“Cashe, honey, before you put your things down, can you run out and get groceries?”
“Let me just get out of my suit,” Cashe said. He had just gotten home from work. Long hours in the office weren’t exactly stressful for him, but he didn’t like being stuck in a suit more than he needed to be, no matter how expensive it was.
Jen poked her head around the corner of the kitchen. She was smiling, and Cashe knew he was doomed. There was no way he could ever say no to that face.
“Before, please?” Jen said, her big brown eyes sparkling with amusement. She knew exactly what she was doing, “I just put in the onions and I realized I don’t have any garlic.”
“Well that’s a problem, can’t have a sauce without garlic,” Cashe said, “Not a good sauce, anyway.”
“Thank you Cashe, I love you.” Jen hurried out of the kitchen and gave him a quick kiss on the lips.
“Love you, too.” Cashe said, smiling, “But it’s weird that you are still calling me Cashe. You’re a Cashe now, too.”
“Apollo is too weird,” Jen scrunched up her beautiful face in distaste, “Your parents were definitely high when they chose that.”
“It was Vancouver in the nineties, what do you expect?” Cashe shrugged, stepping back out the door for their townhouse.
The warm spring sun shone down on him as he descended the small front step and returned to the street. Cashe took his phone out of his pocket and stuck a pair of headphones in his ears with a contented sigh. He might just have the perfect life. He had a home in a walkable neighborhood, a great job that could easily pay for it, and he was married to the love of his life. To top it all off, he had just received word he was getting a promotion, which was the last thing he and Jen were waiting for before they took the next step in their relationship: having a child.
Cashe felt himself grinning as he walked down the street and cut through the park to get to the local grocery store. As if the day couldn’t get any better, his phone buzzed in his hand to alert him that there was a rare pokemon nearby.
He knew it was out of vogue, but he never stopped playing Pokemon Go, and even paid for an app to alert him when pokemon were nearby. He loved the stupid game. All the Pokemon games, really. Even though he was thirty, even though he worked in a bank, he still played the crap out of them. He was even planning a Hawaii vacation this summer with Jen. Ostensibly, it was so they could get out of the city and relax for a couple of weeks in the sun, but it was really so he could attend the Pokemon World Championship. Not as a participant, unfortunately, but as a guest.
Cashe checked his phone. It was another Eevee, which was great because he still didn't have a Sylveon. He kept accidentally evolving them into Espeon since he walked everywhere.
With a flick of his finger, he tossed a pokeball at the Eevee and a few seconds later it was caught. Inspired, he flipped his phone to his music app and started playing the pokemon theme song.
He danced to the beat, ignoring the fact there were definitely other people in the park who could definitely see what he was doing by closing his eyes.
“I wanna be the very best, like no one ever was!” Cashe whipped his hands through the air in time with the drums, “To catch them is my real test, to train them is my cause! I will travel across the land, searching far and wide! Teach pokemon to understand the power that’s inside!”
“Pokemon!” A little girl shouted.
Cashe opened his eyes. He was half a foot away from kicking a little girl in the face with his dancing. Oops. He had walked off the path of the park in his excitement. Actually, where the hell was he? A field somewhere. Long grass and strange looking trees covered the immediate vicinity. Since when was there a copse in the middle of the park?
“What were you singing, mister?” The little girl asked.
She was cute, of Asian descent, maybe six or seven years old and wearing a pair of high, stained overalls.
Cashe smiled, “You haven’t heard the pokemon theme song? What kind of kid doesn't know the pokemon theme song?”
Kids these days. Cashe shook his head. He never thought he would be a grouchy old man complaining about kids not knowing the classics, but here he was.
The girl smiled and laughed, causing a pair of cute dimples to appear on her face as it scrunched up, “Pokemon don’t have a theme song, silly!”
“The first opening then,” Cashe rolled his eyes. Was anime so popular that even little kids were correcting him on everything?
“Opening what?”
Okay, maybe not.
“You know, of Pokemon.” Cashe frowned at the little girl.
She scratched her nose and nodded in understanding.
“Pokemon!” She turned around to pick something up off the ground, “Here!”
