Today's dress hung on my closet door like a ghost. Plain white cotton instead of the usual frills and lace, with just a simple red ribbon at the neck. The sight of it made my stomach turn. After weeks of Fuji's obsession with making me wear elaborate dresses, this simple white one felt deliberate. Wrong. Like he was dressing me for a specific role, though I couldn't quite remember where I'd seen it before.
The apartment air pressed down, stale with unsaid things. Ditto stood by my door, a perfect mirror of that first day—before the mini-adventures, the battle, the taste of friendship in this world.
"Good morning?" I tried.
Silence. Just yesterday we'd celebrated my first reward, a handful of suddenly meaningless coins. Now Ditto just… watched. Back to being the proper guardian. A wall between us.
In the kitchen, wrongness piled up. Cold tea in a forgotten mug. An empty chair where Fuji should be. And there, the empty space by the kettle where Ditto's Pokeball used to sit, a glaring absence.
Would anyone notice I was gone? Mary, Kaede, Erika—our whirlwind adventure felt like a lifetime ago, but it had only been a day. We hadn't made concrete plans, but surely they'd wonder where I'd disappeared to so suddenly. Wouldn't they?
I poked at soggy cereal, too aware of Ditto watching from the doorway. "So... about yesterday—"
Nothing. Not a ripple. Just that steady, neutral gaze that made my skin prickle. I forced down another sand-dry bite. Some reward. Trapped with a friend who couldn't be one anymore.
Watching Ditto's cold distance reminded me of another set of lost friends—the ones from my old life.
My college friends were probably still reeling. No dramatic farewell, not even a proper game over screen—just me, a semi-truck, and that last desperate message about Shadow Mewtwo. Their final memory of me would be an empty dorm room and a string of "where are you?" texts that would never get answers.
The morning dragged on, an endless stretch of mindless channel surfing. Battle tournaments, contest highlights, documentaries on the migratory patterns of Beautifly... None of it could hold my interest.
How could it, after the heart-pounding reality of my own battles? The rush of working in sync with Ditto, the pride of overcoming challenges together, the promise of a real bond—the TV offered only pale imitations. Just flashy spectacles without the personal stakes that had made my brief adventure feel so meaningful.
And through it all, Ditto watched me, still as a statue. No excited trills at the battles, no curious head tilts at the contests. Just that wary, too-knowing gaze. A silent reminder of how much had changed overnight.
The knock, when it finally came, shattered the suffocating silence. Dr. Fuji burst through the door, not waiting for a response. He'd shed his usual lab coat for a crisp brown vest over a neatly pressed button-down shirt. Despite the formal attire, there was something strange in his manner—a taut energy that made his usual composed demeanor feel like a mask about to slip.
"We're leaving." His voice had a strange, stretched quality I'd never heard before. Taut and thin, like a wire about to snap. "Flight leaves soon."
Without ceremony, he recalled Ditto. The Pokeball vanished into his pocket. Then his hand clamped around my wrist, hauling me out into the sudden bustle of the streets.
The Pidgeot Express field sprawled across what would have been prime Celadon real estate. No neat rows of houses here—just an expanse of trampled grass and wooden platforms where massive birds perched like living aircraft.
The morning formation swooped overhead—seven Pidgeots cutting through dawn in perfect V-formation, each wingbeat sending visible ripples through the morning mist. A week ago, that sight had nearly brought me to tears. Now all I could think about was how each of those wings could generate hurricane-force winds with a single flap, how its razor-sharp beak could tear through flesh, and how the games never mentioned what happened to passengers who fell from the height of their flight.
Fuji pulled me through the barely-contained bedlam, his grip never loosening. "Looks like good weather at least," he remarked, but the lightness rang hollow. Forced. "Clear skies to Viridian."
Words lay fossilized on my tongue as he manhandled me into the harness, each buckle a tiny shackle. The liftoff ripped the air from my lungs, leaving my stomach far below.
I'd always imagined this—skimming through clouds, marveling at the bird's-eye view of the world below. But as Kanto smeared into a blur of color, a single morbid thought knocked around my skull: how many trainers had the unforgiving sky swallowed up, never to be seen again?
The question chased me long after we landed. Fuji hustled me through Viridian's winding streets, backtracking twice with a muttered curse. When he finally veered into a narrow alley, the car lot waiting at the end sent a fresh jolt of surprise through me.
