“Cain, what are you doing?”

That was Grunt 1. We hadn’t really had time for introductions, but his fashion sense really speaks for itself with that big red ‘R’ on his chest. Good lad to be worrying about me like that, though. What am I doing? That is a very good question. Let’s take stock, shall we? Currently, my head is killing me, probably due to do with the blood flowing from somewhere that keeps getting in my eye. I’m sure it will be fine. Not like it’s going to matter if I lose my grip.

“Forget him. If he wants to die playing hero, let him. They can burn together.” Grunt 2 that time. Off the Christmas list goes that one. Burn? It’s nice of her to assume I’m going to make it across this chasm to meet my toasty end on the other side. I’ve been working under the assumption that this pipe I’m pulling myself along was going to give out any second.

“Help!” Enter stage right, the reason I’m sprinting towards the world’s shortest reincarnation trophy. Weighing in at who knows, at a height of 3ft nothing; Sobbing Toddler 1. Okay, not the best naming sense here, but give me a break; I'm pretty sure I have a concussion. Little Miss Waterworks' wails are certainly not helping my headache.

“And safe,” I exclaim as my feet make land on the crumbling floor, on the side of this basement devoid of a majestic staircase, leading to what I can only presume is a much nicer place to be. This thought is validated as I turn my head to catch a glimpse of Grunt 1 and 2’s boot heels ascending out of sight. I turn back, wiping some of the blood from my left brow, to stare down at a girl who looks at me with as much fear as she does the fire creeping up the walls from the inferno below. I know, not the look she should be giving the selfless hero who has come to her aid. Probably has something to do with the giant red ‘R’ on my own black attire. Guess that makes me Grunt 3.

Reincarnation? I suppose I did just jump into it. Let me take you back about as long as it takes to make some terrible new life choices and tell you about my last and first day.

I, Simon Matthews, am not a good person. Shocking, I know. In my defence, I wasn’t given the best of starts. Orphaned from birth but no lovely dalmatian-filled firehouse for me though. No, I got the prom night dumpster baby treatment. I can only assume my mother was at one hell of a party, planning to be right back but was waylaid by some primo spiked punch.

Fortunately, a dumpster-diving homeless man was kind enough to hand me over to the government. I'm pretty sure I wasn't the type of baby back ribs he was hoping to find. Let's speedrun the rest of this first life. I went through foster homes in triplicate until I was 14, when I figured I could do a better job of raising myself than the string of abusive drunks the government seemed to think were the cream of the parental crop.

Crime kept my young belly fed and clothed. Picking pockets evolved into picking locks, and hopping fences turned into getting paid by them. I treated everyone around me as a threat and kept to myself. I managed to get enough work to rent a place. It was a real roach hole, but when you're up all night, it hardly matters where you crash as the sun comes up. Eventually, I grew up into a fine thug. Those fences put in a good word with the worst kind of people. I became a bouncer at some of Glasgow’s seediest nightclubs. I hurt whoever I was told to and robbed anyone I thought I could get away with. I did my time without snitching every time I got picked up by the boys in blue, like a good little mutt.

Turns out that criminals aren’t the most loyal sorts. When the boss’s kid blames you for the cops seizing a stash house because you led them to it; even though the boss knew you were alone with him tuning up some unlucky bloke, he will still take the opportunity to let his kid pin it on you to save face. Just not your face; no, your face will be ruined by a 9mm and a swim in the Clyde.

Enter life number two while I’m still reeling from the shock of a rather swift end to the first one.

I woke up with a splitting headache and realized I was pinned under some ceiling debris, which I could only view with contempt for not doing its job of staying attached to the rest of the roof. The large slab pressing into my skull likely had something to do with the migraine.

***

“Wholly hellhound! How is he still alive?” Grunt 1 exclaimed, pulling the rocks off me and securing his spot on my Christmas list.

“Cain, get up; that Magmar escaped and is bringing this place down in its rage,” Grunt 2 informed me.

“Magmar?” I uttered, dazed.

“Yeah, you forgot to lock the Poké Ball after we stole it. Get the kid; we are leaving.”

Just as I was getting to my feet, a blast rocked the floor, causing a large section to fly up, then crash down, caving in on itself. My new coworkers and I were flung back against a staircase – coworkers who, I noted, were wearing outfits I first saw when I played an old copy of Pokémon Red, left by one of the older foster kids when they aged out.

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Wondering if I had died and ended up in a hell that resembled a cosplay-styled escape room, I noticed air rushing down from the top of the staircase. It seemed like a good time to leave. The emerald-haired woman, apparently in agreement, said, “Too late, forget the girl,” and started heading for the exit.

That's when I heard her; she couldn't have been more than 4 years old. Huddled as small as possible on the other side of the room, she was separated from us by the hole in the floor. Her tiny hands were bound with rope. She was wearing a pink dress and had brown hair, both matted and dirty – whether from the blast or her previous treatment, I didn't know.

Before I could think twice, I leaped out over the edge and grabbed a pipe that must have run along the ceiling when it was intact. It was warm from the heat rising below. The remaining brackets holding it to the roof started to snap as I shuffled my way along as quickly as possible. I swear I could see something person-shaped moving down below in that inferno.

I can hear you asking, “But Simon, you’re a terrible person, why would you care?” And I get it, trust me, I do. However, I had experienced firsthand the treatment children receive when adults forget they're supposed to protect kids first and foremost. I had sworn, as bad as I had gotten, that was a line I wouldn’t cross. I was an adult; she was a kid in danger. Easy math. Which was good, because I was never very good at math.

