Prologue

In the middle of the night, at some random bar, there sat a man drinking heavily. The drinks just kept on coming, and he didn't care, but he slammed them all down the moment they arrived. The man in question was approximately 50 years old. He himself didn't even know the exact number, as he had stopped counting years ago. 

He didn't have any family or friends he could celebrate birthdays with anyway, so why even bother to count the years? This man's name was Kristoph. As for how Kristoph got to this point, we will have to go back 40 years in the past. As a 10-year-old child, Kristoph was fairly normal.

He had a happy family, and it was his tenth birthday. His parents didn't know it at the time, but they had gotten him what would be his favourite game of all time: Pokémon Platinum. Kristoph had watched the show almost religiously, and once he turned ten, he could start his own Pokémon journey. 

It was like a dream come true for Kristoph. He played that game in all his free time, maxing out the timer at least once or twice.

One day, Kristoph came downstairs and saw his parents watching the TV with anxious and terrified expressions. This was so out of the ordinary that Kristoph started to worry that something bad had happened.

"Mom? Dad? What's wrong?" He hesitantly asked his parents. His parents noticed Kristoph's worried expression and quickly shut off the TV, saying to him, "I-It's nothing, Kristoph. There's no need to worry."

Kristoph quickly believed his parents and went about his day, not knowing that today was the day the world was turned upside down.

Soon, changes started happening in the house. His parents began storing large quantities of food and boarding up the windows. He was also told he wasn't allowed to go to school anymore or even see his friends. Kristoph found all of this really strange. 

What had happened on the outside? He wasn't allowed out anymore, and his parents didn't tell him anything. However, Kristoph wasn't foolish and quickly realised that going outside right now was dangerous. 

Although he didn't know how dangerous, he still trusted his parents and tried to escape into his favourite game.

Time slowly passed, and one night, Kristoph was awakened by loud sounds – these really loud cracks rang out in the night. He quickly got up and went to his parents' bedroom, only to see them also awake. His parents looked anxious, and his father was holding what looked to be a gun.

"Mom, Dad, can you please tell me what's going on?" Kristoph begged his parents. He had asked his parents this question countless times before and never got an answer. 

His mother looked down at the ground and contemplated it, while his father just sighed heavily. "Kristoph, have they taught you about wars yet in school?" his father asked him.

The question surprised Kristoph, so out of reflex, he said, "Yes, father, wars are usually when people can't coexist peacefully, correct?" He had learned about it in school.

"You're right; however, it usually goes deeper than that. But that doesn't matter now. You may have guessed it already, but there's currently a war going on outside," his father told Kristoph about the events outside. Kristoph didn't really understand why people had to fight among themselves.

But before he could ask his father more questions the sounds outside started to close in, his father and mother turned to the sound then turned to Kristoph.

"Kristoph dear follow me" His mother told him, he wanted to ask where they were going but his mother grabbed his arm and ran downstairs. He looked at his father one last time who seemed to have tears in his eyes.

As they reached the living room, loud banging sounds came from the boarded windows. His mother turned white as she quickly pulled a rug from under the floor. To Kristoph's surprise, there was a small hatch under the rug. Had this always been here?

Spotting his Nintendo DS on the table Kristoph quickly grabbed it while his mother opened the hatch. Once the hatch was opened his mother hugged him and practically shoved him down the hatch, he could hear his mother tell him one last thing before she closed the hatch. 

"Stay down there Kristoph and only come out once the sounds are all gone, and remember we will always love you".

Before Kristoph could say another word the hatch closed, he didn't know what he should do, but he always trusted his parents, so he decided to stay here. Looking around in the dark Kristoph quickly found a lightswitch and turned it on, he could now see that there were multiple shelves filled with water bottles and cans of food. 

Before he could inspect closely a loud bang came from above him, Kristoph could hear loud stomping that quickly turned into multiple loud bangs. He didn't know what happened above him but he trusted his parents and stayed down there until all the sounds were fully gone.

