Cashe kept his eyes glued to the spot from where Emilia disappeared. The door hung on its hinges. He couldn’t see any movement from inside.

How long has it been, now? A minute? Five?

Cold rain drenched his clothes, soaking any part of him that was not already wet as he waited. Mankey paced back and forth in front of him, clawing at the ground. Bulbasaur stood, projecting a stoic façade beside Cashe, but twitching at every sound that cut through the pounding rain.

Cashe clenched his numb hands into fists. He unclenched them and repeated the process. It didn’t help. He joined Mankey in her pacing.

What was taking her so long? It couldn’t possibly take more than a moment to check if a home was empty. Cashe glanced at the door again. No movement.

He bit the inside of his cheek. Were there people in the house? Had she stopped to explain why she broke into it?

He was going to check on her.

Cashe walked over to the house, taking none of the precautions Emilia did on her approach and walking straight up to the door. The door was still ajar. He pushed it farther, eliciting a soft creak.

“Emilia?” Cashe called in a hushed tone. No answer. He entered the house.

It was a family home and well lived in. The front door opened into a living room. There were children’s toys strewn about the floor. A Charizard plushy lay discarded on a worn couch. Its glass eyes watched him as he intruded on its home.

“Emilia?” Cashe called again, his voice louder this time. Rain pounded on the roof, water dripped from his body, pooling on the floor. Mankey hopped on his back, gripping his shoulders firmly. Bulbasaur followed them in, trailing right on his heels.

He followed the front hall to an empty kitchen. A light was on over the stove. A half-cooked meal sat in a frying pan. Cashe walked over to the stove. Wet shoes slapped on linoleum floors, echoing in the silence of the house. The food was cold.

“Emilia?” Cashe was at a normal speaking volume now. Emilia was still not responding. There were footprints on the floor, tracking mud and water through the house. She came through this way.

Cashe followed the footprints to a set of stairs leading down into a basement. Darkness swallowed the stairs, casting a deep shadow after only two. They were old and steep. He flicked a lightswitch on the wall. Nothing happened.

“Emilia?” Cashe’s voice was a whisper again. He could feel his heart beating in his chest, pulse elevated. He took a step down. He could see a light flickering in the basement below, orange and soft. He took another step down the stairs.

They creaked. The light in the basement flickered with movement. Something rustled from below. He couldn’t see what it was. It was coming closer. He took an involuntary step back, tripping over Bulbasaur with a crash.

Something screamed.

Cashe screamed.

Mankey screeched.

“Cashe?”

Cashe stopped screaming. Mankey continued.

“Emilia?”

“What are you doing here?” Emilia’s drenched form emerged from the stairs. She was holding Charmander in her arms, the flame on his tail emitting a soft, orange light. He didn’t seem to appreciate being pressed against Emilia’s soaking wet clothes.

“What’s taking you so long?” Cashe stood up painfully, giving Mankey a light smack to get her to shut up. She smacked him back and scrambled up his shoulder.

“Nobody is here. I’m trying to figure out where they went.”

“In the basement?”

“I had to start somewhere.”

“Why the-”

An explosion of sound knocked Cashe back off his feet. A pain erupted in his leg. The house shook, windows rattling in their frame, furniture clattering as it bounced on the tile floor.

Cashe’s ears were ringing. He couldn’t see straight, the world spun around him as he tried to orient himself. There was a weight on his thighs causing the pain. Cashe looked down. Emilia had fallen on him. She was holding her hands to her ears, her elbow digging into the meat of his inner thigh.

“What was that?” Cashe groaned. His voice sounded dull and muddled. He rose to his feet holding the wall for support surveying the area around him. Mankey was helping Emilia up. The tiny pokemon pulled her to her feet with surprising ease. Charmander had tumbled down the stairs and Bulbasaur was using his vines to pull him back up.

He stumbled off of the stairs and back into the kitchen. It was a mess. Plates and glasses had been thrown from shelves, shattering on the floor. Food was everywhere, the refrigerator having opened and spilled its contents across the kitchen. Emilia stumbled up behind him. She was shaking on her feet, but looked to be in one piece.

“We need to go!” She shouted.

“What was that?”

“A pokemon!”

Cashe’s eyes widened. “What do we do?”

“Follow me!”

