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When Satoshi opens his eyes, he knows he’s dreaming. He distinctly remembers going to bed recently and doesn’t remember Pikachu zapping him awake.
His vision has a weird haze covering it, like it’s not really real but he’s unable to look away from the scene in front of him.
In front of him is himself and his mum, Pikachu is with them but so is a Charmeleon (they isn’t the same Pokemon as his now-Charizard).
This version of Satoshi Ketchum looks…happy, like he has never had the weight of the world on his shoulders since age ten; that he hasn’t died countless times; that he was never Arceus’ “Chosen One” and had never suffered the compounding trauma that came with it.
This Satoshi woke up early on the morning of his tenth birthday, made it to Professor Oak’s lab on time and got a very normal Charmander as his partner Pokemon?
A pang of longing shoots through him at the scene before him. This could very well have been him. If everything had been normal and right, instead of crazy and wrong.
People in every region can live their whole lives and die without ever seeing one Legendary Pokemon, he’s seen every single one in every single region. Even saved the world from them or with them to boot.
It’s a known fact of life that when you die, that’s it; not for him. He’s died and come back to life too many times to count now.
In front of him, other-him and Delia are eating lunch. It’s a perfectly normal scene.
Suddenly, he’s being thrown through space and time.
The scene changes, quickly flipping to the next one. Each of his friends feature in them.
But they’re all stuck where they are, they’re miserable.
It seems that this version of himself never met any of his friends and thus never was able to help them.
He’s not sure what to think about that. But it still doesn’t hurt any less.
If this had been him, would he have been bored with the normalcy? Would he have been as close with Pikachu?