The last thing he noticed was how ordinary everything felt.
The bus smelled faintly of damp fabric and old plastic, the kind that absorbed years of spilled tea and rain-soaked clothes without ever letting them go. Yellow light flickered overhead, tired and inconsistent, as the vehicle rattled along a road he had traveled too many times to count. Outside, rain traced uneven paths down the windows, blurring streetlights into long, trembling streaks.
He wasn't thinking about anything important.
That, more than anything else, struck him later as unfair.
No final revelation came. No sudden clarity about life, no montage of memories neatly arranging themselves into meaning. He was half-asleep, head tilted toward the glass, phone dead in his pocket, thoughts drifting without direction. Tomorrow existed in his mind only as a vague obligation—wake up, eat something, keep going.
The bus lurched.
There was a sound—metal protesting, tires screaming—and then the sensation of weight vanishing, like the ground itself had decided it was done holding things up.
Pain arrived briefly, sharp and disorganized, and then—
Nothing.
No darkness. No peace. Just absence.
---
Cold returned first.
Not the biting cold of wind or winter, but something heavier, denser. It pressed against him from all sides, an inescapable embrace that carried weight and resistance. His first instinct was to breathe in—and panic surged violently as his chest refused to expand.
Water filled his mouth.
He thrashed, or tried to. His body responded wrong. Too much movement for too little intent, as though every effort echoed outward in uncontrolled ripples. His limbs—were there limbs?—failed to move independently. Sensation flooded him from unfamiliar places, each twitch sending his entire form into motion.
*I'm drowning.*
The thought was sharp, human, desperate.
But the panic didn't crescendo into suffocation.
It stalled.
Something adjusted.
The burning in his chest eased, replaced by a strange, hollow calm. Water flowed in and out of him, not violently, not painfully, but naturally—like a rhythm he had always known and somehow forgotten.
He stopped struggling.
Awareness settled slowly, cautiously, like an animal testing unfamiliar ground.
Light filtered down from above, broken and wavering. The world around him was a blur of muted greens and browns, thick with drifting particles that caught the light before sinking again. The water smelled—no, *felt*—rich with minerals and decay, old and stagnant and alive all at once.
He moved.
Not an arm. Not a leg.
His entire body curved, muscles contracting along a single, continuous line. The sensation was alien and yet disturbingly intuitive, as though the instructions had been waiting patiently for him to notice them.
*This isn't a dream.*
Dreams did not come with resistance like this. They didn't demand effort to move, didn't weigh on the skin—or scales.
Scales.
The word surfaced unbidden, carrying with it a sickening sense of certainty.
He twisted again, slower this time, and caught sight of himself in the faint reflection cast by a smooth stone embedded in the riverbed.
Long. Thin. Uneven.
Dull, washed-out scales clung to a narrow body, their color an unremarkable mix of brown and faded orange, like rust left too long in water. His fins were ragged, asymmetrical, trembling slightly even when he held still. His mouth curved downward naturally, giving him an expression that looked perpetually apologetic.
Recognition hit him harder than any pain had.
A **Feebas**.
The name carried weight. Context. Memory.
Pokémon.
The realization didn't arrive with wonder or excitement. It arrived like a verdict.
Of all the creatures he could have become—of all the bright, powerful, beloved Pokémon that filled games, shows, and childhood imagination—this was what he had been given.
A Feebas.
Notorious. Mocked. Ignored.
The weak fish Pokémon that trainers avoided unless they were desperate or foolish. The one children complained about when it appeared in old, tedious fishing routes. The one whose only claim to fame was what it *might* become—if conditions were perfect and patience infinite.
He drifted there, suspended just above the riverbed, mind reeling.
*I died,* he thought dimly. *And this is what came after.*
No voice welcomed him. No explanation followed. There was no glowing interface, no divine presence offering terms and conditions.
Just water.
And hunger.
It crept in quietly, a low ache that radiated through his small body. Unlike human hunger, it didn't come with thoughts of meals or taste. It was a simple, insistent pull, directing him toward the thin layer of algae clinging to submerged rocks.
Instinct nudged him forward.
He resisted for half a second—then gave in.
Feeding felt humiliating, though there was no one to see it. He scraped at the rock clumsily, mouth working at the thin growth. The taste was bitter and earthy, and yet his body responded eagerly, drawing what little nourishment it could from the meager source.
*This is survival,* he realized. *Nothing more.*
Movement in the water sent a ripple of fear through him.
A shadow passed overhead, large and fast, scattering sediment and sending smaller Pokémon darting for cover. His body reacted before his thoughts could catch up, pressing itself flat against the riverbed, fins tucked close.
The shadow moved on.
His heart—did he still have a heart?—slowed gradually.
He understood then that this world was not waiting to accommodate his confusion. Whatever had happened, whatever cosmic mistake or cruel joke had placed him here, the river did not care.
Time passed. Or perhaps it didn't. Without the sun clearly visible, without hunger tied to hours or sleep, moments stretched and compressed unpredictably. He learned by necessity—how to angle himself against the current to avoid being swept away, how to recognize the vibrations that meant danger versus those that meant nothing at all.
He also learned how small he was.
Other Pokémon occupied the river. Goldeen flashed silver as they moved in loose groups, confident and quick. A Corphish claimed a cluster of rocks aggressively, snapping at anything that drifted too close. Once, far in the distance, the water seemed to darken as something massive passed through, its presence bending the current itself.
He stayed out of their way.
Not because he wanted to.
Because he had to.
At one point, as the light above shifted and dimmed, he sensed movement near the surface—sharp, erratic disturbances that didn't belong to any Pokémon he recognized.
Voices filtered faintly through the water, distorted but unmistakably human.
He froze.
Shapes appeared above, silhouettes broken by the rippling surface. Long rods dipped into the water, lines trailing down like pale threads. Something splashed nearby, sending vibrations through the river.
A fishing lure.
His mind raced. *They could see me. They could catch me.*
Hope flared before he could stop it—irrational, sudden, desperate.
Then he heard it.
"Ugh. Another Feebas."
The words were muffled, but clear enough.
"No point. They're everywhere here."
A shadow passed directly above him. He felt the pull of displaced water as something large moved closer, then away.
No Poké Ball descended. No curious gaze lingered.
They left.
The hope collapsed inward, leaving something hollow and bitter in its place.
*Even now,* he thought, *I'm not worth stopping for.*
The current nudged him gently, as if urging him to keep moving, to rejoin the mindless rhythm of the river. For a long moment, he considered letting it take him—letting instinct swallow thought, letting memory erode until there was nothing left to hurt.
But somewhere beneath the fear and the disappointment, something stubborn remained.
He remembered rain on a bus window. He remembered being bored, being tired, being human.
And he wasn't ready to let that go.
He turned slowly, deliberately, and swam—not toward the surface, not toward the shore, but deeper into the river, where the water pressed heavier and the light thinned.
If this was his beginning, then he would face it with open eyes.
Even as a Feebas.
Even alone.
The river closed around him, indifferent and endless, and carried him forward into whatever came next.