia.
Instead, he got a waiting room.
It looked exactly like the waiting room at his dentist's office. Same uncomfortable plastic chairs. Same outdated magazines on a coffee-stained table. Same flickering fluorescent light that buzzed in a frequency specifically designed to induce headaches. There was even the same vaguely threatening poster on the wall about gum disease.
Hiroshi sat in one of the plastic chairs for what felt like several hours. There was no one else in the waiting room. There was no receptionist behind the frosted glass window. There was nothing but the buzz of the lights and the distant, almost subliminal sound of elevator music playing from speakers he couldn't locate.
He tried the door. It was locked.
He tried the window. It didn't open.
He tried yelling. Nobody answered.
Eventually, he gave up and sat back down. He picked up one of the magazines—it was a copy of "Better Homes & Gardens" from 2003—and flipped through it without actually reading any of the words. An article about kitchen renovations stared back at him. A recipe for something involving asparagus. Tips for growing tomatoes in small spaces.
He was reading about the optimal soil pH for heirloom varieties when reality glitched.
There was no other way to describe it. One moment, he was looking at a photograph of a middle-aged woman proudly displaying her vegetable garden. The next moment, the photograph was... wrong. The woman's face had too many angles. The vegetables behind her were colors that didn't exist. The sky in the background had developed geometry.
Hiroshi blinked.
When he opened his eyes, the waiting room was gone.
In its place was a small, comfortable bedroom. Sunlight streamed through a window with cheerful curtains. A desk sat against one wall, covered in what looked like notebooks and pencils. A small television—an old CRT model—sat on a stand in the corner. The walls were decorated with posters of... something. Animals? The images were blurry, like his eyes couldn't quite focus on them.
He was lying in a bed. A small bed. His feet were... where were his feet?
Hiroshi sat up and looked down at his body.
His body, which was significantly smaller than it had been when the vending machine had killed him.
His hands were tiny. Soft. Unmarked by years of keyboard use and caffeine dependency.
He was a child.
"What," said Hiroshi, in a voice that was several octaves higher than he was used to.
It took him three days to fully process his situation.
During those three days, he learned several important things:
First, he was now a ten-year-old boy named Sato Kenji. He had parents—a mother who seemed kind but perpetually distracted, and a father who worked in "the city" and was rarely home. They lived in a small town that looked like it had been ripped directly from the Japanese countryside, all traditional architecture and narrow streets and friendly neighbors who knew each other's names.
Second, there was something wrong with this world.
The animals were wrong.
It wasn't immediately obvious. At first glance, they looked normal enough. There were birds in the trees. There were fish in the small stream that ran through town. There were dogs and cats in people's yards.
But the birds had too many colors. The fish occasionally spat water in ways that defied physics. The dogs and cats... well, they looked mostly normal, actually. But there was something in their eyes. An intelligence that made Hiroshi deeply uncomfortable.
Third—and this was the thing that really broke his brain—he recognized this world.
Not from personal experience. From fiction.
The posters on his bedroom wall, the ones he hadn't been able to focus on at first? They came into clarity on his second day in this body. They were promotional posters for something called "Pokemon." Bright, colorful creatures arranged in dynamic poses. A yellow mouse-thing shooting lightning. A blue turtle with cannons on its shell. A orange dragon breathing fire.
Pokemon.
He was in the Pokemon world.
Hiroshi—Kenji, he reminded himself, his name was Kenji now—sat on his bed and stared at the posters for approximately forty-five minutes while his brain tried to reboot.
He had played Pokemon. Of course he had played Pokemon. Everyone had played Pokemon. He had been ten years old when the original games came out—ten years old in his original life, he meant—and he had been obsessed like every other child his age. He had watched the anime. He had collected the cards. He had traded rumors about Mew being under the truck and Pikablu being a real Pokemon you could catch if you knew the secret.
He had grown up. He had stopped playing. The memories had faded into the background noise of his adult life, occasionally surfacing when Nintendo announced a new game or when he saw kids on the train playing on their handheld consoles.
But now he was here. In the world of Pokemon. As a ten-year-old boy.
This should have been exciting. This should have been a dream come true. Every child who had ever played Pokemon had fantasized about this exact scenario. Waking up in the Pokemon world. Getting your own Pokemon. Going on an adventure.
Kenji felt nothing but mounting dread.
