Chapter 2 - Another world

The feeling of drowning sapped away Red's energy. A higher realm power looked at him, observing him with interest.

He couldn't open his eyes. The sweat running all across his body and those painful burn marks seemed to be washed away.

Everything slowly got washed away, body sensations, thoughts, and even the voice slowly grew quiet.

Sleep. He wanted to sleep and enjoy the sensation.

Forget the painful experience and fall into slumber to recover. After all, he just had to wake up the next day and fix everything...

It kept telling him that it was okay. He can just rest. After all, he did so much in his lifetime…

In the world of blue, where objects appeared from time to time and vanished.

Red's body floated. Curbed up into a fetus position, his consciousness on the verge of breaking down.

The process of returning to the cycle of reincarnation was interrupted by a single plea.

So soft and small.

Memories flooded his mind as he began to wake up. The cry of a small ralts near the muddy road.

Battered and on the verge of becoming a meal for the hundreds of ratatas.

The almost same cry and plea. Yet today it was doing the opposite.

It wanted to help him. He felt a touch and more memories flooded his mind, keeping him awake.

The blue world kept washing his body. In no time, it turned ethereal, but every time he almost succumbed and fell into eternal slumber.

A cry would wake him up.

Bit by bit, he mustered strength as he tried to reach out to the voice.

Somehow, in a plane of higher existence where inferior beings shouldn't be able to feel anything, not to mention move.

The man left his fetus position and reached out.

His hand touched a small flickering soul that kept getting smaller by every single moment.

A resonance appeared. The small soul got sucked into his body as a distortion shook the entire world as a void crack sucked in Red's body.

Sucking force from the void crack tried to take in parts of the blue world, however, a slight ripple erased it from existence.

As if the void crack never existed...

...

"Wake up, ya dingus! Ya younglin ass gonna get cold and ya body stripped like those ladies three streets away." Said a rough sounding voice.

Red grimaced a bit and opened his eyes.

Clear skies with the occasional fluffy cloud changing things up.

The sun hung high as it warmed up his cold body a bit.

He noticed two pairs of old, but well taken care of shoes next to him. Above stood a man in his 40s.

That kind of style of clothing and an accent he never heard of.

Red didn't panic, however, and bowed to the man in gratitude.

He snorted and looked at him up and down.

"Ya kid must be from those fancy high town areas that red dye keeps givin me nightmares with ye prices goin up." He said and put his hand under his chin.

"Not so talkative, are ya, kid. Thrown out, or ya family bankrupted?" The man asked and looked at him.

Red looked at him for a few moments before he nodded in affirmation.

He had no idea where he was. Nevertheless, from the quick glances around.

Nothing even close in his memory could compare to a girl on rollerblades going almost hundred km/h whilst dodging all passersby around.

No one seemed to care.

Such an event would warrant officer Jenny from the eighty-ninth family branch to investigate. Whilst officer Jenny from the seventh family would confront such a reckless young lady.

Architecture seemed pretty foreign as well.

Although the area he found himself in seemed torn down, with not many people going around wearing smiles.

"My arms ain't what they used to be. Dare ya take a few boxes?" The gruff man said and took three boxes out of four which laid nearby.

Clearly, he must have been taking them somewhere before he met Red.

With his physique such a small box, even if it got filled with iron to the brim would be very easy.

All thanks to the training, he and his Pokemon went through.

However, another crucial fact hit him like a truck. Instead of his toned, long arms.

Noodle like white pristine arms welcomed him instead. They looked like they have never seen a single second of light in their whole lives.

Red now understood what the man was talking about.

He looked down at his shirt and confirmed that it should be his own body, albeit younger, much, much younger.

Judging from his outfit, it seemed as if he rewinded back to the time he left his home to travel the world.

Much to his disappointment, he didn't see any poke balls.

Still, he lifted up the crate with quite the ease and looked at the man.

A bit surprised, the man nodded and began walking. Few streets later, past many shady shops and paths that lead to god knows where.

They arrived at a simple-looking shop. Not too outstanding considering its area, but it already seemed closer to the more well-established streets.

Not far away, Red saw a very distinct change.

One street, while not filled with filth, looked much more worn down and abandoned compared to the more pristine street with housing around.

Inside, hundreds of different basic weapons appeared before Red.

Many looked like the medieval weapons ancient soldiers used to wield when they didn't know how to tame Pokemon well yet.

Wars and resources got decided by these.

Compared to his home town though. Many other interesting looking things filled the glass cases.

Quite a few looked advanced. Almost reaching the level of development in the Pokemon world.

He recognised a few, but they looked way more advanced than the guns he remembers that existed.

While looking around, he noticed a locked reinforced glass case.

Inside, many colourful crystals laid inside.

"Pretty right kid? These babies can last a professional huntsman a week with no problem." He said in a much more refined tone.

Red didn't care about the change of tone and nodded absentmindedly.

A huntsman must mean something. He believed that either he found himself on an island filled with prehistoric Pokemon or something similar.

If the huntsman referred to hunting something else. Then he might not be in the world he knew...

Red didn't want to think about that and decided to collect more information.

To ask that old man would be simpler, however, it might reveal many loopholes in his current knowledge.

Perhaps people like him appeared from time to time. If so, he didn't want to alarm that man fast.

Who knows what kind of reputation people like him might have.

"Kid, come here!" said the old man and Red followed the direction of the voice.

A blast of heat assaulted him as he saw a huge furnace.

Next to the ancient-looking furnace laid a piece of equipment that came straight from a sci-fi movie.

Completely comparable to the great machines produced by the greatest and most rich Pokemon companies.

Maybe even better. The man gave Red a series of instructions.

Tasks varied from simple, like filling a bucket with water, to more complex, like finding specific bolts and parts..

Compared to the small mountain of screws, bolts and parts he didn't know the names of.

The old man kept hammering a large piece of metal.

After many minutes of pure hammering, he quenched the metal in the water Red prepared earlier.

What came out confused Red even further. A slab of metal with nothing going for it.

The old man laughed, seeing his expression that changed for the first time, and threw the metal at him.

Red expected some kind of heavy impact weighting dozens of kilograms.

Instead, he got welcomed by something that barely weighed five kilos, maybe even less than that.

"Haha, you must have never seen a real blacksmith, right? In today's age, it is much better to first forge a sturdy metal and then, thanks to some handy laser and smart thinking, it becomes easy to make a sophisticated weapon." The old man said and fished out something from the warehouse.

"This baby is one of them. Ya heard of transforming weapons, right? Or ya livin under a rock?" The old man asked rhetorically.

Anyone would know about transformative weapons.

Their cool premise and design alone not only boosted the prowess of many huntsmen but also gave dreams to many young souls.

Some blacksmiths preferred to keep the old traditions.

The old man took Red to a dining table upstairs and kept on blabbering how foolish those people were.

Like that, with some tremendous luck.

Red somehow gained a tiny foothold that he might use to spring up in the future...

Days flew by and Red began to accept his current identity.

Thanks to some generosity from that old man who never told him his name.

Red got a library card and spent a lot of his free time there. Whenever he had free time, he'd be there, sometimes forgetting to eat or come to the shop.

First, he searched the most basic things of the human history. From the wars, to even specific political groups.

Then he took a look at something that might get him home.

Remnant tales of twin gods, those twisted creatures called Grimm.

Red never gave up on finding a way home.

Different world rules, but supernatural, remained the same. He believed that those tales couldn't be just that.

Or at least some of them must hold some truth to them. The tales of Ever After and Twin Gods shining the brightest amongst the collections.

He wasn't delusional, right?

World travel...