The glow of Kai's Nintendo Switch cast harsh shadows across his darkened bedroom, the only light in a space that had long since stopped pretending to be anything other than what it was: a war room. Empty energy drink cans clustered on his desk in aluminium formations. His fingers danced over the controls with mechanical precision, eyes locked on the final round of an online VGC tournament.
His Hatterene had just twisted the battlefield's tempo with Trick Room, and now his Stakataka lumbered forward with glacial inevitability. Rock Blast. One, two, three, four hits. His opponent's Dragapult crumbled before it could move, its base 142 Speed stat rendered meaningless in reversed priority. The screen flashed "Victory!" in bold, triumphant letters.
Kai's ranking updated: #87 globally. Not bad for someone who'd been banned from three Discord servers and had his Smogon account flagged for "inflammatory rhetoric".
The chat box blinked with a message from his opponent, username "StardustDreamer": "Who even let you play this game? That was so toxic. Do you even have fun?"
Kai's lips curled into something that wasn't quite a smile. He'd written seventeen thousand words across three Smogon threads explaining exactly why "fun" was a logical fallacy constructed by casual players to excuse suboptimal decision-making. The Hedonistic Fallacy, he'd called it. The delusion that enjoyment and victory were somehow correlated when the data proved otherwise.
He typed a single word: "Cope".
His cursor moved to queue for another match. The dopamine spike from winning had already flatlined, it always did, seconds after the victory screen faded. But the next match, the next optimisation, and the next proof of his system's superiority were already loading. The treadmill never stopped.
His finger hovered over the ready button.
The screen went dark.
Not black. Dark. A darkness that pressed in from the edges of his vision like water filling a sinking ship, swallowing the glow of the Switch, the shadows on the walls, and even the pinprick LEDs of his router. Kai's hand moved to rub his eyes, but the movement felt wrong, like pushing through wet concrete.
Then nothing.
Consciousness returned in fragments.
First, it was pain. A dull, throbbing ache at the base of his skull that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. His mouth tasted like copper and dust.
Then a new sensation. Rough wood digging into his back. Grass under his fingers, real grass with stems and roots and dirt. Wind on his face, carrying scents he couldn't name, vegetation and earth and something animal. Sounds. Rustling. Chirping. The distant cry of something that wasn't human and wasn't any bird he'd ever heard.
Kai's eyes opened.
Sky. Impossibly blue, stretching endlessly above him with clouds so white they looked painted. No ceiling. No screen glow. No walls closing in.
He tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. The pounding in his skull intensified, and his vision swam. He was slumped against a fence post, with its old wood, weathered and splintering on the edge of what looked like a dirt road. Tall grass stretched in every direction, broken only by the path winding away toward buildings on the horizon.
His body felt wrong. Lighter. Smaller, maybe, or just... different. Like wearing clothes that didn't quite fit.
Memories crashed into him, disjointed and painful. Not his memories. Or rather, not only his memories. There was Kai Shirota, 19, a dropout and competitive Pokémon player, ranked #87 globally in VGC. But there was also... Someone else. A kid. An orphan. Names and faces that felt like watching a movie he'd forgotten he'd seen. An orphanage. Running away. Sleeping in ditches. Being invisible, being nothing, being—
Forgotten.
The word crystallised with horrible clarity. This body, this new identity bleeding into his consciousness, belonged to someone the system had overlooked. No professor's invitation. No starter Pokémon. No League registration, no Pokédex number, no place in the grand adventure every other kid in this world received like a birthright.
Just a runaway nobody cared enough about to remember.
Kai's hands moved on autopilot, patting his pockets with the frantic energy of someone who'd just been pickpocketed. His old life screamed for a phone, a wallet, keys, his Switch, something. His fingers found:
Left pocket: lint.
Right pocket: a crumpled food wrapper that smelt faintly of stale bread.
Back pocket: empty.
Jacket pocket: a sharp piece of scrap metal, maybe from a broken fence, with edges rough enough to cut.
That was it. His entire inventory. No Poké Balls. No money. No ID, no map, no potions. The sheer, terrifying nothingness hit him harder than the headache.
He tried to stand, and his legs nearly buckled. How long had he been unconscious? The fragmentary memories suggested days, maybe weeks, of this body stumbling through routes, avoiding trainers, and scavenging for food. His stomach confirmed it with a hollow ache.