Because he remembered how Pokemon worked. Not the sanitized anime version where everyone was friends and nobody really got hurt. The game version. The version where you walked through tall grass and wild animals attacked you. The version where criminal organizations tried to take over the world. The version where literal gods existed and occasionally needed to be stopped from destroying reality.
He was a completely normal person. He had no special powers. He had no hidden destiny. He was just a guy—a dead guy—who had somehow ended up in a fictional universe full of creatures that could breathe fire, shoot lightning, create earthquakes, and, in some cases, bend space and time.
This was not going to end well.
The day everything went wrong—or, more accurately, the day everything went wrong in a way that would define the rest of Kenji's existence—started normally enough.
He had spent the past week since his realization trying to gather information. His "mother" had been helpful, in her distracted way, answering his questions about Pokemon and trainers and the general state of the world. His "father" remained a mysterious figure who apparently worked at something called the Devon Corporation in a distant city.
Today was supposed to be a normal day. He was going to go to the local Pokemon Center—because this town had a Pokemon Center, of course it did, every town had a Pokemon Center—and do some research. Maybe figure out where exactly he was in terms of game geography. Maybe learn more about what year it was, what region he was in, whether any of the major plot events had already happened.
He was walking down the main street of the town, enjoying the warm weather and trying not to think too hard about his situation, when he heard the voices.
"I'm telling you, the Professor said to meet here!"
"I know what the Professor said! I'm just saying, he's always late. You know how he is."
Kenji stopped walking.
He recognized those voices. Not personally—he had never met the people speaking—but the character types were immediately identifiable. One voice was eager, enthusiastic, brimming with barely contained energy. The other was annoyed, superior, with an undertone of competitive frustration.
He turned around.
Two boys his age were standing outside a building that Kenji now realized was a Pokemon Lab. One had dark hair hidden under a red and white cap. He was wearing a red jacket and blue jeans, and there was something about his expression—determined, focused, quiet—that seemed to pull attention toward him like gravity.
The other boy had spiky brown hair and an expression of perpetual irritation. He was dressed in purple and black, and he kept glancing at the quiet boy with a mix of rivalry and something that might have been grudging respect.
Kenji's brain processed what he was seeing.
Red.
And Blue.
He was looking at Red and Blue.
The protagonists and rival of the original Pokemon games. The most legendary trainer in the franchise's history and his eternal competitor. They were standing right there, in front of him, arguing about a professor like regular ten-year-olds.
This was Pallet Town. He was in Pallet Town. In Kanto. At the beginning of the original story.
Kenji took a step backward. Then another. He needed to leave. He needed to get as far away from these plot-relevant characters as possible. He was a background character. An NPC. His only goal was to survive this world without getting caught up in any of the dangerous nonsense that defined Pokemon's narrative.
He turned to flee.
The sky exploded.
"Exploded" was perhaps too strong a word. It was more that the sky... opened. A crack appeared in the air itself, a seam in reality that hemorrhaged golden light. The wind picked up from nowhere, whipping through the streets with enough force to send leaves and debris flying. A sound like thunder rolled across the town, but there was no storm, no clouds, nothing to explain the sudden atmospheric chaos.
Kenji stumbled, shielding his eyes from the blinding light.
Through the gaps in his fingers, he saw something emerge from the crack in the sky.
It was huge.
That was his first impression. Huge. Massive. A wingspan that blotted out the sun. A body like a living flame, orange and red and gold, scales that seemed to flicker with inner fire. Wings that left trails of sparks with every powerful beat. A tail with a flame at its tip that burned so bright it hurt to look at.
A Charizard.
But not just any Charizard.
This Charizard was wrong. Too big. At least twice, maybe three times the size of a normal Charizard. Its scales weren't the regular orange—they were black, deep obsidian black, with highlights of blue flame that danced along its body. Its eyes glowed red, not with malice but with an ancient, terrifying intelligence. Patterns of light traced across its form like circuitry, pulsing in rhythms that seemed to match Kenji's panicking heartbeat.
A shiny Charizard. An alpha shiny Charizard. A creature that should not exist because alpha Pokemon were from a different game, a different era, a different region entirely, and yet here it was, descending from a crack in reality like a dragon god coming to claim tribute.
Kenji stood frozen.
The Charizard landed.
The ground shook. Cracks spiderwebbed through the street from the point of impact. Windows rattled. Somewhere, a car alarm started wailing.