Which, of course, brings us back to me standing above this rightfully terrified little girl, doing my best impression of an umpire calling the play as my favourite pipe gave way and clattered down below. “And safe!”

***

“Please don’t hurt me,” the girl pleaded as she somehow managed to shrink further into her corner.

“I ain’t going to hurt you, lass. What’s your name?”

She looked at me funnily, guessing Cain or grunt number 3 would have already known that. Unfortunately, the new body didn’t come with a backup set of memories.

“Lily…” she managed to squeak out.

I got down on one knee to try and be less intimidating and reassure her as best as I could.

“Lily, I am going to get you out of here, okay? That’s my only goal right now, so please, whatever I have done or said in the past, try and trust me. Okay?”

She gave a slight nod, and I took a breath as I turned to assess my new surroundings. There wasn’t much more to work with over here. No staircase or doors, just a small alcove that I couldn’t see from the other side of the room.

Moving towards it to get a better look, I started talking, mostly to keep Lily from focusing on the danger and how the floor on this side was getting smaller by the minute as more of it crumbled into the chasm, with whatever was down below doing its best impression of an erupting volcano.

“I think I see a window over here… Oh my god, is that a snake!” I practically screamed. Okay, so maybe not the best distraction for Lily, but can you blame me? As some of the smoke thinned, I got a look at a snake more than twice the length of Lily, hiding in the alcove opposite Lily's corner. Now I understood why she was bunched all the way up.

“Ekans,” it had the audacity to hiss at me in a questioning tone as it tilted its head like a confused puppy.

Ekans, the Poison-type Pokémon. Purple scales covering the majority of its body, except for a yellow ring just below the head and belly. Yellow serpent eyes and a rattle tail to boot.

"There's a good hallucination; just move away from the alcove and let us terrible-tasting humans through." To my delight, the Ekans moved around the edge of the wall, making a path for Lily and me to get through. I picked her up with less protest than I was expecting and moved to check if we could get out the window. Unfortunately, it was too high up for me to reach, but Lily could with a boost.

It was one of those small, barred windows you see from the outside that provides a bit of light to a basement room. I supposed this must be some kind of bunker or basement room, with the volcano in the sub-basement below. I tried to get Lily to squeeze through, but it was too tight for her, and we were fast running out of ground.

Make or break time. I steeled myself mentally and decided to go for the one-in-a-billion chance, assuming I had reincarnated into an actual Pokémon world where snakes were smart enough to understand me without Parseltongue or some other magic.

“Hey, Ekans?” The Pokémon flinched back as I said its name and took a step towards it. Was it scared of me? Taking a closer look, I saw its scales were in bad shape, with lumps of old skin, and its eyes were cloudy. Clearly, whoever it belonged to had not been the best of trainers. “Not going to hurt you, big guy, just need an assist.”

I earned myself another head tilt from Ekans.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” I found myself repeating, just as I did with the much less dangerous Lily. “I’m going to pick you up and boost you to that window; I need you to slip through the bars and around them.”

“Ekansss,” he nodded, which was oddly reassuring and made me wonder if I was going insane, thinking a snake could understand me. I gingerly tried to pick him up but quickly resorted to more aggressive huffing and puffing as I realized this serpent was no lightweight. Ekans seemed to realize I was struggling and slid over my body himself, using me like a ladder to get his head up through the bars and then began to move away.

“Wait! Please, help me get the girl out at least,” I begged. The Pokémon stopped and curved around to look at me, its cloudy eyes filled with confusion, as if it didn’t know where I had come from and hadn’t just used me as its own personal climbing frame. “Please, just her.”

“Ek, Ek Ekans?” I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to understand that.

To my delighted shock, however, he brought his body around the bars and then stared down at me, waiting. I blurted out the first thing that came to mind, thinking back to those days getting high and watching a 10-year-old travel his anime world, envious of his freedom as I languished in my apartment.

“Ekans, use Wrap!”

“Eeeeekaaanssss!” The bars creaked under the strain of his muscles. Then, with a loud smash, the bars came loose and fell to the floor as Ekans let out an exhausted “Kanss.”

He lost his perch and fell back into the room with us. Stumbling to catch him, I ended up flat on the floor with his weight on my chest. After gently pushing him off, I hoisted Lily up, and she crawled free of the room. Next was Ekans. He had earned his freedom. With my help, he too got free of the room once more. Both Pokémon and child disappeared from my view. I heard the ground rumble and start to give way beneath me. Ekans' head appeared in the window, trying to reach out to me.

“No, Ekans, I won’t fit. Get Lily to safety,” I told him. He stared at me again as if I were the oddity, not the living, breathing video game sprite.

“Ekanss,” he replied before vanishing from view again. I hoped he wasn't considering a toddler-sized snack.

Then the floor gave way beneath me. I couldn't be mad at it; it had held out long enough to hopefully earn me some good karma points for life number three. Besides, it was just an inanimate object, I’m not crazy. I didn’t land in the inferno but was buried in a room adjacent. Apparently, I had moved far enough over in the top room to not be directly above what was now an oven. Not that I was much better off. There was very little air, heat from next door, and two... wait, make that three cracked ribs. Once again, I was pinned under what once would have been a room's ceiling.

Before I passed out, I felt the earth above me shift and move away. A stone head with arms reached out to me. My saviour, a more beautiful creature could not possibly exist. Then its granite dome shifted to glance at my chest. He apparently was not a fan of old Cain's fashion sense. Crack! That was the sound of stone meeting face as I blacked out, thinking this had been the worst two deaths of my life.