Time.
In the void, it was meaningless.
But John had made do.
By counting how many episodes of Pokémon he had replayed, he guessed it had been over a year—give or take. The mental streaming room he created was a comforting sanctuary. Plush beanbags, glowing screen, and endless adventures playing out before him, over and over again.
He never tired of Pokémon.
But even the most beloved stories could grow stale with no new input.
As the screen faded to black after yet another rerun, John leaned back and stared into the dark expanse of his mental domain. The soft hum of silence filled the air.
"I love this... but this can't be it," he muttered to himself, fingers tapping against his knee. "There's gotta be more I can do."
He stood.
For the first time in a long while, he didn't return to the cozy viewing room. Instead, he focused, remembering the flashes of movement, fire, and fury from one of his favorite battle scenes—Ash's Greninja, locked in fierce combat with Alain's Mega Charizard X. The bond evolution. The synchronized strikes. The energy swirling around them like twin storms.
"Can I... recreate that?"
He closed his eyes, concentrating on every frame, every motion, every detail.
Greninja's flurry of water-sheathed strikes. Charizard's blistering flamethrowers. The battlefield scorched, water vapor hissing into the air. The aura of their connection radiating like two souls merged into one.
When he opened his eyes, the arena had formed before him.
The scenery was so vivid he forgot he wasn't alive. Dirt cracked beneath their feet. Fire crackled from Charizard's mouth. Water dripped from Greninja's blades. Their movements were fluid, deadly, beautiful.
John froze in awe.
"It's... perfect."
He hadn't just remembered it—he relived it. The image had burned into his mind over a thousand replays, and now it danced before him, vibrant and alive.
Then a thought sparked in the depths of his mind.
What if I could do more than watch? What if I could learn? Actually train?
What if he could master the fighting styles he had admired for years—every move from every anime he'd ever watched, every martial art, every game weapon, every motion committed to memory?
A slow, almost dangerous grin spread across his face.
"That would be awesome."
He raised his hand. The world shifted.
The arena remained to his right, Pokémon projections locked in battle, but now new structures rose in the distance. A sprawling combat field. A simulation chamber. Rooms that glowed with different elemental auras—fire, water, ice, lightning, earth, and wind. His training grounds.
His mindscape had evolved.
He spent what could've been days—or maybe weeks—building environments, copying terrains, and filling them with every training tool and obstacle he could imagine.
In his elemental zone, he conjured terrain to challenge his focus: scorching deserts of flame, slippery fields of ice, crushing pressure from gravity zones. At first, he felt nothing. No heat, no cold, no resistance. A mind without a body can't feel.
But as time dragged on, that changed.
He began to sense things.
Just faintly at first. A tingle of warmth. A rush of chill. The sensation of effort as he moved. It was like a muscle being slowly awakened. The more he trained, the more the illusion became real.
Then came the weapons.
He conjured the infamous Chain Blades of Kratos, the searing fire sparking along the chains as he whipped them through the air. At first, they were clumsy. Unwieldy. But with each failure, he adapted. His movements grew sharper. Precision replaced wild strikes.
It was not easy.
He couldn't just snap his fingers and master them. His own mind forced him to earn each skill.
Swing after swing. Step after step.
Trees shattered beneath his strikes—only to respawn seconds later. Obstacles returned just as fast as they were destroyed. There were no shortcuts. Every technique had to be earned.
And he learned them all: the scythe, the dagger, the whip, the chain. From graceful spins to brutal executions, he trained without end.
But...
Something felt wrong.
Whenever he fought, he felt incomplete. The blades were cool. The motions were impressive. But deep in his core, something didn't fit.
"I wanted to learn these... but they're not mine," he whispered, lowering the burning chains. "I don't know what is... but this isn't it."
He sighed, dismissing the weapons in a flicker of thought.
Then, something else dawned on him.
Even after years—if you could call it that—of non-stop training, he had never fought anyone. No real opponent. No unpredictability. No threat of failure or danger.
He knew how to block, parry, strike, and move. But he didn't know how to react. How to think on the fly. He didn't have experience—just technique.
"Training is one thing," he said aloud. "But battle... is something else."
Still, he kept pushing forward. He had time. Endless time.
One day, maybe, he'd figure out how to simulate an opponent. But for now, he mastered everything else he could.
He turned and looked across his mental domain. It was massive. Almost too big.
The greatest detective sherlock holmes had mind palaces the size of a single library. John's stretched across fields, mountains, caverns of knowledge and skill—bigger than anything he could've imagined back on Earth.
Maybe that was the problem.
His emotions had started to wane.
Joy, sadness, even anger... they came less frequently now. Like echoes in a deep cave. He still remembered what it felt like to laugh or cry, but the feeling itself was slipping away—dulled by time and solitude.
He gazed at the weapon chamber and the arena beyond it, where a projected Nidorino lunged at a Beedrill in pixel-perfect motion.
To his left, the elemental zones shimmered with unnatural weather. Lightning struck water. Wind howled against stone. It was all perfect.
But perfection... was cold.
Still, he pressed on. He would master every skill. Every motion. Every element. He was determined.
One day, someone might find him.
One day, maybe he'd awaken again—not in this void, but in a world where the skills he earned could mean something.
But for now, he trained.
Because even if he was alone...
He would be ready.