Kristoph continued to stay down there for multiple days, hearing thumping sounds every so often. In the beginning, Kristoph had his favourite game with him to pass the time. However, that changed once the Nintendo DS ran out of battery. 

Kristoph looked at the hatch and hesitated. It shouldn't be a big problem to grab it quickly, right? He remembered the promise he made to his parents; to stay down there until all the sounds were gone. If he went back up now he would be breaking that promise. He ultimately decided to stay put, the sounds were bound to be gone soon he thought.

The days slowly turned into weeks, and Kristoph was deteriorating day by day. The food storage was dwindling, and he started to lose weight, appearing extremely skinny. The room stank from all his waste in the corner of the room, there were luckily some toilet rolls however even those had run out. 

Worst of all was that his sanity was slowly dwindling, he kept frantically checking for sounds. His dreams were slowly filled with nothing but nightmares about the sounds and the horrors that were going on up there. Every day this went on was a day too much for Kristoph, with nothing to stimulate his mind he slowly started to shut off his emotions in order to not go insane. 

More time passed and Kristoph awoke one day or was it night? It didn't matter as he listened if there was noise upstairs and to his surprise no sound was heard. He waited around an hour more, this was usually the time it took for another sound to be heard only to still hear nothing.

Feeling his heartbeat go crazy Kristoph waited one more hour just to be safe and still heard nothing, with this he confirmed there were no more sounds heard and he approached the ladder and climbed up leaving the Nintendo DS there.

Opening the hatch, Kristoph peered out and had to squint his eyes due to the light he hadn't seen in weeks. Once his eyes were adjusted to the light again he slowly opened the hatch more and climbed out. 

His house looked like it had been trampled by a horde of people and a thick layer of dirt was kicked up, Kristoph coughed a little as he walked around. There seemed to be nothing left in the house except for the carpet that still laid on the hatch.

Kristoph went up the stairs and walked to his parents' bedroom door, still holding hope that his parents were there waiting for him, now that the sounds were gone.

Opening the door a horrible stench assailed Kristoph as he looked at the scene that laid before him, two disfigured people dressed in his parents clothes laid there on the floor with dark red blood everywhere.

Kristoph's worst fears had come to reality as his parents were dead and Kristoph began to break down in tears, he had always hoped his parents were still alive but now that hope was crushed.

Kristoph cried for an unknown duration, and when he was done, he felt as if he had lost something deep inside him. At the time, he didn't realise that he had lost the rest of his emotions, leaving him broken. 

Bidding his parents farewell, Kristoph went outside for the first time in weeks only to see the town where he lived for over ten years turned into a ghost town filled with rubble. He tried to find food and water in the broken houses only to see more bodies everywhere, it was a haunting sight at first but Kristoph slowly got used to it.

He found no food and was slowly getting desperate in his search when he suddenly came face to face with another person, this person was dressed in a full green outfit along with a helmet and glasses as such Kristoph couldn't see who it was. 

The person spotted Kristoph and out of reflex pointed their weapon at him only to register that it was only a young boy that looked to be heavily malnourished.

The person turned out to be a military personnel from Kristoph's own country, through this person Kristoph learned a few things. 

For one the entire town should've been evacuated however Kristoph was still there which meant some people didn't see the message or chose to ignore it.

The second was that the war was still going on and didn't seem to stop any time soon, the war was primarily due to one country running out of space for its own people, leading them to invade another country's territory. 

Kristoph was soon put on a car ride to a local medic tent and stayed there for a few days for food and water. After staying there for a few days Kristoph was once more escorted away, this time to a big building with multiple other children. 

He was told it was an orphanage that housed more children and that they would help him however It was a bleak place, where children were screaming, crying, being aggressive, or just plain messes.

Kristoph was by far the most 'normal' out of them all as he didn't say anything, he didn't cry and he wasn't aggressive, it was nice but it soon turned into worry as Kristoph just sat there in silence.