Cashe bent over to take whatever the girl was about to hand him. In their preparation for a child, Cashe and Jen had done a lot of research, including simply talking to other parents that he knew. One of the things that was emphasized the most was when a child hands something to you, you take it from them. No exceptions.
Eight times out of ten it would be innocuous, a rock or a bit of chewed up paper. One time out of ten it would be something that had been missing for weeks, or something else vitally important like your car keys.
And the last time it would be something the child should definitely not have. Like your sleeping pills. Or a gun. Or in this case, a Weedle.
Cashe took it from the girl, “Thank you! I’m just going to put this right over here.” Cashe lowered the squirming pokemon to the ground behind him where promptly waddled away from him a few inches at a time.
He turned back to the little girl, shivering a little. That bug was enormous and those stingers looked like they would hurt. “You shouldn’t just pick up-”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Wait.
Cashe froze in place, eyes going wide. He spun around. The Weedle was inching its way over to a tree.
“Wee-dle” it chirped happily.
Cashe turned back around slowly, taking in his surroundings. He was in an open field, lined with trees. It was on the edge of a small town. The city was nowhere to be seen. He could see people going about their day. A bird flew by, darting through the air. No, not a bird. A Pidgey. It slammed into the Weedle as it climbed the tree with a loud shriek of its name.
The Weedle responded with an explosion of silk that covered the tree, the Pidgey and the ground around them. The silk stuck to the Pidgey and Weedle both as they rolled around on the ground.
“Pidgey!”
“Weedle!”
The Pidgey pecked at the Weedle once, twice, three times, and the Weedle lay still. The Pidgey began wrenching at the Weedle’s venomous stinger, pulling it from its body with a splurge of green ichor.
“I thought Pidgey ate Seedot,” Cashe said before his world went dark and he promptly passed out.
***
Daryl leaned against his wrist and stared at his computer screen, bored. Eyes drifting up to the clock on the wall, he saw only five minutes had passed. When he applied to the Mossdeep Space Center for a researcher position, he had anticipated research, not whatever this was.
“Connie, I’m going to go crazy,” Daryl groaned as another minute ticked by, “How is this research?”
“We can’t research dimensional anomalies without one actually happening first!” Connie’s cheery voice wavered across the empty lab.
Lab was a bit of a stretch as a descriptor. It was four computers and a giant piece of complex machinery that had a screen with a world map displayed on it in green. It detected dimensional anomalies, but he didn’t even know if it still worked, since it had been silent for months. Not exactly the cutting edge of technology.
“Arrhg! My degree is in pokemon paleontology! What am I doing here? I should be in the field with that meteorite that crashed a month ago!”
A loud skidding echoed through the small lab as Connie kicked her chair across the floor, spinning in it as it rolled towards Daryl. The chair came to a stop an inch from where he sat, but facing the wrong way. Connie leaned back in the chair until it was about to fall over and grinned at him, upside down.
“You know how Celebi is,” Connie said, her silver hair tumbling over the edge of the chair, “She might bring anything back here. She doesn’t exactly care for linear time.”
“The last thing she brought was an Iron Treads,” Daryl grumbled, “I wasn’t exactly a help there.”
“You helped clean up that family’s home very well,” Connie giggled, “Didn’t they ask you over for dinner just a few nights ago?”
Daryl grunted, “They were lucky no one died. Those things are dangerous.”
“Don’t call pokemon things,” Connie frowned, “Some of them are smart enough to be people.”
“They are still dangerous. And please don’t get started,” Daryl sighed. He turned around in his chair to face his computer again. Rows upon rows of data ticked by, taunting him with their regular fluctuations, “I know some are very intelligent, geniuses, even but most need trainers for a reason.”
Connie pouted at his attitude, as she often did, but didn’t say anything. Daryl appreciated that in a coworker. Too many people would try and cheer him up, but he liked being grumpy. Why did so few people understand that?
“Speaking of trainers, did you catch the Ever Grande semi finals last night?” Daryl said. He didn’t really want to talk about them, but Connie loved battling, and he figured he would do her a favor for never asking him to smile once in a while. She smiled enough for both of them, “Looks like Wallace isn’t getting his Champion position back any time soon.”
