Kenji did not sleep well.
This was, perhaps, understandable given the circumstances. When you have two Pokeballs on your nightstand—one containing a reality-warping dragon the size of a small building, and the other containing an actual phoenix god that could resurrect the dead—sleep becomes somewhat optional.
He spent most of the night staring at the ceiling, listening to his "mother" hum as she cleaned up after dinner, hearing his "father" come home late from "work" and exchange mundane pleasantries about the weather. Normal sounds. Normal life. Completely divorced from the absolute insanity that had become Kenji's existence.
At some point around 3 AM, he must have drifted off, because the next thing he knew, sunlight was streaming through his window and his mother was calling him down for breakfast.
"Kenji! Your friends are here!"
Friends?
What friends?
Kenji dragged himself out of bed, changed into clothes that he vaguely recognized as belonging to his new body, and stumbled downstairs with the enthusiasm of a man walking to his own execution.
Red and Blue were sitting at his kitchen table.
Red was quietly eating a rice ball while his Pikachu nibbled on what looked like a tiny Pokemon-sized portion of the same meal. Blue was talking animatedly to Kenji's mother about something—probably boasting about his new Squirtle—while gesturing with his chopsticks in ways that seemed vaguely dangerous.
"Ah, there he is!" Kenji's mother beamed at him. "Your friends came by to see you! They said you had quite an adventure yesterday!"
"It wasn't an adventure," Kenji muttered, sliding into an empty chair. "It was a nightmare."
"He's always so modest," Blue said, grinning at the mother with the kind of charm that probably worked on every adult he'd ever met. "You should have seen it, ma'am! Two legendary Pokemon, just—whoosh—right out of the sky! And they chose YOUR son! Can you believe it?"
Kenji's mother laughed. "Oh, Kenji's always been special. I'm not surprised at all!"
Kenji wanted to point out that she had known "Kenji" for approximately one week and that her memories of raising him were probably implanted by whatever cosmic force had shoved his consciousness into this body, but that seemed like a conversation that would raise more questions than it answered.
"Why are you here?" he asked Red and Blue instead.
"We're heading out today," Red said quietly, between bites of rice ball. "Thought you might want to come."
"I told you yesterday. I'm not going on a journey."
"And we thought you might change your mind after sleeping on it!" Blue leaned back in his chair with the confidence of someone who had never been told 'no' in his entire life. "Come on, man. You've got the two most powerful Pokemon any of us have ever seen. You can't just sit around in Pallet Town forever!"
"Watch me."
"That's no way to talk to your friends, Kenji." His mother set a plate of breakfast in front of him—rice, miso soup, grilled fish, the works. "You should go with them! It'll be good for you to get out of the house!"
Kenji stared at his mother.
His mother stared back with the serene, unshakeable certainty of a parent who had already decided what was best for her child.
He had a sudden, horrifying realization: this world's narrative was conspiring against him. The NPCs, the protagonists, probably reality itself—they all wanted him to go on this journey. Resistance was not just futile; it was actively being undermined by the universe.
"Fine," he said, because what else could he say? "Fine. I'll go. But only for a little while. Just to... see the next town. Then I'm coming back."
"That's the spirit!" Blue pumped his fist in the air. "Route 1, here we come!"
Red nodded, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
Kenji ate his breakfast in defeated silence.
They left Pallet Town around mid-morning.
The sun was bright, the sky was clear, and the weather was perfect for traveling. Birds—regular birds? Pokemon birds? Kenji still couldn't tell the difference—sang in the trees. A gentle breeze carried the scent of flowers and fresh grass. It was, objectively, a beautiful day.
Kenji hated every second of it.
"So," Blue said, walking backward so he could face both Red and Kenji while still moving forward, "the plan is simple. We hit Route 1, catch some Pokemon, get some experience, make it to Viridian City by nightfall. Easy peasy."
"What Pokemon are on Route 1?" Red asked.
"Pidgey and Rattata, mostly. Maybe some Spearow if we're unlucky. Nothing too tough—perfect for training up our starters!" Blue patted the Pokeball at his belt proudly. His Squirtle. The one he had received yesterday from Professor Oak. A normal, reasonable starter Pokemon for a normal, reasonable journey.