Kristoph had lost everything, he had lost his parents, his friends, and even his home and seen so much bloodshed that he was involuntarily shutting down his emotions. It was an emotional numbness that was caused due to trauma, Kristoph could try and express his trauma just like the other kids however that would've left him a mess and he didn't want that.

The days slowly turned into years as Kristoph transitioned from the orphanage to military school, his first choice of place, as it would allow him to join the military and participate in the ongoing war. The war continued to rage on for multiple years as Kristoph slowly grew up, the war was the only thing on Kristoph's mind these years and he wanted to participate to have a goal to work for and to not dwell on his bad memories. 

Kristoph's case of emotional numbness got worse by the day, he would act almost like a robot. He would sleep, eat, study, exercise, repeat and nothing else, he didn't speak to any of the other children and would always look at you with soulless dead eyes. 

To the newer kids it was haunting and to the staff who could see it getting worse it was soul crushing, one of the staff couldn't handle it anymore and he quit one day only to be found dead in his apartment the next day due to committing suicide. There was a letter that detailed he couldn't handle the stress anymore.

Regarding Kristoph himself, he noticed he couldn't feel anything anymore but didn't dwell on it. His sole focus was joining the military, and nothing else mattered to him. Eventually he graduated top of his class and successfully joined the military. 

There was some initial debate over his broken mental state being a deterrence however when he scored the highest they had ever seen they quickly put a blind eye to it. They knew he had problems however if they could get a top commander down the line, well let's just say exceptions can be made.

He joined the army at the age of 18 and excelled quite well in the army mainly due to his emotionless state he had no problems with firing a weapon at people. His actions were always precise, disciplined and his intellect was the highest they'd all seen. 

Kristoph quickly rose through the ranks and became an excellent leader, displaying confidence in every action. However, the primary reason for his rapid promotions was his incredible talent for tactics. Kristoph had developed a completely new strategy when it came to warfare dubbed the 'Baton Pass'. 

The strategy was simple and extremely effective, squads would walk in groups of 6 and work together to overwhelm the enemy. Each man of the squad was equipped with specialised tools that would be passed along should the situation call for it, with 6 man squads new tactics could be used such as a distraction and diversion with 4 man and two would sneak around. 

Krispoth's tactics made a turning point in the now nearly 30 year war that was going on. For 30 long years, the war raged on, with diplomatic talks constantly falling apart. More and more neighbouring countries also joined, marking this war in history as World War Three.

In these 30 years a lot had changed, hundreds of thousands died and the world had forever changed due to one of the worst wars the world had ever seen. Countless children lost their parents and even more parents lost their children to this war. 

Kristoph himself had changed both emotionally and physically. He had transformed from a carefree, happy child who could play all day to a 40-year-old military commander carrying the weight of an entire country on his shoulders. The war eventually came to an end after another 10 years. Despite Kristoph's tactics, it had still been a challenging battle to win. However, small victories gradually piled up and reached the tipping point.

For his efforts in the war Kristoph had been awarded many honours and was consequently named a 'war hero'. Kristoph himself never saw it that way, the war was the only thing occupying his mind as he stopped caring about everything that fateful day.

Now he sat himself in random bars across the country drinking his thoughts away day in and day out. Nobody came to check up on him, he had no more family, no friends, no coworkers, he was well and truly alone in the world.

He was well-off for an army veteran due to his popularity in the army. However, even then, he didn't care about any of that. The only thing Kristoph wanted was to feel again, he wanted to feel emotions again however it was all for naught, he had spent too much time neglecting his emotions in order to not deal with the trauma as such he couldn't even remember what they felt like. 

Kristoph had thought of ending it all multiple times, what use would be living if he had nothing to live for or could even feel in life. Psychiatrists across the country couldn't help him at all, even medical scans of his brain demonstrated nothing wrong. 

