Leaves in the canopy of an Appalachian forest rustled in the breeze. Rhythmic ripples of a gently babbling river flowed through the woods teeming with the sounds of wildlife.
In the center of the river, a small red and white fishing bobber floated at the surface. At the end of the attached fishing line, a young man sat on a portable cooler and chewed on a piece of grass while watching the bobber with lazy dark green eyes. Wavy dark hair curled out from under his green camo ball cap and partially obscured his gaze.
"Nothin's bitin'," he mumbled to himself, sounding surprisingly nonchalant about it.
Another minute or two passed before he sighed and pulled out his phone.
"Hm. Two bars. Not bad for being this far out."
Keeping one hand on his fishing pole in case anything actually decided to bite, he casually pulled up his social media account. None of his friends seemed to have caught any fish or hunted anything during this spring break, either.
"Must be a bad week for it or somethin'."
After scrolling through his feed for a few more minutes, he suddenly stopped and furrowed his brows. He scrolled back up to a video he had skimmed past that had been posted by a fishing channel he had been following for years. The thumbnail showed a blur mark in front of a fish with two guys struggling with it. Curious, he started and unmuted the video, then watched with unblinking eyes.
The channel host, Greg, a total redneck beefcake of a dude with a thick curly blonde mullet and an equally unruly beard struggled to reel in his catch for a good minute or two.
"This one's a dawgone figher!! Must be a giant pike or somethin'!" Greg yelled at the camera.
Before long, the cameraman, Greg's older brother, held out a large net upon seeing the glint of a fish's scales below the water. The camera barely picked it up as well. The man prepared to help bring in the catch but then muttered in his rarely heard deep voice, "Seems a brighter red than any fish I ever saw 'round here."
Moments later, the fish ended up in the net.
The cameraman, obviously struggling, set down the camera to use both hands. Then, Greg dropped his pole to assist upon seeing his brother struggling to lift the fish out of the water.
Meanwhile, the fish floundered wildly in the net. Splashes of foamy water flew everywhere, soaking both men to the bone. Eventually, they forced it onto the deck and held it down long enough to remove the hook from its mouth.
"I ain't never seen this kind of fish before!" Greg wheezed, still holding it down. "Looks like some sort of giant goldfish or somethin'!! Get the camera on it, Landon!"
Nodding, Landon reached out for the camera. In that moment of lost tension, the fish flailed wildly as though fighting for its life. The camera barely turned in time to catch the fish slapping Greg across the face with a wide red and white tail fin. The slap sent Greg flying sideways across the deck of their fishing boat.
Now free, the fish launched itself over the side of the boat with a single bound.
Narrowing his eyes, the young man paused the video and rewinded frame by frame. Despite the chaotic and blurry recording, he could clearly see the undeniable rounded red body and yellow dorsal fins.
"That is totally a Magikarp, right?"
Out of curiosity, he checked the comments, but most of them were asking if it was some kind of goldfish just like Greg had, or if it was an edited CGI. Of course they wouldn't know it, though.
"Pokemon doesn't exist in this world," he mumbled to himself.
Falling into contemplation, he bookmarked the video and stared at the clearest still screen of the red fish that he could find. The longer he looked at it, the more dumbfounded he became.
"But a real Pokemon? Really?"
It was the most confusing moment in his life since he opened his eyes as a newborn eighteen years ago with his previous life's memories intact.