Kenji's hand drifted unconsciously to his own Pokeballs. The weight of them was somehow both reassuring and terrifying.
"What about you, Kenji?" Blue continued. "You gonna use your Charizard? Your Ho-Oh? Or are you gonna catch something smaller to train with?"
"I'm not using either of them," Kenji said firmly. "They're... too much. I'll just watch. Maybe catch a Pidgey or something if I feel like it."
"Boring!" Blue complained. "Come on, at least show us what they can do! I bet that Charizard of yours could take on the Elite Four!"
"That's exactly why I'm not using it."
Red gave Kenji a look that was hard to interpret. Understanding? Sympathy? Whatever it was, it made Kenji feel slightly less insane for his decision.
They walked in relative silence for a while after that. Route 1 stretched out before them—a dirt path cutting through rolling hills of tall grass, dotted with the occasional tree or boulder. Other trainers were visible in the distance, kids around their age wandering through the grass looking for Pokemon to catch.
Normal. Peaceful. Ordinary.
Kenji was almost starting to relax when the sky tore open.
It happened without warning.
One moment, the sky was blue and clear and normal. The next moment, reality itself seemed to glitch—the same way it had in the waiting room after his death, the same way it had in Pallet Town yesterday. Colors inverted. Sound distorted. The air pressure changed so suddenly that Kenji's ears popped.
And then the hole appeared.
It wasn't like the golden cracks that the Charizard and Ho-Oh had emerged from. This was different. Darker. The hole was a void in the sky—pure black, absolute nothing, an absence of everything that should have been there. It pulsed with an energy that felt wrong on a fundamental level, like existence itself was being violated.
"What the hell is THAT?!" Blue stumbled backward, his hand flying to his Pokeball.
Red was already in a defensive stance, Pikachu sparking on his shoulder, ready for battle.
Kenji just stared.
He knew what this was.
Ultra Wormhole.
A dimensional rift from Pokemon Sun and Moon, connecting the normal world to Ultra Space—a dimension filled with creatures that didn't belong in reality. Ultra Beasts. Beings of incomprehensible power that operated on rules completely different from normal Pokemon.
This should not be here. This was the wrong region. The wrong generation. The wrong TIMELINE.
But here it was anyway.
And something was coming through.
The first creature that emerged was a nightmare given form.
It was massive—easily fifteen feet tall—and shaped like nothing that belonged in a sane universe. A gaping maw that seemed to take up most of its body. Arms that were too long, too jointed, bending in ways that made Kenji's brain hurt to look at. Its skin—if you could call it skin—was black and yellow, patterned with stars like a corrupted night sky.
Guzzlord.
The Junkivore Pokemon. An Ultra Beast with an appetite that could devour entire buildings. According to the Pokedex—according to the LORE—this creature never stopped eating. It consumed everything in its path. It had destroyed entire dimensions.
And it was looking directly at Kenji.
"RUN!" Blue screamed, already backing away. "THAT'S—I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS BUT WE NEED TO RUN!"
Red hadn't moved. His Pikachu was sparking harder now, electricity arcing between its cheeks, but even Red seemed to understand that this was beyond them.
The Guzzlord opened its massive mouth.
A sound emerged—not a roar, not a scream, but something deeper, something that resonated in Kenji's bones and made his teeth ache.
And then it started moving toward them.
Each step shook the ground. Each step brought it closer. The grass beneath its feet didn't just flatten—it disappeared, consumed, eaten, absorbed into the creature's endless hunger.
"Kenji!" Red's voice was sharp, urgent, stripped of its usual calm. "Use your Pokemon!"
"I—"
"USE THEM!"
Kenji's hand moved on its own. His fingers closed around a Pokeball—the Charizard's, he realized, as he felt the warmth radiating from it.
He threw.
The alpha shiny Charizard materialized in a burst of light that put the sun to shame.
It was even more impressive in broad daylight. The black scales gleamed like polished obsidian. The blue flames that traced its body burned brighter than ever. Those red eyes, ancient and knowing, locked onto the Guzzlord with immediate recognition.
For a moment, nothing happened.
The Charizard and the Guzzlord stared at each other across the distance—two creatures that should not exist in the same reality, sizing each other up like titans preparing for war.
