I was a dreamer, but at the same time a realist. I knew my older body was probably dead, and this girl's soul was also dead and I was probably stuck here. And the worst thing was that she was probably involved with a murderer. Did she really kill herself? Was this kid probably murdered? I didn't have the memories to know, but I would have to stay alert from now on.
The last thing I remembered to do before turning off the phone for the time being, was to look through her notes app. I always had a habit of writing everything on my mind, and she probably had the same habit. There were dozens of notes, all of them a mix of poetry, song lyrics, and cryptic thoughts. One note, titled "The Colors," stood out. It was a long, rambling poem about the colors she saw and the whispers she heard, and how she was "unraveling" because of them. Is looked like they were almost guiding her through life, despite the headaches and noises in her head. Another note, titled "The Ring," simply said:
"The ring. The ring. The ring. I know the ring. They saw me."
The last note, a single, unadulterated thought, simply said:
"They know. I'm next."
I stared at the phone in my hand, my heart pounding in my chest. This wasn't a suicide. This was a murder. And the killer, whoever he was, knew her secret, and he or she was still out there. She was a prime candidate of a "murder that looks like suicide", with all her medical history and her family history, it's no wornder no one questioned what really happened. This poor girl, I could not imagine what she had been going through, and the panic she felt if someone really killed her.
I kept reviewing everything in my head, but couldn't reach a conclusion. The only thing I could do for now was to try to remember what happened—the memories must be somewhere in my brain, even if the soul wasn't the same—and be careful. I put the phone down on the bedside table and closed my eyes, trying to clear my mind of the chaos. I focused on the stillness of the hospital room, the soft hum of the monitor, the cold plastic of the IV drip on my hand. I tried to focus on the pain, the memory of her pain, of the blood and the tears.
Nothing came. Just blackness.
I opened my eyes, a wave of despair washing over me. I was a nurse, a mother, a nerd. I had a life, a history, a family. But I was in a body that was not my own, a body that had been marked by a trauma I couldn't comprehend. I was a ghost, haunting a corpse. I wasn't a special agent or detective that could solve a murder, just a lost soul.
Just then, the door to the room opened and a slightly large, pink Pokémon waddled in. It was the Chansey that held me yesterday (don't ask me how I knew, I just did) standing nearly four feet tall with a tray of food resting precariously on its stubby, cone-shaped hands. The sight of it brought a fresh wave of surrealism, but also a strange sense of calm. I had always loved Chansey and its evolution, Blissey, they were in my top tem Pokémon for sure. As a nurse, I had always felt a deep connection to their compassionate, healing nature, and their soft, pink color was a comfort in itself. I had always imagined them as the perfect hospital companions, and here it was, exactly as I pictured, the perfect cute nurse. I wasn't afraid anymore. Not to say I was "used to it", but I just had to face reality, and chansey was the perfect Pokémon for a Pokémon world introduction.
I reached out my hand instinctively, a silent plea for comfort. The Chansey, as if understanding my need, left the tray and waddled closer, its gentle eyes filled with a deep empathy. It held out one of its hands, and I took it, my fingers wrapping around its warm, soft, hand. The Chansey's fur was smooth and warm and I always thought it would be rubbery…a wave of calm washed over me, a physical warmth that spread through my body. It was a small, quiet moment of peace in a world of chaos.
Chansey, sensed I needed comfort and started humming. Not using the move Sing, just humming a lullaby for close to ten minutes.
The sound was a low, melodic vibration that resonated in my chest, a gentle rhythm that was both comforting and foreign. The Chansey wasn't using its move; it was simply humming, a sound that a mother might use to soothe a child. It sat on the floor beside the bed, its stubby hands gently resting on my arm, its small, dark eyes filled with a deep empathy. My eyelids, heavy with exhaustion, slowly closed, and I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
I woke up to the soft click of a door closing and the sound of the clock on the wall signaling that it was 5 o'clock. My body felt rested, but my mind was still reeling. The room was dark, lit only by the faint setting sun, and clinical glow of the hospital machinery, and the Chansey was gone. It had left a tray of food on the bedside table, a simple sandwich I could eat anytime, and a small cup of what looked like milk. The food smelled delicious, and my stomach, which had been empty for what felt like days, growled in protest.
