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He had always hated that Mr.Mime…
Delia loved that stupid creature, so he let it stay. First mistake.
Mr. Ketchum was an ambitious and business minded man, laser focused on his career. How could he be expected to provide for his wife and future family otherwise? However, his constant travel for work was taking its toll. Delia still seemed to be her happy self, but something was wrong, she was… distant. It was difficult to talk about though, with that MIME always around, but he had to this time. He had made up his mind, this trip would be the last. He’d be home for good and he and Delia could actually start a real family.
Delia had been quiet when he called and told her he had requested a transfer so he could be home more. He promised he was sure he was making the best decision for them.
“Of course you are darling,” she did not sound convinced.
The last week of the trip dragged on. It seemed like it would never end. The trip back to Pallet was even worse. Train delays, bus delays, and finally the thunderstorm. It was nearly 1 am when he finally got to town and began his cold and wet walk home, and then he hit a wall.
An… invisible wall. Was this a prank? A misguided attempt at security for the town? All he could do was feel his way along it hoping for a gap. When he finally found one it led to another wall. Not a wall, a maze. Now he was sure someone or something was messing with him, maybe an escaped pokemon from the research lab? He had to try to get to a building, maybe if he could get to a phone the lab could fix this, at least he could call Delia. He kept feeling along the wall towards the nearest house only to find his access blocked. He tried to call out, but it seemed no one could hear him over the storm.
Maybe he could make it to the lab?
Every step of his journey seemed to lead him farther and farther away from home, and his attempts to approach the lab were also blocked. The cold and the storm had started getting to him, along with the frustration of the maze he became less concerned about finding a way home and more concerned with finding who or what was doing this.
In his furious haze he had somehow found himself on the edge of town near a deep trench. He could vaguely recall Delia being excited that the town would be getting connected to some new high speed internet lines. Good for the restaurant, she had said. He continued to feel his way along the wall as his shoes sank into the loose mud near the edge of the trench. When he got out of here he was going to hunt down whatever was responsible, and make them wish they had never been created. Probably a psychic pokemon, maybe even that stupid mime that never left Delia’s side.
A too close lightning strike snapped him out of his rage. As he swiveled around panicked, a light in the distance caught his eye. It was a house, his house, a single light on in the upstairs bedroom. Was she waiting for him? He took a step towards it, and instead of a wall he found a pit.
Pain shot through his legs and up his back as he slammed into the muddy bottom and crumpled backwards. Gazing up into the pounding rain his eyes struggled to focus in the darkness. From what he could make out he was deep, too deep to climb out of on his own even if his legs somehow still worked. He cried out hoping that someone– anyone– could hear him. Slowly a shadow emerged at the top of the pit, an eerily familiar shadow. The mime.
Mud and then darkness overtook him and he waited for the end to come. He wasn’t sure if it ever did and finally he got sick of waiting. He opened his eyes to dirt and darkness, but he could move easily enough. He didn’t know which way was up anymore, but he was certain it didn’t matter. He drifted aimlessly in the darkness, until he suddenly passed into the sunlight. It seared his eyes and his skin, except he didn’t have skin he was just a cloud of… something. Whatever he was now he couldn’t bear the sunlight and retreated back into the ground. There was nowhere else for him to go, he couldn’t let Delia see him like this, if she could see him at all.
He knew he was dead and he knew that stupid mime had something to do with it, but he didn’t know what to do about it. He continued to drift in the darkness, did he want revenge? How could he even get revenge if daylight hurt to exist in? Did Delia do this? Why?
His melancholy was interrupted by a curious sensation, he was being pulled. Forcefully.
In a flash he found himself embedded in some kind of… electrical line? His mind flooded with information as he raced along it to an unknown destination. Statistics, news articles, images, recipes, and a myriad of other things flooded through him until he came to a sudden stop. He was adrift in a new void, this one filled with notes, and research on… pokemon. The lab, the internet, he had merged with those cables or whatever Delia had been talking about. Perhaps he could use this to his advantage, surely these men of science could help him if he could get their attention.
Years went by, and his attempts to make contact with the scientists had made no progress. If they noticed him at all they seemed to think he was just a bug in their systems, or at best some kind of spelling correction program. He had learned much about pokemon and had even managed to travel using the web, but he was still no closer to getting justice.
He was mindlessly reading through the lab's cloud archive one night when a familiar last name caught his eye. Ketchum, Ash… Ketchum. Who the hell was Ash Ketchum?! He quickly scoured everything he could access to for the name. He was a boy from Pallet Town, a pokemon trainer. Finally he found a birth certificate, 10 years old. Mother; Delia Ketchum, and Father… that wasn’t possible, he could not be the father of that boy the timeline didn’t add up. He found a picture and stared long and hard at it. He looked like Delia, except the hair and the goofy grin, he looked nothing like him. There was something eerie about him though, something not quite right. He looked… like… that damn MIME.
He didn’t want to think about it, he wouldn’t think about it. He just had to contact the boy somehow, maybe the kid would listen to him. He seemed human… enough. He was sure the kid would want to know more about the man everyone believed was his father. That would be enough to get someone to start asking questions, but how would he do it? He remembered one of the research assistants trying to show the scientists a new program so they could communicate across the office without having to leave their work. Some kind of chat room program… What was it? Discord? That was the answer, he’d merge himself with the program and use it to find Ash. Use it to talk to him, convince him to ask questions. Then maybe he’d finally see justice.