The massive creature stood in the middle of Pallet Town, surveying its surroundings with those terrible, knowing eyes. Steam rose from its body. The air around it shimmered with heat.
Then it looked at Kenji.
Kenji's entire body went cold despite the waves of warmth radiating from the dragon.
Don't look at me, he thought desperately. Look at Red. Look at Blue. They're the protagonists. They're the special ones. I'm nobody. I'm literally just some guy who got killed by a vending machine.
The Charizard took a step toward him.
The ground trembled with each footfall.
"Um," said Kenji.
The Charizard took another step. And another. Each step brought it closer, each step made Kenji more certain that he was about to die for the second time in his existence. Killed by a vending machine and then by a fire dragon. At least this death would be more impressive.
The Charizard stopped directly in front of him.
It was so close that Kenji could see the individual scales on its snout. Could feel the heat radiating from its body like standing in front of an open furnace. Could see his own terrified reflection in those massive, glowing red eyes.
The Charizard opened its mouth.
A ball of fire gathered in the back of its throat.
This is it, thought Kenji. This is how I die.
The Charizard spat.
But it wasn't fire that emerged. It was... a Pokeball. A regular, red-and-white Pokeball, covered in saliva and slightly warm, landing at Kenji's feet with a sad little plop.
Kenji stared at the Pokeball.
The Charizard made a rumbling sound in its chest. It was, Kenji realized with dawning horror, a sound of expectation. Anticipation.
The giant, reality-defying, alpha shiny Charizard wanted him to catch it.
"What," said Kenji.
The Charizard nudged the Pokeball toward him with its snout.
"No, seriously, what."
The Charizard made a sound that was unmistakably impatient.
From behind him, Kenji heard footsteps approaching. Red and Blue had apparently decided that whatever was happening here was worth investigating, because of course they had, because they were protagonists and protagonists always walked toward danger instead of running away like sensible people.
"Whoa!" Blue's voice was filled with a mix of alarm and excitement. "Is that a Charizard?! Why is it so BIG?"
Red said nothing. Red just stared. His eyes moved from the Charizard to the Pokeball to Kenji and back again.
"Why is it BLACK?" Blue continued, circling around to get a better look while maintaining what he clearly thought was a safe distance. "I've never seen a Charizard that color! And those markings—what even IS that?"
The Charizard ignored Blue entirely. Its attention remained fixed on Kenji, patient and expectant, like a dog waiting for its owner to throw a ball.
"I think," Red said quietly, "it wants him to catch it."
"What?!" Blue's head whipped around to stare at Kenji. "Who even IS this guy? I've never seen him before! Why would a Charizard—why would THAT Charizard—want HIM to catch it?"
That was an excellent question. Kenji would also very much like to know the answer.
"I don't want to catch it," Kenji said, his voice coming out as a strangled whisper. "I'm not even a trainer. I don't have any Pokemon. I don't WANT any Pokemon. Especially not—" he gestured weakly at the enormous dragon looming over him, "—THAT."
The Charizard made a sound of displeasure.
The temperature around them increased by about ten degrees.
"I think you should catch it," Red said, in the same quiet, unbothered tone he used for everything.
"I think if you don't catch it, it might get mad," Blue added, and for once there was no superiority in his voice, just genuine concern. "And I don't think we want to see it mad."
The Charizard looked at Kenji.
Kenji looked at the Charizard.
The Charizard looked at the Pokeball.
Kenji looked at the Pokeball.
His hands were shaking as he bent down to pick it up. The ball was warm in his palm, almost uncomfortably so. It felt heavier than it should, like it contained something more than just a mechanical capturing device.
"This is insane," Kenji muttered. "This is completely insane. I'm going to catch a dragon god with a ball I didn't even buy. This is fine. Everything is fine."
He threw the Pokeball.
It was a terrible throw. Weak. Wobbly. It barely made it three feet before it bonked against the Charizard's nose and fell to the ground.
The ball opened.
Red light erupted from its core, engulfing the massive Charizard in a beam of energy. The dragon's form dissolved, becoming light, becoming data, becoming something that could fit inside a sphere no larger than a baseball.
The ball snapped shut.
It wobbled once.
Twice.
Three times.
Click.
Kenji stared at the Pokeball lying on the ground. It wasn't even shaking anymore. It just sat there, innocently, as if it hadn't just absorbed a creature the size of a small building.