After I ate, I decide to tackle the problem like a Pokémon (hah, tackle, get it?), and see this world's history, and how Pokémon appeared here. It looked like they were the center of this earth, if the phones and the apps were to go by. So I needed to adapt fast if I wanted to survive. Would my game knowledge be useful here? Were the Pokémon the same? The types? What about the areas in the games and countries of this world, was there some connection?
The phone felt heavy in my hand as I began my search. I started with a simple query: Pokémon. The results were a mix of scientific articles, historical records, and folklore, all pointing to a singular event that occurred roughly three hundred years ago, a phenomenon now called The Unsealing. According to the histories, the entire world heard the sound of a llama call (really, Arceus?) and in that instant, Pokémon just... appeared, out of thin air, in their own respective habitats. There was no scientific explanation, no meteor strike, no lab experiment gone wrong. Just a sudden, global emergence of fantastical creatures. Some had existed only in myths and legends before like dragons, some were never seen before.
This cataclysmic event had plunged the world into a new dark age. The old "empires", built on steel and gunpowder, collapsed under the pressure of a world they no longer understood and couldn't do anything about it. The next century and a half was a period of chaos, with humanity fighting to survive against the raw, untamable power of the new creatures. It was a time of fear and violence, where a city's fate could be decided by a single, rampaging Onix, or a nation's power could be measured by its ability to pacify or capture a powerful dragon or pseudo-legendary. Some of the Scientific and technological progress as I knew it had been aborted, replaced by a desperate, frantic search for ways to coexist with these new forces of nature, which resulted in the creation of pokeballs and other items that could be used on Pokémon or by Pokémon.
Alongside the birth of Pokémon came the dawn of a new kind of human. The charts and historical accounts referred to them as "meta-humans" or "The Gifted." In the early years, these individuals who could communicate with Pokémon through a psychic link, use some kind of telekinesis or sense energy with an aura were feared and persecuted. The same societies that hunted witches and burned heretics also turned on them, seeing their strange abilities as a sign of being possessed by these new, dangerous creatures. The first Pokémon trainers, a small and persecuted group of these individuals, found solace in the wild, bonding with the very creatures that humanity feared and misunderstood. Other people, like farmers and laborers, learned to coexist with Pokémon like Miltank or Mareep out of necessity, creating a duality that would define the profession of "trainer" for centuries.
With that in mind, I started my next search, focusing on how they were used in daily life. The results were overwhelming. Pokémon were not just creatures to be battled; they were a fundamental part of the world's infrastructure. Electric-types like a Magnemite were used to power everything from streetlights to entire cities. Ground-types like Sandshrew were used for construction, burrowing tunnels and moving earth with ease. Water-types were used for agriculture, watering vast fields and preventing droughts. Flying-types were used as couriers, carrying mail and packages from one city to another. It was a terrifying reality, a world that was both familiar and utterly alien.
I decided to look up the Pokémon themselves. I scrolled through countless pictures, my mind reeling. Seeing realistic pokemon made by AI was kind of a pastime for me on tiktok, I loved seeing the changes of evolution, the scales, fur, etc. but seeing it in REAL pictures was crazy. Nothing could compare to this. Seeing scales and muscles rippling when a Pokémon roared to the sky was simply crazy. The Pokémon were basically the same as the games, for the most part. I could see that some iterations of animals still existed, but were now Pokémon, as was the case of the American Eagle, that suffered a mutation. Normal animals still existed, but a lot of them became extinct because of the turf wars and hunting when Pokémon came into existence.
Familiar faces like Pikachu, Charizard, Arbok and Blastoise appeared in news articles and social media posts. But there were notable differences. The types were the same—fire, water, grass, etc—but some were absent. I quickly pulled up a type chart and saw that fairy and dark were missing from it. The chart simply didn't list them. I performed a quick search on "Fairy type" and "Dark type" to confirm my suspicions, and the results were a confusing mix of historical records and folklore. The word "Fairy"or "fae" was used to describe mythological creatures, often mischievous and very dangerous, but never a Pokémon type. A search for "Dark type" brought up nothing about an official type, only recent speculations now that a renowned Pokémon professor had evolved the first know Umbreon and thought it was a normal type evolution, but the data was not "dataing".