“He lost?” Connie cried, “I didn’t get a chance to watch it last night! The Wailmer were migrating and I went to the harbor to see them leave!”
“Beaten by that Milton guy from Galar,” Daryl grumbled. He had spent two hours watching the conference just so they would have something to talk about and Connie didn’t even bother to watch, “Had a sand team and a Dracozolt with Bolt Beak. Wallace didn’t stand a chance.”
“It’s ridiculous that he doesn’t have a rain team in this day and age,” Connie said, scrunching up her face in frustration, “I mean I know he’s getting old, but seriously, people are a lot better now than they were in his heyday, everyone has access to much better information, breeding, strategies, even Mega Evolutions are in one in ten teams and he doesn’t even have that. I mean he has a Gyarados, all he needs to do is-”
Connie’s rant was cut short by a loud wailing. A dimensional anomaly.
“Is it Celebi?” Daryl demanded.
“I’m checking, I’m checking.” Connie rolled herself over to her computer with a clatter, “Not enough chronotrons for Celebi,” she call from across the room, “Lots more dimensional readings.”
“An Ultra Beast?” Daryl said. He hoped not. Those things were disasters. He had no idea how anyone managed to train them, “Should we call Hokulani?”
“If it’s an Ultra Beast, they’ll call us.” Connie said, “Any idea what it is yet?”
Daryl squinted at his monitor, “Readings aren’t right for an Ultra Beast anyway, so not a Faller either,” he said, “Signature is coming up local.”
“In Hoenn?” Connie gasped.
“No, I mean whatever it is, it’s found in our universe.” Daryl craned his neck to view the glowing green screen, “Looks like Kanto, right outside Pallet Town. You sure it’s not Celebi?”
“It’s not her, but Oak again?” Connie said, “That guy has had a crazy life.”
“Looks alive, human or pokemon, probably,” Daryl called. The readings began fluctuating further, coalescing into something more familiar, “Looks like a human.”
“Crap, better call Oak,” Connie said.
“Which one?”
“What do you mean which one? The professor in Pallet Town.”
“Which one?”
“Just call his lab, man!” Connie shouted, exasperated, “Either of them works just fine!”
Daryl picked up the lab’s phone, an ancient thing with a rotary dial. He flipped open the emergency contact folder kept by the desk, running his finger down the list until he came across Oak, Blue.
“Any idea what caused this yet?” Daryl said as he fumbled to turn the dial on the phone.
“Yes. Crap. Looks like Jirachi.”
“It’s awakened?!” It was supposed to only wake up once every thousand years and Daryl knew it woke around thirty years ago. He knew it for a fact. He knew the man who documented the entire thing, “What’s it doing in Kanto?”
“Oh my god, Daryl, the meteor!” Connie gasped.
Daryl didn’t have time to ask her what she was talking about. The phone was already ringing.
“Hello, Professor, you’re not going to believe this, but-”
***
“I think I know what you are talking about,” Blue said, watching his granddaughter and her Geodude drag an unconscious man down the road towards his lab. Well, her Geodude alone, really. All Annie was managing to do was tug at his shoes a bit. The man was face down and being pulled across the rough road at a steady pace by the leg Geodude was holding. Blue winced. The man was definitely going to have road burns after this. “Annie, sweetheart, what are you doing?”
“Grandpa!” His granddaughter dropped the man’s shoe with a thunk and ran to wrap herself around her grandfather’s legs, “I found a funny man! He saved me from Weedle!”
Oak smiled and picked up his granddaughter, ignoring the confused shouts coming over the phone. “He saved you did he? So you decided to drag him all the way across town? Of course you did.”
“I saved him back,” Annie said proudly, sticking her chest out from where she sat in her grandfather’s arms, “a Pidgey got him and he fell over, but Geodude scared it away.”
“Dude,” Geodude confirmed, looking guilty.
“Why don’t you call Geodude back, sweetie, and I will take care of the rest.”
“Yay!” Annie squealed as Blue put his granddaughter down, “Come on Geodude! Let's go play with Mareep!”
“That’s not what I meant!” Blue called as Annie and Geodude ran away from him at near sonic speeds. He sighed and turned back to the man in the strange suit.
It was time to have an unpleasant conversation.