Then the Charizard moved.
Kenji didn't see it happen. Not really. One moment, the Charizard was in front of him. The next moment, it was in front of the Guzzlord. The space between had simply ceased to exist, as if the dragon had decided that distance was optional and reality had agreed.
The Charizard's claw came down.
The Guzzlord SCREAMED.
It was a sound that Kenji would never forget. A sound of pain, yes, but also of incomprehension—as if the Ultra Beast couldn't understand how anything could hurt it. As if it had never experienced true damage before.
The claw strike sent the Guzzlord flying backward—all fifteen feet and however many tons of it—tumbling across Route 1 like a ragdoll thrown by an angry child.
"Holy—" Blue's voice cracked. "Did you SEE that?!"
Red said nothing. He just stared.
The Guzzlord struggled to its feet. It was hurt—clearly hurt—ichor that might have been blood leaking from the gashes in its side. But it wasn't dead. It wasn't even close to dead.
Its eyes fixed on the Charizard with something that looked almost like fear.
Then it opened its mouth again.
A beam of dark energy erupted from its maw—Dark Pulse, maybe, or some Ultra Beast equivalent—a concentrated blast of destruction aimed directly at the Charizard.
The Charizard didn't dodge.
It didn't need to.
Instead, it opened its own mouth, and fire emerged.
But this wasn't normal fire. This wasn't even the blue fire that traced the dragon's body. This was something else entirely—white, so white it hurt to look at, so hot that the air itself seemed to burn away from it. A beam of pure thermal destruction that met the Dark Pulse head-on.
The two attacks collided in mid-air.
For a split second, they seemed evenly matched.
Then the white fire punched through the dark energy like it wasn't even there, continuing on its path directly into the Guzzlord's face.
The Ultra Beast didn't even have time to scream.
When the light faded, when Kenji could finally see again, the Guzzlord was... gone. Not dead—he somehow knew it wasn't dead—but gone. Retreated back through the Ultra Wormhole it had emerged from, driven off by a single attack from a creature that shouldn't exist.
The Charizard landed gently in front of Kenji, folding its wings against its body.
It made a sound—a low, satisfied rumble—like a cat that had just caught a particularly impressive mouse.
Kenji stared at his Pokemon.
His Pokemon stared back.
"That," Blue said faintly, "was the most terrifying thing I have ever seen in my entire life."
"Agreed," Red said, which was probably the longest sentence Kenji had heard from him.
"What... what even WAS that attack?" Blue continued, his voice still shaky. "That wasn't Flamethrower. That wasn't Fire Blast. That was... I don't even know what that was!"
Kenji thought about it.
The Pokedex entry for Charizard—the original Charizard, the normal one—mentioned that its fire could reach temperatures hot enough to melt stone. But this wasn't a normal Charizard. This was an alpha. This was shiny. This was something that had torn through reality to find him.
If the normal Pokedex entries were accurate...
What would the entries say about THIS?
A horrible thought occurred to him.
"The Pokedex," he said slowly. "The entries in the Pokedex... they're accurate, aren't they?"
"Huh?" Blue looked confused. "Yeah, of course they're accurate. Why wouldn't they be?"
"All of them? Even the ones that say things like... Magcargo is hotter than the sun? Or Alakazam has an IQ of 5000? Or—" Kenji's voice cracked, "—Gardevoir can create black holes?"
"Well, yeah." Blue shrugged. "That's what makes Pokemon so amazing! They can do incredible things!"
Kenji felt the blood drain from his face.
The Pokedex entries were accurate.
All of them.
Every single one.
He looked at his Charizard—his alpha shiny Charizard that had just one-shot an Ultra Beast with a fire attack so hot it made regular Charizard flames look like candle light.
He looked at the Pokeball containing Ho-Oh—the legendary phoenix that, according to the Pokedex, could resurrect the dead and whose feathers granted eternal happiness.
He was not carrying Pokemon.
He was carrying weapons of mass destruction.
The second Ultra Wormhole opened before anyone had a chance to recover.
This one was different from the first—smaller, more precise, like a surgical cut in reality rather than a gaping wound. It appeared directly above them, hovering in the air like a pupil in an invisible eye.
And from it fell something small.