"Did... did that just happen?" he asked no one in particular.
"Congratulations!" Blue said, his voice carrying a strange mix of jealousy and genuine awe. "You just caught the most powerful Charizard I've ever seen! On your first try! With a ball you didn't even throw properly!"
Red picked up the Pokeball and examined it for a moment before handing it to Kenji. "It chose you," he said simply.
"But WHY?" Kenji's voice cracked. "I didn't do anything! I was just walking! I was just trying to get to the Pokemon Center! I don't want to be chosen! I want to be NORMAL!"
Red and Blue exchanged a look that Kenji couldn't interpret.
"Well," Blue said, shrugging with the casual acceptance of someone who had grown up in a world where ten-year-olds routinely received god-like creatures as birthday presents, "that's just how it works sometimes. Pokemon choose their trainers. Guess this one really likes you."
"But it came from the SKY. There was a CRACK in REALITY."
"Yeah, that was pretty cool," Blue agreed. "I've never seen a Charizard do that before. Must be a regional variant or something."
Kenji wanted to scream. A crack in reality. A creature that shouldn't exist. An alpha shiny Pokemon from a game that hadn't even been made yet, that took place in a region on the other side of the world, that involved literal gods of space and time.
And Blue thought it was "a regional variant or something."
"This isn't normal," Kenji insisted. "This is the opposite of normal. This is the least normal thing that has ever happened to anyone ever."
"You'll get used to it," Red said, and there was something in his voice that might have been sympathy. "Pokemon do strange things sometimes. The important thing is that you take care of it now. It trusted you enough to let you catch it. That means something."
Kenji looked down at the Pokeball in his hands.
The Pokeball that contained an alpha shiny Charizard.
The Pokeball that had been literally spat at him by a dragon that had emerged from a hole in the sky.
"I think I need to sit down," he said.
They ended up at Professor Oak's laboratory.
Kenji didn't entirely remember how they got there. His brain had entered a protective fugue state somewhere between "you'll get used to it" and the walk across town. He vaguely recalled Red and Blue leading him through streets full of gawking townspeople, past buildings whose walls had been scorched by the ambient heat of the Charizard's arrival, up a hill to a large building with a windmill on top.
Professor Oak was... exactly what Kenji had expected. An older man with gray hair, wearing a lab coat, looking at the world with the cheerful curiosity of someone who had dedicated his entire life to studying creatures that could level cities.
"Ah!" Oak said, examining the Pokeball with interest. "An unusual specimen! I've never seen energy readings quite like these. Where did you say you found it?"
"It fell out of the sky," Kenji said flatly. "Through a crack in reality. It was the size of a house. It was black. It glowed. It spat a Pokeball at me and then got inside when I threw it."
"Fascinating!" Oak said, completely unfazed by this description. "A spontaneous manifestation event! We've theorized about such things, of course, but documentation has been scarce. You're very lucky, young man! Not many trainers can say they've witnessed something like this!"
"I don't want to be a trainer."
"Nonsense! Everyone wants to be a trainer!" Oak patted Kenji on the shoulder with the oblivious enthusiasm of someone who had never considered that there might be alternatives. "And with a partner like this, you're already ahead of the curve!"
"It's a monster. It's literally a monster. It tore a hole in the sky."
"Yes, well, Charizard can be quite dramatic. It's in their nature." Oak handed the Pokeball back to Kenji. "I'd recommend spending some time bonding with it. Take it for walks. Battle some wild Pokemon. The usual."
Kenji stared at the Professor with the hollow eyes of a man who had lost all hope of being understood.
Red and Blue were standing nearby, watching the exchange with expressions that Kenji couldn't read. Red seemed thoughtful. Blue seemed impatient, glancing at the door like he was eager to get started on his own journey.
"Now then!" Oak clapped his hands together. "Since you boys are all here, why don't I give you your official starter Pokemon and Pokedexes? It's a bit earlier than I planned, but given the circumstances..."
"Wait," Kenji said. "You're giving THEM starter Pokemon? Regular starter Pokemon?"
"Of course! Red will be receiving a Pikachu, and Blue will have his choice of Charmander, Bulbasaur, or Squirtle."
"And you don't find it strange that I already have an alpha shiny Charizard the size of a truck?"