Route 1. He recognised it now, not from the fragmentary memories but from a thousand playthroughs. The distribution of grass patches, the angle of the path, the town in the distance—this was the starting area. The tutorial zone. The place where ten-year-olds received their first Pokémon and began their journeys with a smile and a wave.
He was 19. He had nothing. And he was alone.
A rustling sound snapped his attention to the grass three feet away. Something small and brown moved through the stems, disturbing the vegetation in a way that made Kai's newly integrated survival instincts scream danger.
A Rattata emerged onto the path.
It was smaller than he'd imagined—maybe eight inches long, not counting the tail—but its teeth were very white and very sharp. Large front incisors designed for gnawing. Small, beady eyes that locked onto him with the flat effect of a predator evaluating prey.
Kai's mind, despite everything, catalogued the information automatically: Rattata. Normal-type. Learns Tackle at level 1, Tail Whip at 3, and Quick Attack at 6. Common early-game encounter. Level 2, maybe 3, based on size.
Completely harmless in the games.
The Rattata's nose twitched. Its whiskers quivered. Then it snarled, a visceral sound that raised the hair on Kai's neck, and charged.
Kai scrambled backward, his back slamming against the fence post. The Rattata closed the distance in a heartbeat, jaws open, and Kai's hand shot up instinctively. Teeth sank into his forearm.
The pain was immediate and white-hot, nothing like getting hit in a game. This was real teeth breaking real skin, tearing real flesh. Kai shouted, a wordless, animal sound, and swung his arm. The Rattata held on for a second that felt like an eternity before releasing and dropping to the ground.
Blood welled from the bite marks, four punctures in a neat semicircle. The Rattata landed on its feet, still snarling, preparing for another lunge.
Kai's other hand found the scrap metal in his pocket. He didn't think. He swung.
The metal caught the Rattata mid-jump, a glancing blow that sent it tumbling into the grass. It squeaked—actually squeaked, a sound so incongruous with its aggression that Kai's brain stuttered and then it was gone, disappearing into the tall grass like it had never been there.
Kai stood frozen, blood dripping from his arm, scrap metal clutched in his shaking hand. His heart hammered against his ribs. The bite burnt.
In the games, wild Pokémon were obstacles. Annoyances. Things you ran from or caught or grounded for experience. They were code, pixels, and numbers in a database.
This Rattata had tried to kill him. Or at least hurt him badly enough that he'd stop being a threat. And it had been level 2. The weakest possible encounter in the weakest possible zone.
Kai looked down at his arm. The bleeding was already slowing, but the wounds were deep enough to scar. He had no potions. No bandages. No money to buy medical supplies even if he reached town.
His meta-knowledge was supposed to be an advantage. He knew every Pokémon's moveset, every type matchup, and every optimal strategy. But standing here, bleeding and alone on Route 1, all that knowledge did was tell him exactly how screwed he was.
He couldn't battle. He had no Pokémon to defend himself. Every wild encounter was a threat he had to avoid or endure. And Route 1 stretched between him and the town like a minefield.
Kai wrapped his hand around the bite wound, applying pressure. The pain helped him think. Okay. Analyse the situation.
Wild Pokémon operated on aggression patterns. In the games, it was encounter rates and random battles. In the anime, they had territories and behaviours. This world, whatever amalgamation it was, seemed closer to the anime. The Rattata had attacked because he was in its space, or because he looked vulnerable, or because that's what Rattata did.
He needed to move through Route 1 without triggering encounters. Stealth, not combat.
And he knew how Pokémon AI worked.
Kai started walking, keeping to the edge of the path where the grass was thinner. His eyes scanned constantly, watching for movement patterns. A rustle to his left, he froze. A small, green shape moved through the grass. Caterpie. Bug-type. Defensive, not aggressive unless provoked. He waited until it passed, then continued.
Ahead, a Pidgey perched on a fence post. Normal/Flying. Territorial but with short aggro ranges. He knew from a hundred playthroughs that Pidgey would only attack if you got within about ten feet. He gave it a wide berth, crossing to the opposite side of the path.
The Pidgey watched him but didn't move.
It was working. His knowledge, useless for winning battles, was keeping him alive. Barely.