Kenji almost missed it. After the Guzzlord, he was expecting another massive creature, another titan of destruction. But this was... tiny. Maybe two feet tall. A origami-like figure with blades for arms, white and orange, floating down through the air with the gentle grace of a falling leaf.
Kartana.
The Drawn Sword Pokemon. An Ultra Beast that looked delicate, almost fragile, but was anything but. According to the Pokedex, Kartana's body was so sharp that it could slice through a steel tower with a single stroke. Its blades never dulled. It cut through everything—and it did so effortlessly.
The tiny creature landed softly on the ground between Kenji and his Charizard.
It looked up at him.
Two small eyes, barely visible on its paper-thin face, met Kenji's gaze.
And then—
It pulled a Pokeball from somewhere (where had it been keeping a Pokeball? It was made of PAPER) and placed it at Kenji's feet.
"No," Kenji said.
Kartana tilted its head.
"No no no no no. Absolutely not. I already have two. TWO. Do you understand? I have a Charizard that can one-shot Ultra Beasts and a Ho-Oh that can raise the dead. I don't need another one. I don't WANT another one."
Kartana tilted its head the other way.
"Go back through your wormhole. Go back to Ultra Space. Find someone else. ANYONE else."
Kartana looked at the Pokeball.
Kartana looked at Kenji.
Kartana made a sound that might have been a sigh—a soft rustle of paper, like pages turning in a book.
Then it picked up the Pokeball, floated over to Kenji, and pressed it into his hand.
Its touch was cold. Sharp. He could feel the edges of its body even through the Pokeball, like holding a letter opener made of ice.
The Kartana looked at him expectantly.
Behind him, Blue was making sounds that weren't quite words—a series of strangled noises that communicated shock, confusion, and the complete breakdown of everything he thought he understood about Pokemon training.
Red, for his part, had sat down on the ground. His Pikachu was patting his head comfortingly.
"This isn't fair," Kenji whispered.
Kartana's paper-thin body rustled in what might have been agreement.
He threw the Pokeball.
The Kartana dissolved into red light, willingly entering its new home, and the ball didn't even wobble before clicking shut.
Three Pokemon.
Kenji now had three Pokemon.
A dragon that could melt reality. A phoenix that could defeat death. And a paper samurai that could cut through anything.
He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. He wanted to wake up from this nightmare and find himself back in his old life, being crushed by a vending machine, which suddenly seemed like a merciful way to die.
Instead, he just stood there, holding his three Pokeballs, while the universe apparently decided that this was not enough and opened ANOTHER hole in the sky.
"Oh come ON!" Blue finally found his voice. "ANOTHER ONE?!"
This wormhole was golden again—similar to the ones that had produced the Charizard and Ho-Oh, rather than the dark Ultra Space portals. It crackled with energy, sparks of light falling from its edges like embers from a fire.
Kenji braced himself.
What emerged was... not what he expected.
It was a bird. A normal-sized bird, relatively speaking. Blue and white plumage. Long, elegant tail feathers. A crest like frozen crystals.
Articuno.
The Legendary Bird of Ice. One of the original trio of Kanto legendaries.
Kenji's brain, which had been operating in a state of constant crisis for the past two days, simply gave up.
"Of course," he heard himself say, his voice coming from very far away. "Of course it's Articuno. Why wouldn't it be Articuno. Makes perfect sense. Everything makes perfect sense."
The Articuno circled once, twice, three times, then landed gracefully in front of Kenji.
It was beautiful. Objectively, impossibly beautiful. Its feathers seemed to be made of actual ice, but ice that moved and flowed like fabric. Cold radiated from its body, turning the grass beneath its feet white with frost. Its eyes were deep blue, like frozen oceans, and they looked at Kenji with the same expression that all his other Pokemon had worn.
Expectation.
Recognition.
Inevitability.
A Pokeball materialized in front of Kenji, dropped from Articuno's beak, frost crystallizing on its surface.
"I'm not even surprised anymore," Kenji said flatly.
He picked up the Pokeball.
He threw it.
Articuno vanished into light.
Click.
Four Pokemon.
Blue had stopped trying to speak. He was just sitting on the ground next to Red now, staring blankly at the sky.
