Work Text:
Rei stumbled onto his feet, trying to remember what Arceus told him.
Seek out all Pokemon, mend wounds, yadadada…
Then he remembered the most important part. He was put many years into the past in what appeared to be Sinnoh’s old land: Hisui.
Before Rei was transported into the past, he remembered seeing a tweet on Twitter with a very particular phrase:
“what modern day thing do you think would kill a hisuian era child? i think a single serving of gigantamax curry would wipe them out”
When he searched his pant pockets for anything useful, he still felt a pack of Warheads sour candies in one of them.
He knew what he needed to do.
He looked around and saw a village. Bingo. That’s where he’d be able to find the poor victim to give the sour candy to. He ran over to the entrance to the village and saw a guard there. He glanced at the guard and determined that he was too old to actually be affected by the candy for too long. He ran past him and was being yelled at. He’d need to make this quick.
He surveyed the area and spotted a girl that was just about his age. She looked innocent enough to be naive to the horrors manmade inventions would turn into in the future.
“Perfect.” He whispered to himself, running over to her.
She looked over at him, confused. “Who are you?”
“Oh, I’m, just, uh,” Rei pulled out the Warheads candy and held it out to her, “I have a– Uh– offering! Yes, a blessing!”
Akari grabbed the bag and studied it. She looked at the art on the front, extremely suspicious as to what it meant.
“...Honestly I don’t know what any of this means.”
“You should read the back.”
“What do you mea–” She flipped the bag around and the color drained from her face at the sight, instantly silencing her.
Rei could barely stifle his laughter. “It’s just the nutritional facts.”
“I… I can’t read this language,” She looked at the bottom and her eyes widened, “Is… Is that a date in… 2022?”
“Yeah, that’s the year, isn’t it?” He asked, acting clueless.
“...It’s 1822. Are you from 200 years in the future…?”
Rei blinked. He didn’t know he was that far back in the past. Now that he thought of it, there wasn’t ever an actual date in the few history textbooks of Sinnoh’s past he was able to get his hands on.
He grinned. This whole experience would be even better.
“Yeah, but anyway, there’s candies inside of the bag I think you should try! It’s my treat to you.”
“Okay…?” She laughed nervously, attempting to open the bag. After failing to do so for a couple minutes, she embarrassingly handed it back to Rei to have him open it for her.
Soon, though, the open bag was in her hands, and she picked up one of the pieces of candy. She shifted it around between her finger and her thumb, feeling the texture and even trying to smell it. After judging that it wasn’t poisonous, she plopped it in her mouth and started to chew on it.
…Big mistake.
Her face immediately scrunched up, and Rei burst out into laughter. She began to cough from the overwhelming flavor and came close to choking. She eventually spitting out the candy, though, and she looked terrified.
“Wha- What the Hell is in that?!?” She yelled out, backing away from the candy.
Rei was laughing extremely hard now, having to hold his stomach because it was beginning to hurt. He couldn’t believe the girl actually tried to eat the thing!
Then, he felt the ground beneath him fade. He felt himself get pulled into what he assumed to be a rift, and was face-to-face with Arceus again. The godly Pokemon looked pissed.
“What was that?!” Arceus yelled out.
“I just… pulled a small prank, is all.” Rei mumbled.
Arceus rubbed the bridge of his snout with one of his feet. “It hadn’t even been five minutes, and you already fucked up history in one of the worst ways possible…”
Rei waved his hands in front of him in a small panic. “H-Hey! I can go back and apologize to the girl and–”
“No, no, that timeline will never be the same, you seem to fail to realize that,” Arceus sighed, and another rift opened, “That insane merchant works fast, goddamn… Let’s try this again, okay? Without your demonic candy this time.”
The Arc Phone appeared in Rei’s hand. Maybe he shouldn’t take advice from Twitter this time…