Feeling nothing even after drinking himself into oblivion, Kristoph staggered back to his home. Once he was home didn't even bother to brush his teeth as he just crashed onto the bed. 

He quickly fell asleep and soon found himself in a dream, dreams were nothing new to Kristoph ever since that day he's been having nightmares on a consistent basis. This dream, however, was one of Kristoph's childhood memories, where he played with his Nintendo DS and enjoyed a game of Pokémon Platinum.

He loved that game so much that it even inspired his 'Baton Pass' tactic. He had learned everything there was to know about the game during his childhood. However, after the events, Kristoph never touched the game or even the newer Pokémon games; the war consumed his thoughts. 

Kristoph watched himself in the dream play on the DS and could see so much emotion in the young child, he tried to reach out to the young child trying to feel something, Anything however it was all for naught as the dream ended and Kristoph woke up with a massive hangover.

The dream was a strange one and it kept lingering in Kristoph's mind for the rest of the day, what was it trying to tell him? To play the DS again? Possible however the DS stopped being made decades ago and trying to find one now was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. 

He suddenly remembered that he had a DS with him during the time he was hiding in the bunker in his parents' old house, could it still be there? Once Kristoph's thoughts reached this point he felt a strange feeling in his gut, one that he had never felt before. It wasn't an emotion, but more of a sense of 'need'.

Kristoph decided to go and see for himself if the DS was still there. The trip to his old home was uneventful, thanks to the advancements in technology that had simplified travel. The town was still a ghost town filled with rubble, it was decided to remain that way by the whole world to remind them of the horrors of this war. 

Walking through the town filled Kristoph with more memories, he looked to the right to see the rubble of his old school and quickly found the way to his old home.

Opening the door stirred up a thick layer of dust, indicating that no one had entered here in a very long time. Looking around the entire house was empty, Kristoph had come here once before however that was to relocate his parents to proper graves. 

Walking to the carpet and removing it once more revealed the bunker he had been in all those years ago, he opened it and climbed down the ladder. Standing in the bunker after all those years made Kristoph think the bunker was actually smaller than he remembered, probably because he grew a lot bigger.

He quickly spotted the Nintendo DS, coated with a thick layer of dust. He cleaned the dust off it and noticed there was still a game inside. It was the exact same game he had played all those years ago. Kristoph attempted to turn the device on; however, he soon recalled why he had left it there. The battery had dried up and he didn't have a charger for it, trying to find a charger was probably going to be even harder than finding a working device. 

"Oh well, at least it's still intact" Kristoph muttered and put the DS in his pocket, he would try to find someone that could charge the DS once he was back. Going back up the stairs and opening the hatch Kristoph came to a different scene than he was expecting.

In the room now stood around 5 men and 4 of those men were armed with guns all pointing at Kristoph. Kristoph looked around only to see the unarmed man walking towards him and kicking him in the face, making him unconscious.

Kristoph woke up in his old room, bound to a chair. He glanced around to see five masked men, four of them with their guns pointed at him. He looked at the only unarmed person in the room who was sitting on his old bed, Kristoph still couldn't feel anything even with these threats to his face. 

"Even in the face of death you still show no emotions" The man said as he watched Kristoph closely, Kristoph showing no emotions was not a secret everyone in the world knew.

"I lost all of my emotions 40 years ago in this very house, this is actually my old room" Kristoph explained calmly, he really didn't feel anything even now. "So you came here for nostalgia?" The man was a bit perplexed as to why Kristoph would return here. 

"I came here to try and regain my emotions, however with the current circumstances I don't think that will ever happen" Kristoph told the man, it was a shame his search for the old DS came to an end like this.

"Can you guess why we're going to kill you?" The man taunted Kristoph with a smile, Kristoph looked at the man and responded "I guess it's because of my efforts in the war". The man nodded and said to Kristoph "If it wasn't for you 'war hero' we would've won the war" the man spat angrily at Kristoph and even said his title with some contempt. 