Red patted Blue's shoulder sympathetically.
Pikachu patted Red's shoulder sympathetically.
Kenji stood alone, surrounded by Pokeballs containing gods, and wondered if the universe would ever give him a break.
(It would not.)
They made it to Viridian City by late afternoon.
The walk had been... tense. Blue kept shooting glances at Kenji like he expected him to spontaneously summon another legendary Pokemon at any moment. Red remained his usual quiet self, but there was a wariness in his posture that hadn't been there before. Even Pikachu seemed to be watching Kenji with unusual attention.
Kenji couldn't blame them.
He was watching himself with unusual attention too.
Viridian City was larger than Pallet Town—actual buildings, actual streets, an actual Pokemon Center that looked like it could accommodate more than three people at a time. Trainers milled about everywhere, showing off their Pokemon, comparing badges, doing all the normal things that normal trainers did.
Kenji felt like an alien among them.
"Let's hit the Pokemon Center first," Blue suggested, his voice carefully casual. "Get our Pokemon checked out, maybe grab some lunch."
"Good idea," Red agreed.
Kenji just nodded.
The Pokemon Center was bright and welcoming, staffed by a Nurse Joy who looked exactly like every other Nurse Joy that had ever existed in any Pokemon media. She greeted them with a cheerful smile and offered to heal their Pokemon.
"Oh my!" she exclaimed when Kenji placed his Pokeballs on the counter. "That's quite a collection you have there! Four Pokemon already, and you just started your journey?"
"They sort of... came to me," Kenji said weakly.
"How wonderful! Let me just scan them and—" Nurse Joy plugged the Pokeballs into a machine. "—oh. OH."
Her smile flickered.
"Is something wrong?" Red asked.
"No, no, nothing wrong, just—" Nurse Joy stared at her screen with an expression that Kenji recognized. It was the expression of someone whose worldview had just been violently dismantled. "These readings are... unusual. Very unusual. I've never seen energy signatures quite like these before."
"Can you heal them?" Blue asked.
"They don't need healing. They're in perfect health. Perfect BEYOND perfect, actually. It's like they've never been damaged. Ever. By anything." Nurse Joy shook her head slowly. "Where... where did you get these Pokemon?"
"They fell out of the sky," Kenji said.
Nurse Joy looked at him.
Kenji looked back.
"I see," she said finally, in a tone that indicated she very much did not see but was choosing not to pursue the matter further. "Well. Your Pokemon are ready. Please come back anytime."
She handed the Pokeballs back with slightly trembling hands.
Kenji took them and fled to the Pokemon Center's cafeteria.
Lunch was a quiet affair.
They sat at a table in the corner, away from the other trainers, eating sandwiches that Kenji barely tasted. Blue kept starting to say something and then stopping himself. Red ate in silence, but his eyes kept drifting to Kenji's belt where the four Pokeballs sat.
Finally, Blue broke.
"Okay, I have to ask. How are you not freaking out?"
Kenji looked up from his sandwich. "What makes you think I'm not freaking out?"
"You look pretty calm to me!"
"I'm disassociating. There's a difference."
Blue blinked. "What's disassociating?"
"It's when your brain decides that reality is too much and just... stops processing it properly. I'm not calm. I'm in shock. I've been in shock since yesterday. Possibly since I died."
"Since you WHAT?"
Kenji realized what he'd said.
He considered his options. He could try to walk it back, claim it was a joke or a figure of speech. He could change the subject and hope they forgot about it. He could—
Ah, screw it. What did it matter?
"I died," he said flatly. "In my old life. I was a grown man. Twenty-six years old. Systems administrator. I got crushed by a vending machine, woke up in a weird waiting room that looked like my dentist's office, and then suddenly I was a ten-year-old kid in the Pokemon world. And ever since then, legendary Pokemon keep falling out of the sky and volunteering to be caught by me. So no, I'm not freaking out. I'm BEYOND freaking out. I've achieved a state of calm that only comes from complete and total emotional exhaustion."
Silence.
Blue stared at him.
Red stared at him.
Pikachu stared at him.
"A vending machine," Blue said slowly.
"Yes."
"You died because of a VENDING MACHINE?"
"It fell on me. The bolts were loose."