Oak considered this for a moment. "Well, every trainer's journey is different! Some start with a Caterpie. Some start with a gift from a family member. And some," he gestured vaguely at Kenji, "have legendary-class Pokemon fall out of the sky and volunteer to be their partners. It's the beautiful diversity of the Pokemon world!"
Kenji opened his mouth to argue, then closed it.
There was no point.
These people were insane. The entire world was insane. He had been reincarnated into an insane universe where reality-warping dragons chose random nobodies as their trainers and everyone just accepted it as normal.
Fine.
FINE.
If this was how things were going to be, then he would adapt. He would survive. He would find a quiet corner of this world where nothing interesting happened and live out the rest of this life in peaceful obscurity.
A loud crash from outside interrupted his thoughts.
Everyone in the lab turned toward the window.
Outside, in the field behind the laboratory, something was happening. Another crack had appeared in the sky—smaller than the first one, but unmistakable. Golden light spilled through. Wind whipped across the grass.
And from the crack emerged...
Kenji squinted.
It was a bird.
A very large bird.
A bird with rainbow feathers that left trails of light in the air. A bird with a crest like flames and a tail like a comet. A bird that radiated power and majesty and an ancient, timeless presence.
Ho-Oh.
The legendary Pokemon Ho-Oh had just appeared above Professor Oak's laboratory.
"Oh, how wonderful!" Oak exclaimed, pressing his face against the window like an excited child. "A Ho-Oh! I haven't seen one of those in decades!"
The Ho-Oh circled once, twice, three times. Its eyes scanned the laboratory, the fields, the town. It seemed to be searching for something.
Its gaze settled on Kenji.
"No," Kenji whispered.
The Ho-Oh began to descend.
"No no no no no."
It landed gracefully on the grass outside, folding its magnificent wings against its body. Even at rest, it radiated heat and light, a creature of fire and life and resurrection.
It was looking at him through the window.
It was looking at him with EXPECTATION.
"NO."
Kenji ran for the back door of the lab. He didn't know where he was going. He didn't have a plan. He just knew that he needed to be somewhere else, anywhere else, before—
He burst through the door and directly into a face full of rainbow feathers.
The Ho-Oh had moved. Faster than something that size should be able to move. It was standing right in front of the door, blocking his escape, looking down at him with eyes that contained the wisdom of centuries.
It opened its beak.
A Pokeball dropped at Kenji's feet.
"Please," Kenji said, his voice breaking. "Please, I already have one. I don't need another one. Go find someone else. Go find Red! He's the protagonist! He's supposed to have legendary Pokemon! I'm nobody! I'M NOBODY!"
The Ho-Oh made a sound that was unmistakably a disagreement.
Behind Kenji, he heard the laboratory door open. Footsteps on the grass. Red, Blue, and Professor Oak joining him outside.
"Remarkable!" Oak breathed. "It's presenting itself for capture! In all my years of research, I've never—"
"Dude," Blue interrupted, staring at Kenji with an expression that mixed horror and jealousy in equal measure. "DUDE. That's a Ho-Oh. That's THE Ho-Oh. And it wants YOU to catch it?!"
Red was silent. He was always silent. But his eyes were fixed on the scene with an intensity that made Kenji even more uncomfortable.
The Ho-Oh nudged the Pokeball toward Kenji with its beak.
Kenji looked at the Pokeball.
He looked at the Ho-Oh.
He looked at the sky, where the crack in reality was slowly closing.
He looked back at the Pokeball.
"I hate this," he said quietly. "I hate everything about this."
He picked up the Pokeball.
He threw it.
The Ho-Oh was engulfed in red light.
The ball closed.
Wobble.
Wobble.
Wobble.
Click.
Kenji stood in the afternoon sunlight, holding a Pokeball containing an actual god, while a Professor and two future Champions stared at him in silence.
"Well!" Oak said brightly, apparently recovering first. "This is certainly going to make for an interesting research paper!"
Kenji sat down on the grass.
He stared at the two Pokeballs in his hands.
One contained an alpha shiny Charizard that had torn through reality itself.
The other contained Ho-Oh, the legendary Phoenix Pokemon, guardian of the skies, bringer of rainbows and resurrection.
He had been in this world for approximately one week.
This was going to be a very long life.
Somewhere, in a distant region, a man in an orange suit felt a sudden chill run down his spine.