"War hero huh, I'm no hero, I couldn't even save my parents who died in the room next to this one" Kristoph told the man, he didn't care about his past or who he told it to. 

The man was a little lost, this wasn't how the whole thing should be going down. He had hoped to finally break the infamous stone-faced 'war hero'. However it turned out that the man was just a broken person who the war had also affected. 

Ending Kristoph's life would be a mercy, as there wasn't much left for a man like him to live for. But they couldn't not kill him, it was too late and they doubted Kristoph would actually forgive and forget if they did let him go. 

"The man didn't say anything to Kristoph anymore as he gave the order to shoot. Gunshots rang out, and Kristoph could feel them piercing his body and riddling him with holes. Hearing the gunshots again reminded him of the first time he heard gunshots, which was coincidentally also in this very room. 

He felt like he had truly circled back in his life as he would die in the very same house where he left his emotions. ('I guess I can't play that game one last time.') These were Kristoph's final thoughts as he quickly drifted away.

Soon, Kristoph could feel his body getting colder and colder and quickly fell asleep. He dreamed again as he saw his entire life before him. His childhood years, him growing up at the orphanage, entering the army, and the war that followed. 

He never reclaimed his emotions or even played his favourite game one last time. As he was reliving his memories, he slowly felt warmer and warmer, as if he was suddenly dunked into a warm bath.

('What?') Kristoph tried to move around but couldn't feel much. He tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids felt taped to his face. It actually felt nice in the warm bath, he felt completely at ease and soon drifted back into unconsciousness. 

He awoke and fell asleep consistently and often wondered where he was. It wasn't until he could finally open his eyes that some questions were answered.

One day Kristoph opened his eyes and could see he was in some sort of warm, red water. There also seemed to be a membrane around him that kept him from being engulfed in the water. ('Is this?') He had a guess as crazy as it sounded and looked down to confirm his guess. 

He could see a tiny body with a cord that connected his belly with the outside. ('I'm actually in a womb?') Kristoph realised where he was, knowing the basics of biology included childbirth, so he identified his current situation.

('So I did die, and now I'm being reborn?') The whole situation sounded so crazy that Kristoph even wondered if this was still a dream. Suddenly, he felt a warm current rush into his belly and spread out.

Nope, this was not a dream, considering his mother just had a meal, and Kristoph could feel the nutrients filling his body. ('Oh well, I wonder if this place can bring back my emotions.') Kristoph still had no emotions even now as a foetus in the womb.

He stayed this way, slowly growing and getting bigger. Kristoph could feel the membrane slowly wrap around his skin as he was getting too big. ('I guess it's time to be born again.') He thought once he noticed the membrane getting too small. 

Sure enough, he soon ripped open the membrane and could feel the water and muscles of his mother convulse and contract, pushing him down. He could see the light as he was being pushed down the tunnel, but Kristoph was still pushed through the tunnel and into the light.

The light was painful to Kristoph's eyes, so much so that he involuntarily cried out in pain. A wail escaped Kristoph's mouth, one that he didn't expect but made sense once he thought about it. Once his eyes were adjusted to the light, he could finally look around the room. He saw he was in a hospital room with multiple people in the room.

What attracted his vision wasn't the young blonde woman on the bed that was likely his mother, but a pink, bipedal, egg-shaped creature that was jumping happily.

Kristoph recognized it in an instant but only due to his childhood being obsessed with these creatures. ('A Chansey? I'm in the Pokémon world?') The world of Pokémon was an incredible world that was full of mystery and, of course, Pokémon themselves.

Kristoph was suddenly picked up and brought next to the young blonde woman who smiled warmly at Kristoph. Kristoph, however, still felt nothing, and it just felt so off. 

He needed to recover his emotions, and luckily an idea quickly came to mind once he knew he was in the world of Pokémon. However, it all depended on time and an opportunity.