"That's... that's the lamest way to die I've ever heard."
"I'M AWARE."
Red held up a hand, cutting off whatever Blue was about to say next. "You're from another world?"
"Another world, another dimension, another reality—I don't know the exact metaphysics. All I know is I was an adult with a boring job and no future, I died, and now I'm a kid with legendary Pokemon and what appears to be some kind of cosmic target on my back."
"That explains it," Red said quietly.
"Explains what?"
"Why they're coming to you. The Pokemon." Red's dark eyes met Kenji's. "You don't belong here. You're... anomalous. Different. Pokemon can sense that kind of thing. They're probably attracted to whatever energy brought you here."
Kenji considered this.
It was, perhaps, the first explanation he'd heard that made any kind of sense.
"So what you're saying," he said slowly, "is that I'm going to keep attracting legendary Pokemon for the rest of my life."
"Probably."
"And there's nothing I can do about it."
"Probably not."
Kenji put his head down on the table.
"I want to go home," he mumbled into the wood.
"You can't," Red said, not unkindly. "You're here now. This is your life. Might as well make the best of it."
"The best of it. The BEST of it. I have four Pokemon that could destroy cities. One of them can raise the dead. One of them can cut through anything. I'm pretty sure if I let the Charizard go all-out, it could burn through the planet's core. How am I supposed to make the BEST of that?"
"Could be worse," Blue offered.
"HOW?!"
"You could have... I don't know... attracted mean Pokemon? Evil Pokemon? At least yours seem to like you."
Kenji lifted his head to glare at Blue.
Blue shrugged defensively. "I'm just saying!"
Before Kenji could respond, the door to the Pokemon Center burst open.
A young boy—maybe eight or nine years old—came running in, tears streaming down his face, wailing at the top of his lungs.
"HELP! SOMEONE HELP! THERE'S A MONSTER IN THE FOREST! IT'S ATTACKING PEOPLE!"
Nurse Joy immediately rushed over. "Calm down, sweetheart. What kind of monster? What happened?"
"I don't know! It's HUGE! It came out of a weird hole in the sky and it's destroying everything! My sister is still out there! PLEASE!"
A weird hole in the sky.
Kenji felt his stomach drop.
He looked at Red.
Red looked back.
Blue was already standing up, grabbing his Pokeballs. "Come on! We have to help!"
"Blue, wait—" Kenji started.
But Blue was already running out the door, Red close behind, Pikachu sparking with determination on his shoulder.
Kenji sat at the table for a moment, alone, surrounded by the panicking civilians who were just starting to realize something terrible was happening.
He could stay here. He could let Red and Blue handle it. They were the protagonists. They were supposed to handle things. That was their job.
But the boy had said people were in danger.
The boy had said there was a hole in the sky.
Which meant another Ultra Beast. Or another legendary. Or something else entirely—something drawn to this world because Kenji was in it.
His fault.
This was his fault.
"Damn it," Kenji muttered, and ran after his friends.
The "forest" was actually more of a large wooded area between Viridian City and Route 2. By the time Kenji caught up with Red and Blue, they were standing at the treeline, staring at something between the trunks.
"What is it?" Kenji asked, panting.
Blue pointed wordlessly.
Kenji looked.
It was another Guzzlord.
No—wait. It was the SAME Guzzlord. He recognized the scars on its side from where his Charizard had hit it earlier. It had come back. It had followed them. And now it was rampaging through the forest, its massive maw consuming trees, rocks, anything in its path.
And caught in its path—
A group of trainers. Kids. Younger than them, some of them. They were huddled together in a small clearing, their Pokemon out and forming a defensive perimeter, but none of them looked like they could do anything against a creature like this.
"We have to help them!" Blue was already reaching for his Squirtle's Pokeball.
"Blue, no!" Red grabbed his arm. "That thing shrugged off your Squirtle's best attacks. We need—"
They both looked at Kenji.
Kenji looked at the Guzzlord.
The Guzzlord looked at Kenji.
Their eyes met.
And in that moment, Kenji saw something in the Ultra Beast's gaze that he hadn't seen before. Not hunger. Not rage. Fear. The Guzzlord was afraid. It was here—chasing him, following him—not because it wanted to fight, but because it wanted...