Every step was calculated. Every movement deliberate. He knew Spearow were more aggressive than Pidgey. He knew Weedle's poison was mild at low levels but still painful. He knew Oddish were nocturnal and wouldn't be active during the day. He moved through Route 1 like a ghost, using AI knowledge that shouldn't exist in the real world but somehow did.
It was tense. Humiliating. Every time he had to crouch in the grass to avoid a wild Pokémon's line of sight, every time he took the long way around an encounter, he felt the weight of how far he'd fallen.
This was the world he'd dreamed of. The world he'd spent thousands of hours mastering through screens and spreadsheets. And he was skulking through it like vermin, praying a level 3 Pidgey didn't notice him.
The town grew closer. Buildings took shape—small, weathered structures that looked more like a rest stop than an actual settlement. Not Viridian City. Not even Pallet Town. Just a nameless pit stop for trainers passing through, the kind of place that existed on the margins of the world's grand adventure.
Appropriate.
Kai stumbled into town as the sun began to set, his arm throbbing, his legs shaking from exhaustion and an adrenaline crash. The main street—really just a widened dirt path—was busy despite the late hour. Kids his age, maybe younger, clustered around the Pokémon Center's entrance. Their voices carried on the evening air, bright and excited.
"—evolved my Charmander today! Only took three days!"
"Did you see that Pidgeotto near Route 22? I'm going to catch it tomorrow!"
"My Bulbasaur learnt Razor Leaf! Professor Oak said I'm ahead of schedule!"
Kai watched from the shadows between buildings. The kids all had Poké Balls on their belts—multiple balls, in some cases, marking successful captures. They wore clean clothes and carried backpacks full of supplies. One girl was showing off a new Pokédex, its red casing gleaming under the streetlights.
They were trainers. Real trainers, registered with the League, recognised by the system, part of the world's grand design. They'd been chosen. They mattered.
Kai looked down at his own clothes—a ragged jacket, jeans with holes in the knees, and dried blood on his sleeve. His pockets contained lint and garbage. He had no Pokémon. No balls to catch Pokémon. No money to buy balls. There's no way to register with the League even if he could catch something.
The disparity was crushing in a way no game over screen had ever been.
In his old life, he'd been ranked #847 globally. He'd made other players rage quit. He'd written essays that changed how people approached competitive battling. He'd been somebody, even if that somebody was widely hated.
Here, he was nothing. Less than nothing. He was an observer in the world he'd dreamed of, watching through glass at a party he'd never been invited to.
A boy—maybe twelve, with a Squirtle perched on his shoulder—walked past Kai's hiding spot, laughing at something his friend said. The Squirtle looked healthy and well-fed, its shell polished. A partner. A friend.
Kai's hand drifted to his empty belt, to the space where Poké Balls should have been.
He had all the knowledge. Every type matchup, every move's base power, every strategy that had ever won a tournament. He could build teams in his head that would sweep entire gyms. He knew the meta better than anyone in this world possibly could.
And it meant nothing. Nothing at all.
Because without a Poké Ball, he couldn't even begin.
The boy with the Squirtle disappeared into the Pokémon Center, its automatic doors sliding shut behind him. Through the window, Kai could see the warm interior, Nurse Joy at the counter, and trainers clustered around tables comparing their teams.
Kai turned away and walked deeper into the town's back alleys, where the streetlights didn't reach and the forgotten people went when they had nowhere else to go. His arm throbbed. His stomach was empty. His head still pounded from whatever cosmic joke had dropped him into this world.
Somewhere in this town, there had to be Poké Balls. A store, a careless trainer, a discarded ball in a trash heap. He just had to find it. And then, only then, could he start to prove what he already knew: that this world's bright-eyed, friendship-obsessed trainers had no idea what real competition looked like.
But tonight, huddled in an alley behind a closed shop, his arm wrapped in a strip torn from his shirt, Kai Shirota had nothing but his meta-knowledge and his hatred.
It would have to be enough.
Tomorrow, he'd figure out how to get that first Poké Ball.
Tonight, he was just another forgotten kid on the wrong side of a world that didn't want him.
The town's lights dimmed one by one as trainers went to sleep, their Pokémon safe in their balls, their futures bright and certain.
Kai stared at the darkening sky and felt nothing at all.