These were small, chilling details that confirmed that Pokémon was a very recent phenomenon, according to Google (that was still called Google, thank God, or Arceus?), and many things were still undiscovered about them. I mean… three hundred years when earth was billions of years old? Really, a recent humanity changing event.
After I finished my research session, I decided to let it all sink in, looking at the ceiling. This world became totally dependent on Pokémon in only three hundred years. The technological advancements were now back on track, and with the help of Pokémon, the jump was even greater, even after the new "dark age." The old empires, built on steel and cement, almost collapsed under the pressure of a world they no longer understood. The next century and a half was a period of chaos and violence, where nations rose and fell based on their ability to command the new forces of nature. The First World War never happened in this reality, its causes and conflicts simply erased by the larger global event. The only world war in this history was still caused by Hitler, but the battles were waged with armies of Pokémon instead of tanks and planes.
The world that emerged from the new dark age was a bizarre mix of the familiar and the alien. The man had only gone up to the moon (and found some traces of Pokémon, but no pokemon in the area they landed) in the year 2000. The Soviet Union was still going strong, its vast, cold territory providing a strategic advantage in controlling powerful Ice and rock types. Countries like Italy and France had united into a European Trainer Union, their old rivalries forgotten in the face of a world where national power was determined not by firepower, but by the strength of their Pokémon. I saw that firearms didn't even work on most Pokémon, only maybe the baby Pokémon, and even then it was hard to kill them with it. The development of military equipment kind of went under, with the taming and befriending of such powerful creatures, and guns were still stuck in their more primitive forms, the most "recent" being the famous cowboy revolver.
I looked at the phone, my heart pounding in my chest. This world was totally a crazy rip off of mine. It was absolutely insane. How could things be the same, yet so different? I had a clear goal. I needed to adapt fast if I wanted to survive. My game knowledge would be my guide, but I had to be careful. The smallest mistake could be a fatal one, specially if I really had a killer behind "my" suicide. Well, I really needed to start thinking of myself as me, now was a good time as any to start. Anyway, specially if I had been murdered, I really needed to up my game. Did I have a Pokémon? I mean, besides Maya, the eevee that was probably mine, because dad didn't really like dogs, even if eevee was more like a fox than anything. Anyway, there was only one way to find out, I had to call dad.
I scrolled through the contacts on the iPoke. His name, "Daddy🥰," was listed under a photo of him and me, taken when I was a child. He was smiling, his arm wrapped around me. A lump formed in my throat. I hadn't spoken to him in three years, not since his death. My finger hovered over the call button, a wave of both terror and longing washing over me. I wanted to hear his voice again, but I was terrified of what he would say.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm my racing heart. My training as a nurse kicked in. A nurse doesn't panic. My plan was to act like a scared, confused teenager. It was my only way to get through this.
I pressed the call button. The phone rang once, twice, and then a familiar voice, thick with concern and relief, answered. "Celeste? Are you okay? The doctors said you were awake. Why didn't you call earlier? What happened, little bug? Are you alright?"
Tears were already streaming down my face. Daddy hadn't called me little bug in years. I hadn't heard his voice in three years.
I bit my lip, trying to control the sob that was threatening to escape. His voice, a sound I thought I would never hear again, was a comfort and a dagger all at once. "Dad?" I asked, my voice a shaky whisper, and I prepared to say a half-truth. "I... I don't remember."
"I only remember waking up here with a bandage on my arm," I said, my voice barely a whisper. "I don't remember much else either. I didn't remember that mom had… died."
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. I could hear my father's shaky, uneven breathing. I sensed that he was feeling really guilty about being absent, probably thought his daughter had tried to off herself, so his guilt must have been huge right now. "I'm sorry for not being there for you," he said, his voice thick with emotion, while trying to compose himself.
I bit my lip, trying to control the sob that was threatening to escape. "It's okay, dad," I said, my voice a shaky whisper, even if it wasn't really okay, and that he had basically abandoned a teenager to raise herself. That made me think that this was my dad, but at the same time it really wasn't, because mine had never done that.