Giovanni, leader of Team Rocket, paused in the middle of signing a document. His hand trembled slightly. He looked around his office, but nothing was out of place. The same shadows. The same silence. The same Persian sleeping at his feet.
And yet, something had changed. Something in the air. A premonition. A warning.
He shook his head and returned to his work. Probably nothing. Probably just stress from the Silph Co. operation planning.
Probably.
In Hoenn, a man named Maxie suddenly looked up from his computer screen, seized by an inexplicable sense of dread.
In another part of Hoenn, a man named Archie dropped his drink, staring at nothing, feeling for the first time in years the cold touch of fear.
In Sinnoh, Cyrus paused mid-sentence during a Team Galactic briefing, losing his train of thought entirely as something deep in his chest constricted.
In Unova, Ghetsis stumbled during a speech, recovering quickly but unable to shake the feeling that something terrible was coming.
In Kalos, a man named Lysandre cancelled all his appointments for the day, claiming illness, and spent the evening staring at the ceiling of his bedroom wondering why he suddenly felt so afraid.
None of them knew what had caused these feelings.
None of them would understand until much, much later.
But on some instinctive level, every villain in the Pokemon world felt the same thing at the same moment:
A new player had entered the game.
And the game would never be the same.
Meanwhile, in Pallet Town, Kenji was trying very hard not to have a complete mental breakdown.
"So," Blue said, settling down on the grass next to him with the casual ease of someone who was not currently experiencing an existential crisis. "You caught two legendary-class Pokemon in one day. Before even getting your trainer license. Before even leaving your hometown."
"I didn't catch them," Kenji replied automatically. "They caught me. They THREW POKEBALLS AT ME."
"Semantics." Blue waved a hand dismissively. "Point is, you've got them now. What are you gonna do with them?"
"Nothing. I'm going to do nothing. I'm going to release them back into the wild and pretend none of this ever happened."
"You can't release them."
"What? Why not?"
"Because they chose you." Red had appeared on Kenji's other side, silent as always. "If you release them, they'll just find you again. That's how it works with Pokemon that have formed that kind of bond."
Kenji stared at him. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. They just met me. There's no bond. I was just standing there. STANDING. That's all I was doing."
"Doesn't matter." Red shrugged. "Something about you called to them. Pokemon can sense things humans can't. Potential. Destiny. Whatever you want to call it."
"I don't have potential. I don't have destiny. I was a systems administrator! I died getting crushed by a vending machine! There is nothing special about me!"
Red and Blue exchanged another one of those looks.
"Look," Blue said, in a tone that was almost gentle, "I don't know what your deal is. I don't know why these Pokemon are attracted to you. But they are. And that means something. Even if you don't understand it yet."
"I don't want it to mean something. I want to go home, go to bed, and wake up tomorrow to find that this was all a very elaborate nightmare."
"That's not going to happen," Red said.
"I know." Kenji buried his face in his hands. "I know."
They sat in silence for a while. The sun was beginning to set, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink. Somewhere in the distance, a bird called. Normal sounds. Peaceful sounds. As if reality-warping dragons and legendary phoenixes hadn't just volunteered to be enslaved by a random nobody.
"Hey," Blue said eventually. "You know what might help?"
"Therapy? A complete memory wipe? Death?"
"A Pokemon battle."
Kenji lifted his head. "What?"
"A battle!" Blue jumped to his feet, suddenly energized. "You've got those Pokemon now. Might as well see what they can do! I just got my Squirtle from the Professor—let's have a quick match!"
"You want me... to battle your brand-new Squirtle... with an alpha shiny Charizard and Ho-Oh."
"Why not? It'll be fun!"
Kenji stared at Blue for a long moment, trying to determine if the boy was genuinely this stupid or if this was some kind of elaborate joke.
Blue's expression was completely sincere.
He was genuinely this stupid.
"I'm going home," Kenji said, standing up. "I'm going to go home, and I'm going to sleep, and tomorrow I'm going to figure out how to live a completely normal, boring life that involves none of this."
"Where do you live?" Red asked.
Kenji opened his mouth to answer, then stopped.
He had been living in a house in this town. With "parents" who had the memories and behaviors of NPCs in a video game. But that had been before. Before the Charizard. Before the Ho-Oh. Before Red and Blue had witnessed everything.
Could he go back to that house? Could he pretend to be a normal kid with a normal family when he had two legendary Pokemon in his pocket?
