The pungent stench of chemical fumes had long become his daily companion. His life revolved around laboratories—preparing materials, conducting experiments, recording results. Rinse and repeat.
And he never once resented it. If anything, he was prepared to die inside a lab. That was the path he chose when he pursued double degrees in Chemistry and Biology, followed by master's studies in both, and Physics on top of that.
So when it happened, it wasn't entirely a surprise.
The filtering apparatus failed at a critical moment. A volatile substance destabilized, its energy spiking. He registered the sharp rise in temperature an instant before the explosion tore the lab apart.
No, dying wasn't the surprise. What came after was.
He expected nothingness. Instead, he felt pressure, as if being squeezed out of a narrow tunnel. He then broke free into open air, coughing and gasping. His body burned with each breath, raw and unfamiliar.
A piercing cry escaped from his throat. The world froze.
When he opened his eyes, glowing faintly purple, he saw a large woman holding him. A doctor, judging by her white coat and surgical mask.
Her eyes were wide with horror. Around them stretched an operating theater, sterile and cold.
As the eerie glow from his eyes dimmed, time seemed to resume. A heart monitor wailed a flatline, ensuing panic in the room. Then a pink, egg-shaped Pokémon rushed forward.
He blinked hard, struggling to process the sight. Stubby arms, tiny eyes, a pouch with a white egg—there was no mistaking it.
Chansey.
The doctor barked an order, "Heal Pulse," she commanded, and Chansey's body glowed. A warm wave spread through him, soothing the pain. Exhaustion pulled at his mind, and he slipped into unconsciousness.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
When he awoke again, the truth became clearer. The doctor and nurses seemed enormous only because he was now a newborn—an infant. Somehow, impossibly, he had been reborn into the world of Pokémon.
This was no game or anime he remembered, but a parallel Earth where Pokémon lived alongside humans.
He also pieced together what had happened in the operating room: the flatline had not been his heart, but his mother's. She had died bringing him into this world.
He didn't let himself dwell on grief. Instead, he turned inward, toward the strange presence lingering in his mind. Warmth. Power. A tide that surged and ebbed.
Psychic energy.
He learned—by overhearing the doctors—that he was an inborn psychic, rare but not unheard of. His uncontrolled outburst at birth had stopped not only the machines but the very flow of time in the hospital. It was a miracle no one else was harmed.
The cost, however, was clear. His mother's weakened body had been pushed beyond its limits by the strain of carrying a child with such overwhelming psychic potential. She had loved him, but the price of his existence was her life.
His father, too, was gone—killed defending his pregnant wife from a sudden Pokémon riot in the forest. His mother survived only with the military's aid, long enough to carry him to term.
Despite being an orphan twice, he still felt some semblance of comfort. His parents were strangers, yet they had given everything for him. That love, for him, was enough.
He mulled over his fate. Perhaps his experiment's catastrophic energy release had torn a hole through space-time, pulling his consciousness into this new reality. A freak accident, but one that had given him a second life.
The tag at his side bore his new name: Alfred Hugo Deford.
An intelligent mind, son of the strong. How fitting.
Despite his helpless infant body, Alfred's thoughts churned with ambition. Psychic powers. A flawless memory. And the greatest playground of all—the Pokémon world.
His dream of having his partner Pokémons and becoming the strongest trainer was no longer a fantasy.
A grand future awaits.
But for now, fatigue claimed him once more, and the prodigy drifted into sleep.