"It's going to be okay, my love. We're going to get through this. The doctors said you might have some memory loss. It's normal. I'm on my way, little bug. I'm on my way on the weekend, when you will probably get discharged."
"Dad," I said, my voice still a shaky whisper. "I really don't remember some things… I think I have a Pokémon. Maya? I saw some pictures."
There was another long silence, and I could hear him take a deep, shuddering breath. "Yeah, Maya," he said, his voice soft with a pain I could only imagine. "She was your mom's. She passed to you when your mom… when she passed away."
"Do I have more Pokémon? Do YOU have Pokémon?"
He was silent for a moment, and I could practically hear him smiling. He laughed, a short, strained sound. "Even with memory loss, you're still my little pokemaniac, aren't you?" he said, his voice filled with a mix of affection and sadness. "No, you don't have any more. We thought Maya was enough of a handful for now. And I have a few of my own: an Elekid, a a kirlia, and the Rotom that usually stays inside my phone."
I was stunned when he talked about Rotom. I didn't think the technology had reached the point of Rotom phones yet. My mind raced, trying to reconcile the game lore I knew with this new reality. "You have a Rotom phone?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper. "Or does Rotom just randomly enter any phone he wants?"
There was a different kind of silence now. I think he was taking my memory loss a little bit hard. "Little bug, you don't remember even that?" he said, and then laughed awkwardly. "I'm one of the creators of Rotom appliances."
I was floored. My dad definitely didn't have a company in my last life; he was only one of Microsoft's employees. And if he was one of Rotom's company owners, why did I have an iPoke? Teenage rebellion, maybe? The phone call was still going on, and I was just now processing the fact that I was probably rich, not just from my dad's being one of rotom's owner, but also inferring that from the kirlia he owned, because from my brief internet surfing, kirlia was just as popular Pokémon as in the game, but even more rare because their evolution line tended to hide and teleport away from civilization . I was also processing the fact that my teenage self had the audacity to use the phone of her dad's competitor.I kinda loved her, to be honest. You go, little me! Reminded me of when windows 12 launched but I insisted to my dad I had to get Linux because it was better, just to see his face getting purple in anger.
The phone call ended, leaving me alone with the new and overwhelming reality. I clicked on the Pokebook app and entered the "Família Fuente" group, a chaotic stream of photos, jokes, and inside jokes from over fifty family members. I scrolled through the posts, seeing familiar faces, some I hadn't seen in years, faces I had thought I would never see again when I fell into the water. The sight of them, all alive and well most with photos I could vaguely remember them having at that point in time, brought a fresh wave of emotions. I took a deep breath, and with a steady hand, I typed a short post. "Oi família! I'm doing better and will be going home soon. Don't worry." I pressed send and watched as the notifications started to pour in, a flood of love and concern from a family that was both mine and not.
Days passed in slow motion, friends and family sent messages on Pokebook, some texted or even called. None of them really knew what had really happened; they thought it was just an accident in the bathroom. My maid, who was also my babysitter when I was younger, and had practically raised me—an almost elderly woman that I found out was called Joana, and was Brazilian just like me—visited some days and told me she was taking good care of Maya, my Eevee, that I was eager to meet. I had always wanted an Eevee before.
On my spare time, I watched the TV that was in my room, or scrolled though news and social media online. I picked up a lot on Pokémon and the current affairs of the world. I found out that almost everybody in my dimension was also in this one. Even big figures like Barack Obama, or the girls from Destiny's Child (that here were called Destiny BOND, seriously, a Pokémon move?) and were still a group, not solo artists. What type of butterfly effect could have made that possible? A simple change in name? No freaking way. This was all too wild to digest.
I continued my digital deep-dive, searching for more clues in this crazy ripoff of a world. I found out that my old musical idols were still here, but with a Pokémon twist. Taylor Swift was still a global superstar, but some of songs were about trainers and their Pokémon, and her album "RED" had been released a month ahead of my time (sue me, I had a small obsession). Her song "I knew you were trouble was about one of her Pokémon, na Exploud. This world was really crazy. She used her team in her shows, as did most other artists. "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen was a hit, but the lyrics were about a trainer calling another one to battle. Even Katy Perry's song "Part of Me" was a hit, but it was about a trainer and their Pokémon becoming one with mega evolution. The world was a strange, warped mirror of my own, but it was kind of nice to hear these songs again almost for the first time. Sometimes laughing myself silly over the changes.