"It wants me to catch it," Kenji said, his voice hollow.
"WHAT?!" Blue's head whipped around. "That thing tried to EAT US!"
"It didn't, though. It was coming toward us. Toward me. Just like all the others." Kenji took a step forward. "It's... it's lost. It's scared. It came through the wormhole and now it doesn't know how to get home. And it saw my Pokemon—saw what they were—and thought... thought maybe..."
He didn't finish the sentence.
He didn't need to.
He walked toward the Guzzlord.
"Kenji!" Red called out. "What are you doing?!"
"Something stupid," Kenji called back. "Don't follow me."
He walked into the forest, toward the monster, toward another creature that shouldn't exist, toward another companion he didn't want but was apparently destined to have.
The Guzzlord stopped its rampage.
It turned to face him fully, its massive body blocking out what little light filtered through the trees.
They stood there, boy and beast, human and Ultra Beast, reality and anomaly.
"You want to come with me?" Kenji asked.
The Guzzlord made a sound. Low. Rumbling. Almost... sad.
"You can't get home, can you? The wormhole closed and now you're stuck here. In a world that doesn't make sense. In a reality that wasn't made for you."
The Guzzlord's massive head lowered.
"Yeah," Kenji said softly. "I know how that feels."
He reached into his pocket. He didn't have any empty Pokeballs—he'd never bought any—but somehow, impossibly, there was one there anyway. Red and white. Standard size. Warm in his palm.
The universe was still conspiring against him.
But maybe... maybe that wasn't entirely a bad thing.
"Alright," Kenji said, and threw the ball.
The Guzzlord dissolved into light.
The ball fell to the ground.
Wobble.
Wobble.
Wobble.
Click.
Five Pokemon.
Kenji now had five Pokemon.
An alpha shiny Charizard. Ho-Oh. Kartana. Articuno. And now Guzzlord.
He picked up the Pokeball—it was noticeably heavier than the others, as if the creature inside was exerting some kind of gravitational pull—and walked back to where Red and Blue were waiting.
They stared at him.
He stared back.
"So," Blue said finally, "you just... caught the monster that was terrorizing the forest."
"Yes."
"The monster that took a full-power attack from your Charizard and survived."
"Yes."
"The monster that came from another dimension."
"Yes."
Blue opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"I give up," he said. "I officially give up trying to understand you. You're some kind of... Pokemon magnet. A legendary Pokemon magnet. Every time I think things can't get weirder, they get weirder."
"Welcome to my life," Kenji said tiredly.
Red walked over and put a hand on Kenji's shoulder. "You saved those trainers. That was brave."
"It was stupid."
"Sometimes brave and stupid are the same thing." Red smiled that small, rare smile of his. "You did good."
Kenji didn't feel like he'd done good. He felt like he'd just added another apocalypse-class creature to his growing collection of apocalypse-class creatures. But he was too tired to argue.
"Let's go back to the Pokemon Center," he said. "I need to lie down."
They made it about halfway back before the next hole opened.
This time, Kenji just sighed.
"What now?" he asked the universe.
The universe answered by dropping a Zapdos directly in front of him.
The Legendary Bird of Thunder. The second member of the Kanto bird trio. Yellow plumage crackling with electricity. A wingspan that created static just by existing.
It had a Pokeball in its talons.
"Of course you do," Kenji said.
He caught the Zapdos.
Then, before they could take another step, a Moltres appeared—emerging from a column of flame that seemed to spring up from the ground itself, the third bird, the Legendary Bird of Fire, completing the trio.
It had a Pokeball too.
"Of course," Kenji repeated, his voice now completely flat, devoid of all emotion.
He caught the Moltres.
Seven Pokemon.
Seven legendary or ultra-powerful Pokemon.
In less than forty-eight hours of being a "trainer."
Blue had given up reacting. He just walked beside Kenji in stunned silence, occasionally making small whimpering sounds.
Red seemed almost... amused? It was hard to tell with him, but there was definitely something in his expression that suggested he was finding this entertaining.
Pikachu had fallen asleep on Red's shoulder, apparently having decided that the constant reality-breaking events were no longer worth staying awake for.
They finally made it back to the Pokemon Center.