Emilia turned and made her way out of the house. She stopped at the front door, leaning on the frame with one hand. The other fell to the pokeballs on her belt. She was clutching Omanyte’s ball with a death grip. She took a deep breath and exited the house.

Cashe was right behind her, following her back into the square. A scene similar to the one in the kitchen greeted them. Glass was everywhere, broken windows leaving the area littered with shattered glass.

Cashe blinked a few times as he stumbled after Emilia, a thought tugging at his muddled head.

A flash of light flickered through the sky, coming from a spot several streets over. Emilia turned towards it, picking her way across streets lined with glass.

The thought solidified in Cashe’s mind. They were heading towards the explosion.

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“Emilia!” Cashe yelled over the rain. Another flash of light shot through the sky. Emilia picked up her pace, hurrying towards it. Cashe ran after her, “Emilia!”

Either she didn’t hear him or she was ignoring him. She turned down another street as second explosion rumbled through the air. It was deep and grating, causing both him and Emilia to stumble. Cashe didn’t even hear it. He felt it.

What Cashe could hear was shouting. It was high pitched and just loud enough to cut through the rain and the ringing in his ears. Someone was in trouble.

Emilia heard it too, her head snapping in the direction of the shouts. She made to move towards them, but Cashe finally caught up with her and grabbed her arm.

“What are you doing?”

Emilia spun around, meeting his eye. She was deathly pale, her eyes dilated into wide black orbs, their color barely visible. She was shaking in his grip and her knuckles were white where her hand held Omanyte’s pokeball.

“A pokemon is attacking, people are in trouble!” Her voice was high. Frightened.

“It’s too dangerous!” Cashe yelled, “We should call the Poke Rangers! You said-”

“This world is real, Cashe,” Emilia yanked herself from Cashe’s grip and looked him in the eye. She was scared. Terrified. She knew it was dangerous. She knew what she was doing. “Those people are real. And they need our help.”

Light flashed through the sky again and Emilia was gone, leaving Cashe staring at the spot from which she disappeared for the second time in the few minutes.

These people were real. Emilia was real. A person with her own thoughts, worries, fears, and convictions. At his feet, Bulbasaur was real. On his shoulder, Mankey was real. He was not dead, not dreaming, not hallucinating or stuck in virtual reality.

Cashe looked down at Bulbasaur. All he saw was fierce determination on the little pokemon’s face.

Cashe looked down the wet road, covered in glass. He heard the shouts, cutting through the wind. Another flash of light danced across the sky.

Cashe took off after Emilia.

***

Blue covered his mouth, finally calming down from his uproarious laughter. He picked himself up off the floor of the cave as Red chuckled quietly at him from across the small cavern.

They were in the tunnel system Cashe described, right beneath the summit of Mount Silver. Red had made a small alcove within the cave his home. Whether it was the result of natural phenomena or dug out by one of Red’s pokemon, Blue did not know, but it was small, surprisingly warm, and well maintained.

The warmth was at least partially due to Red’s companion. Charizard, in all his scarred and fiery glory, lay curled up against the wall of he cave, his tail wrapping around Red and resting in the center of the floor, the fire at its end burning clean and providing no small amount of warmth.

Red was also well maintained. Blue’s old friend-turned-rival did not look like a mountain man who lived in a cave. While he doubted Red could move like he used to, the years had been kind to him. Like Blue, Red was nearing sixty, but while Blue had slowed down and allowed himself to enjoy the comforts of life, Red clearly had not.

He was whipcord thin, with taut, wiry muscles cording his arms and neck. He did not move as if the years affected him either; he was full of energy and happy as he regaled Blue with stories of his lifelong adventure. He was shorter than Blue - he always had been - but he carried himself with such confidence and self assured grace that Blue couldn’t help but feel the smaller man.

Red was bald in his old age and he wore a beard, his facial hair trimmed down to a neat and oddly stylish layer. It was clearly professionally done, which, coupled with his worn but modern clothes, meant that it had likely not been almost fifty years since anyone had laid eyes on the legendary trainer.

Blue finished chuckling and sat back down on the stone he had tumbled off of at the climax of Red’s story. He sighed, “You always did like to talk. You must have been going crazy with no one to yap at for the last five decades.”

Red grinned wider and shrugged, patting Charizard as he lay against him.

“Probably driving your pokemon mad, then,” Blue joked, “Not the method I would choose, but to each their own, I guess.”