Cars were a rarity in Celadon, and I'd barely spared them a glance, too caught up in the thrill of real Pokemon. But now, faced with the rusted husks slouching in this forgotten lot, I couldn't look away. They seemed to belong to another era entirely, all boxy frames and chrome grills as if from the 1950s.
After Dr. Fuji paid for a day's rental, he yanked open the passenger door and ordered, "Get in."
I eyed the cracked leather seats and the dust-filmed dashboard, wondering if this was some kind of elaborate prank. But Fuji's expression held no hint of humor as he drummed his fingers against the roof, his whole body coiled with barely suppressed agitation.
Swallowing my questions, I clambered into the passenger seat, wincing as the ancient springs dug into my back.
As the city gave way to rolling hills and dense forests, I couldn't shake the feeling that we were driving straight into the past. The car's radio dial was frozen on a station that crackled out staticky old jazz tunes, and every bump in the road rattled the frame like it was one pothole away from shaking apart entirely.
The southern road wound through rolling countryside, each hill revealing more of the landscape ahead. A laboratory complex appeared long before the town itself—a sprawling collection of windmills and research buildings perched atop the highest hill like something from a Studio Ghibli film. The setting sun painted the spinning blades in shades of amber and gold, their long shadows sweeping across the valley below like the hands of some giant clock counting down to... Pallet Town?
With its proximity to Viridian City and the iconic windmills of Professor Oak's lab seemingly pulled from the cartoons, this was clearly Pallet Town.
My hands twisted in my lap as questions I'd been avoiding crashed through my mind: Why Pallet Town? Was this even the same timeline as the games? Or was it the anime? …Manga? Did Ash exist here? Red? Both? Neither?
The reality of this world kept diverging further from everything I thought I knew, and each difference felt like another crack in whatever remained of my certainty.
The Town emerged gradually: first scattered farms, then clusters of houses, and finally the town proper. It was smaller than I'd imagined, barely more than a collection of homes wrapped around the base of Oak's lab's hill.
We turned onto a narrow lane lined with neat gardens. A woman worked among the flower beds, and for a moment I didn't recognize her. This wasn't the sprite or anime version of Delia—this was a real person in a dirt-stained apron, completely unaware that her past was about to catch up with her in the dying light.
The car's brakes squealed. Before I could process the scene, Dr. Fuji's hand found my arm, pulling me from the car. Gravel crunched under my feet as I stumbled.
In the yard, a dark-haired boy played with a Poliwag, his laughter carrying in the evening air. I froze—I knew that face from countless episodes, but seeing Ash Ketchum as a young child felt wrong.
Or... was this Red? The Poliwag made me doubt everything I thought I knew. The manga version had a Poliwag, didn't he? But that was definitely Delia in the garden, so this had to be Ash. Unless this was some weird timeline where—
A twig snapped under Dr. Fuji's shoe. The woman turned, brushing hair from her face with soil-stained fingers. For a moment, her expression was simply curious. Then her eyes found Dr. Fuji, and recognition crawled across her face like an advancing shadow.
"Delia." Fuji's voice cracked on the name like thin ice. "It's... it's been a while."
I watched the woman at the garden freeze, trowel suspended mid-motion. This was Delia—Ash Ketchum's mother—but something was wrong. In all my hours of Pokemon games and shows, I'd never heard of any connection between her and Dr. Fuji. The garden tool trembled in her grip, dark soil falling like black snow.
Even the boy and his Poliwag had gone quiet, sensing the shift in atmosphere.
"I brought—" He pushed me forward like a prize specimen. "I brought her back. I did it, Delia. I brought our daughter back."
The garden tools lay forgotten among the flowers, their shadows stretching long across the carefully tended earth. In the dying light, I watched Delia's face go completely still, as if she'd forgotten how to breathe. Her eyes fixed on me with an expression I couldn't read—something between disbelief and dawning horror.
"You actually did it," she whispered, and there was something terrible in her voice, like she was seeing every fear she'd ever had come true at once. "After all these years, you actually—"
The sound of running water cut off abruptly inside. A chair scraped against wood, followed by the bang of a screen door. A man burst onto the porch, sleeves rolled up and hands still dripping soap suds.
The boy—Ash? Red?—snapped out of his frozen state, the tension sliding right off him. "Dad! Come look at what Poliwag learned today!"