Nurse Joy took one look at Kenji's expanded collection of Pokeballs and simply nodded.
"Would you like a room for the night?" she asked, her voice carefully professional.
"Yes please," Kenji said.
She handed him a key.
He went upstairs.
He found his room.
He collapsed face-first onto the bed and screamed into the pillow for approximately three minutes.
Then he rolled over and stared at the ceiling.
Seven Pokemon.
Seven impossible Pokemon.
And he had a horrible feeling that this was only the beginning.
That night, Kenji had a dream.
He was standing in a vast, empty space—not the waiting room from before, but something else. Something larger. Something that felt like the space between dimensions, the void between realities.
A voice spoke.
It was not a human voice. It was not a Pokemon voice. It was something older. Something deeper. Something that existed before existence itself.
"THE ANOMALY HAS BEEN RECOGNIZED," the voice said. "THE BEACON HAS BEEN LIT. THEY WILL COME. THEY WILL ALL COME."
"Who?" Kenji asked the void. "Who will come?"
"ALL OF THEM."
"All of who?!"
"ALL."
And then Kenji saw them.
Stretching out into infinity. Every legendary Pokemon. Every mythical creature. Every Ultra Beast and paradox Pokemon and things that didn't even have names yet. Dialga and Palkia. Rayquaza and Giratina. Arceus and Eternatus. Creatures from every region, every generation, every corner of the Pokemon multiverse.
They were all looking at him.
They were all waiting.
They were all coming.
"Oh no," Kenji whispered.
"OH YES," the voice replied.
Kenji woke up screaming.
In various regions across the world, various villains continued to experience unexplained episodes of terror.
Giovanni cancelled all Team Rocket operations for the day, claiming he needed to "reassess strategic priorities." His underlings had never seen him look so pale.
Maxie and Archie, eternal rivals, found themselves agreeing on something for the first time in their lives: something terrible was coming, and they wanted no part of it.
Cyrus, who prided himself on being emotionally detached, broke down crying in the middle of a Team Galactic meeting and refused to explain why.
Ghetsis had a nightmare in which he was being chased by something he couldn't see, couldn't name, couldn't understand. He woke up and immediately began working on "contingency plans."
Lysandre looked at his ultimate weapon—the device that could destroy the world—and felt, for the first time, that it might not be enough.
Across every region, every criminal organization, every villain who had ever dreamed of using legendary Pokemon for their own purposes felt the same thing:
A new power had emerged.
And it wasn't on their side.
Meanwhile, in the Indigo Plateau, Lance of the Elite Four looked up from his morning coffee with a frown.
"Something wrong?" his colleague Bruno asked.
"I don't know. I just felt..." Lance shook his head. "Never mind. Probably nothing."
It was definitely not nothing.
In Hoenn, Steven Stone put down his phone mid-conversation, struck by a sudden urge to take a very long vacation somewhere far, far away.
In Sinnoh, Cynthia paused in her research, her Garchomp whining at her feet like a frightened puppy.
In Unova, Alder started packing a bag without entirely understanding why.
In Kalos, Diantha cancelled all her matches for the foreseeable future, citing "personal reasons."
In Galar, Leon suddenly developed an intense interest in exploring other regions—specifically, regions that were as far as possible from Kanto.
The Champions of the world, the strongest trainers in existence, all felt the same instinct at the same moment:
Stay away.
Whatever was happening in Kanto, whatever was drawing all these legendary Pokemon to one place, they wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.
Some instincts were worth listening to.
Kenji woke up the next morning to find a Celebi sleeping on his pillow.
He stared at it for a long moment.
It was small. Green. Almost cute, if you ignored the fact that it was a literal time-traveling fairy that could manipulate the flow of causality.
There was a Pokeball clutched in its tiny hands.
"I'm not even going to ask how you got in here," Kenji said.
Celebi opened one eye, looked at him, smiled, and pressed the Pokeball into his palm.
Then it dissolved into green light and reappeared inside the ball.
Eight Pokemon.
Kenji looked at the Pokeball.
He looked at the ceiling.
"Why me?" he asked no one in particular.
No one answered.
But somewhere, in the space between realities, something that might have been a cosmic voice might have been laughing.
End of Chapter 2