"I don't know," he admitted.
"You could stay at my house," Red offered. "My mom wouldn't mind. She likes having guests."
"Or mine," Blue added, not to be outdone. "Gramps has plenty of room in the lab, and I bet he'd love to study those Pokemon of yours."
Kenji considered his options.
Option one: Go back to the NPC house and pretend everything was normal while hoping no more legendary Pokemon fell from the sky.
Option two: Stay with Red, the silent protagonist who would eventually become the most powerful trainer in the world.
Option three: Stay at Oak's lab, where the Professor would probably study him like a science experiment.
All options were terrible.
He chose option one.
"I'll go home," he said. "My... parents are probably worried."
Red nodded. Blue shrugged.
"Suit yourself," Blue said. "But hey—we're heading out on our journeys tomorrow. Going to travel around, collect badges, become Champion, the usual. You should come with!"
"Absolutely not."
"Come on! It'll be great! With those Pokemon of yours, you'd be unstoppable!"
"I don't want to be unstoppable. I want to be invisible."
Blue laughed like Kenji had told a joke. "Good luck with that!"
Kenji turned and walked away.
He made it approximately fifteen steps before Red's voice stopped him.
"Hey."
He turned.
Red was still standing where Kenji had left him, silhouetted against the setting sun. His Pikachu—when had he gotten a Pikachu?—was perched on his shoulder, yellow fur glowing in the evening light.
"Whatever happens," Red said, "don't be afraid of them."
"The Pokemon?"
Red nodded. "They chose you for a reason. Even if you don't understand it. Even if you don't want it. They believe in you. That has to count for something."
Kenji stood there, Pokeballs heavy in his pockets, the weight of two impossible creatures pressing against his hip.
"I don't want anyone to believe in me," he said quietly.
Red smiled. It was a small smile, barely visible, but it transformed his entire face for just a moment.
"Too late," he said.
Then he turned and walked back toward Oak's laboratory, Pikachu chirping on his shoulder, leaving Kenji alone in the gathering dusk.
Kenji walked home.
The streets of Pallet Town were quiet now. Most people had gone inside after the excitement of the afternoon, probably to gossip about the crazy events at the lab. The windows of houses glowed with warm light. The smell of cooking dinner drifted through the air.
Normal. Peaceful. Ordinary.
The Pokeballs in his pocket felt like they weighed a thousand pounds.
He reached his house—his "house," the house that belonged to his NPC "parents"—and stood outside the door for a long moment. Through the window, he could see his "mother" moving around the kitchen. Making dinner. Living her life. Completely unaware that her "son" was actually a dead salary worker from another dimension.
He went inside.
"Kenji!" His mother looked up with a warm smile. "There you are! I heard there was some commotion at the Professor's lab today. Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," he lied.
"Good, good. Dinner's almost ready. Go wash up!"
Kenji went to his room.
He sat on his bed.
He looked at the Pokeballs.
Then, slowly, carefully, he released the Charizard.
The room wasn't nearly big enough. The massive dragon materialized in a burst of light, immediately crashing through the ceiling, the walls, probably destroying half the house. Kenji scrambled backward, ready to die for the third time, except—
—nothing happened.
The Charizard was there, but it wasn't there. It existed in a state that seemed to ignore physical space, its massive form somehow contained within the tiny room without actually destroying anything. Like a hologram. Or a dream.
It looked at him.
He looked at it.
"Why me?" he asked.
The Charizard tilted its head. A sound rumbled from its chest—not quite a growl, not quite a purr. Something in between.
"I'm nobody," Kenji continued. "I'm literally nobody. I died in the most pathetic way possible. I have no skills, no powers, no destiny. I'm just... me. So why?"
The Charizard moved closer. Its massive head lowered until it was level with Kenji's face. Those red eyes, ancient and knowing, met his.
And for a moment—just a moment—Kenji felt something.
A connection. A recognition. Like the Charizard was looking at him and seeing not who he was, but who he could become. Who he was supposed to be. A version of himself that he couldn't even imagine yet.
"I don't understand," he whispered.
The Charizard made a sound that might have been agreement. Or comfort. Or maybe just acknowledgment.
Then it dissolved back into light, returning to its Pokeball without being recalled.
Kenji sat in his room, in his bed, in his borrowed life.
Tomorrow, everything would change.
He had no idea how right he was.
End of Chapter 1