Red snorted and leaned further back against Charizard, stretching out against the pokemon and shutting his eyes.

“Just going to ignore me, huh?” Blue muttered, causing Red to grin again, but indeed, ignored him.

Blue allowed his eyes to wander the cave. There were few signs that someone had been living in it for nearly fifty years. The walls were smooth from frequent pokemon activity and the cave looked like it was kept clean, but besides that, there was only one other thing that signified anyone had ever been here, at least from what Blue could see.

Blue flicked his eyes to the small engraving on the cave wall. It was rugged, carved by the hand of an amateur, but unmistakable in what it was supposed to be. It was a plaque, shaped to resemble those found in the pokemon Gyms of their youth, set to display the successful challengers of the Gym.

Red had set his cave up as a Gym. But that wasn’t the surprising thing. Blue, too, had taken the occasional challenge from promising young trainers himself, even as a pokemon professor. No, the surprising thing was that there was a name on Red’s improvised plaque.

Gold.

“Did Elm’s brat really beat you?” Blue said, flicking his gaze over to Red, “He was talented, don’t get me wrong, but he didn’t seem to have the same spark we had.”

Red flicked his eyes open and met Blue’s with a level gaze. Gold had famously conquered Johto, the Elite Four, became Champion, and followed it up by conquering Kanto as well. Specifically Kanto’s Gym Leaders. Specifically Blue.

“Don’t give me that look,” Blue said, rolling his eyes, “I was trying out a different team and strategy. I wanted to see how my new ideas held up against one of the best. Turns out that my old ideas were better.”

Red raised a mocking eyebrow. Blue always had an excuse.

Blue caught his meaning and snorted, “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine.”

Red shook his head with a small smile and leaned over, murmuring something to Charizard. The old pokemon growled in mild protest, but righted himself, shuffling to the side and revealing the wall behind him, along with a second, more intricate carving.

Blue felt his throat tighten as unexpected emotion rose in his chest.

It was a gravestone. For Red’s Pikachu.

“Unevolved Pikachu don’t live that long,” Blue said quietly, “Pikachu must have been getting old when Gold finally made his way up here.”

Red nodded and ran his hand over the carving.

“I’m sorry, Red. I knew Pikachu didn’t want to use a stone, but I never thought about what that meant.” Losing a pokemon was never easy. Blue had been lucky, all of his pokemon were fully evolved and many would outlive him. But not all pokemon went that route, especially not stone evolutions.

Red gave Blue a nod of thanks and slid back down against the cave wall, where he sat, staring at the floor.

“Not that it would have mattered anyway,” Blue continued, a teasing tone entering his voice, “Kids these days have really taken pokemon battling to another level. I bet even I could beat you, and I haven’t trained properly in twenty years. You’re behind the times, old man.”

Red looked up, a glint of challenge breaking through the gloom that had entered his eyes. He placed a hand on his waist, where a belt of pokeballs lay.

“What do you say, one more for old time’s sake?” Blue asked the question, but he knew the answer. He was already leaving the cave and heading for the mountain’s spacious plateau. He smiled and he heard Red jump to his feet, Charizard growling a challenge in his wake.

Blue walked for a few hundred paces until he came to an open, flat space on the plateau. He turned to face red.

Red was only thirty yards away, Charizard at his side.

“Starting with Charizard, then?” Blue grinned, “Brave choice,” he tossed out his pokeball, “Dragonite, come on out, let’s show this bald, old man what we can do.”

Dragonite emerged, floating in the air beside Blue, letting out a keening cry.

Red eyed Dragonite in sharp appraisal and smiled. He leaned over to Charazard and whispered something in his ear. Red placed a hand on his shoulder. Charizard flexed.

The wind of the mountain stilled.

Charizard’s red skin began to turn black, the color draining from it like oil running over water. The deep red flame on his tail brightened, changing to a violent blue as the heat of the fire intensified. Dark blue flames billowed from Charizard’s mouth with every breath. There was no rush of power, no flash of light, but this was undoubtedly a Mega Evolution.

“Where did you get the Mega Stone for that?” Blue breathed, gaping at the Charizard, who now thrummed with power.

Red looked up from Charizard and across the battlefield, steel in his gaze and fire in his eyes.

“What’s a Mega Stone?”

*****