His father's eyes never left us as he descended the worn wooden steps, each creak underlining the tension. Even with soap suds still clinging to his arms, there was nothing domestic about his expression as he watched these uninvited ghosts invade his dooryard.
Twenty years of anime episodes where he simply didn't exist, and here he was washing dishes. Something about that felt more wrong than right.
The Poliwag splashed in a puddle, oblivious to the growing storm. Delia's voice cut through the evening air, quiet but firm: "Ash, take Poliwag inside."
"But Mom—"
"Now, please."
I watched him hesitate, caught in that peculiar childhood moment of sensing adult tension without understanding its source. After what felt like forever, he scooped up his Poliwag and trudged toward the house, trailing water with each step.
"Who are you?" Ash's father moved to stand beside his wife, positioning himself between us and the house. Water dripped steadily from his rolled sleeves onto the freshly turned earth.
Fuji's fingers dug deeper into my shoulder. "This doesn't concern you." His voice had taken on a strange, dreamy quality that made my skin crawl. "You've played your part, offering comfort while I was away. But now I've succeeded. Our daughter—" he pushed me forward again, "—is back. We can be a proper family again. A brilliant family. Not this..." he gestured at the modest blue house, the neat rows of vegetables, "...pastoral mediocrity."
The garden tools lay scattered where Delia had dropped them, their metal surfaces catching the last rays of sunlight. She stood very still, and I wondered if this was how she'd looked when Fuji first told her about his plans to clone their daughter—that perfect balance between fury and heartbreak.
"Pastoral mediocrity?" Her voice trembled with the weight of years. "While you were hiding in your lab playing god with our daughter's memory, I built something real. Something whole." She swept her arm toward the cheerful blue house behind her, the carefully tended garden beds, the wooden swing hanging from the old oak tree. "But you wouldn't understand that, would you? Some of us chose to live instead of—"
"I brought her back!" Fuji's grip tightened until I had to bite back a wince. "She's alive, Delia. Our daughter is alive again. Look at her face, her eyes—it's her, it has to be her—"
"That's not Amber." Delia's words fell like broken glass. "Whatever you've done, whatever you've created..." She forced herself to look at me, really look, like someone pressing on a bruise to prove it hurts. When she finally spoke again, her voice cracked. "Our daughter is gone, and this—" her hand trembled as she gestured at me, "this is just another experiment. Another way to avoid facing what happened. The cancer—"
That word—cancer—carried the weight of years of grief. The setting sun caught in her hair, painting her in shades of gold that made the whole scene feel like some twisted memorial photo.
A breeze stirred the flowers, carrying the scent of freshly turned earth and something that might have been dinner cooking inside that cheerful blue house. Some other version of this evening existed where they'd all be sitting down to eat right now, if we hadn't shown up to shatter their peace.
Fuji's fingers dug so deep into my shoulder that I could feel each individual digit trembling. Not with grief or shame, but with that particular kind of desperate anger that comes when someone's carefully constructed reality starts to crack. "You don't understand," he said, his voice rising to match the wind. "I did it. I actually did it! While you were here playing house with—" he released my shoulder to jab a finger at Ash's father, "—with some lab assistant," he spat the words like they tasted foul, "I brought our daughter back! I did what everyone said was impossible! This is what I promised you, what you never believed I could—"
"Get off my property." Delia's voice cut through his rant like a knife. Her shadow stretched long across her garden, merging with the darkness gathering at the edges of this broken family tableau. "Before I call Officer Jenny."
The silence stretched between them like a thread pulled too tight. I looked up at Fuji, watching shadows crawl across his face as the sun sank lower, dreading the moment something—
His hand suddenly lifted from my shoulder. The absence of pressure was so unexpected I stumbled slightly, catching myself just as he spun on his heel. No words, no final desperate plea—he simply stormed back to the car in sharp, angry steps that sent gravel flying.
The engine roared to life, gears protesting as he threw it into reverse. Only then did it hit me: he was leaving. Actually leaving me here, surrounded by the fragments of a family I both did and didn't know, in a world that kept refusing to match my memories.
First my old life, then Ditto, and now even the man who'd caused all of this—all of them slipping away like water through cupped hands.
I stood frozen, conflicted, in the lengthening shadows of Delia's garden, listening to the sound of tires on dirt fade into the distance.