Days passed in slow motion. The sterile routine of the hospital became my new reality. I had visitors every morning, besides nurse Alina and her Chansey: a psychologist accompanied by her Alakazam. He explained that with my permission, the Pokémon could act as a bridge between us to help disentangle difficult thoughts and emotions for better communication. I always declined. Didn't want my past or transmigration out in the open. Probably a lot of people declined that offer, afraid of having secrets exposed.
My nurse's reflex and natural curiosity led me to observe and to see other Pokémon in the hospital. Psychics assisted surgeons with their powers, a level of precision no human could achieve. Magmar sterilized instruments with their intense heat. Audino and Blissey and some water Pokémon waddled around, their compassionate auras providing comfort and healing. The Pokémon really were the foundation of this world's infrastructure.
I even found out, going through my phone and talking to the doctors and nurses, that this world was really behind in drugs and medicine creations. They were giving me a kind of anti depressant that I had never seen before, and wasn't really doing anything. I asked to change the prescription to maybe fluoxetine or similar, but the doctor looked at me like I had grown a second head. With Pokémon that could use moves like Life Dew, or put people to sleep with moves like Sing, why would analgesics and anesthetics be super developed? Pokémon could just shift trough your trauma, maybe lock it in or erase it, so mind health wasn't very advanced besides therapy either.
It made perfect sense that those fields of study were so far behind. In my old world, a surgery would require a team of specialists, each with years of training, and a cabinet full of complex drugs to keep the patient safe. Here, a simple Pokémon could do the same job with a move. A Chansey's healing touch could act as an anesthetic, a pokemon song could put a patient to sleep, and a Kadabra's psychic powers could assist in diagnosis. It was a world of natural medicine, and the need for complex, man-made drugs had simply evaporated. Not to say they relied exclusively on Pokémon, but medicine was still a little behind of that in my dimension.
In my endless search for knowledge, I also ler antes na interesting tidbitt from one of the nurses: human medical staff walked around with special auricular protectors, which looked like sleek, modern earbuds. That's why the Chansey's Sing move had only worked on me that first day, not on the nurse. It also explained why no one else seemed to be affected by the constant low hum of Pokémon in the hospital, that did that to keep patients in a state of prolonged calm. I found out that really senior Nurse Pokémon or elite-tier battlers could direct their sound-based moves onto only their target, which made them incredibly skilled. Imagine being capable of directing sound waves? Crazy!
In the quiet moments between doctors' visits and meal trays, I allowed myself to grieve. I would sit in the bed, my eyes closed, and force my mind back to the memories of my old life. I would remember Erik's smile, the sound of my children's laughter, my old nurse team, my family. I would mourn them, a silent, secret ritual of grief that was mine and mine alone. The pain was a physical thing, a deep, aching void in my chest that no amount of meditation could fill. But I was never one to quit. My life, my family, my entire existence had been taken from me, but I was still here. I was still alive. And I would not let this new world, with its impossible Pokémon and its dark secrets, break me.
My grief, however, was not the only thing that occupied my mind. I spent the week in a constant state of low-level anxiety, a feeling of being watched. Sometimes I would hear things almost like whispers, in a very very distant voice, almost like there was some static in na old radio connection. The first time I heard that, I thought I was crazy. There were no diastinct words, only jumbled sounds. In the week I had spent in this body, I had come to terms that this brain was a schizofrenic champ. Like I said before, different souls, same brain, of course I would inherit all that comes with the body.
I even thought I heard some laughter sounds when a small kid that reminded me of my son, from the pediatric ward, invaded my ward, and then went through human nurses' legs only to be caught by the scruff of his neck by one stubby but strong Chansey's arm. Her look of disappointment made the kid cry, and it almost made me cry. This was definitely a new layer of madness in my new world.