The world smelled too real.

  Ren stirred weakly, coughing as fresh earth and wild grass filled his lungs. Morning mist clung to him like a second skin. His body ached — shallow cuts and bruises burned along his arms.

  Somewhere beyond the haze, a voice called out.

  "Hold still, boy."

  Heavy boots crunched over grass. Warm hands steadied him.

  Ren blinked against the sunlight, vision swimming. A man in a white coat stood over him — older, lined with years of wisdom and hardship, yet with eyes sharp and alert.

  The man studied him in silence for a long moment.

  "You're lucky. If wild Pokémon had found you first…"

  Ren couldn't answer. His tongue was dry. His mind was chaos.

  It was later — after warmth, food, and clean clothes — that the real questions began.

  Ren sat at a simple wooden table inside a back room of the lab, nursing a mug of tea that floated gently into his hands with a faint glow of psychic power.

  Across from him, Professor Samuel Oak leaned back in his chair, watching him with calm, sharp eyes.

  A tall Alakazam stood quietly nearby, two spoons hovering lazily around it, the faint shimmer of psychic energy distorting the air around its hands.

  It didn't look at Ren.

  It didn’t need to.

  Ren knew better.

  Alakazam was watching everything.

  The realization made the room feel just a little colder.

  Oak spoke at last, his voice mild.

  "You’re an odd one, lad. Found you half-dead on the borderlands, with no ID, no Pokédex, and no known origins."

  He took a slow sip of his tea, never breaking eye contact.

  "Do you remember anything?"

  Ren hesitated.

  Fragments flickered through his mind — strange cities, alien towers, names whispered on winds that no longer blew here.

  But nothing whole. Nothing real.

  "No," he said quietly. "Nothing."

  There was a soft clink of silver on porcelain.

  Ren caught a tiny glance — one of Alakazam’s spoons dipped briefly, a shimmer running along its outline.

  Oak’s expression didn't change.

  He simply gave a small hum of thought, nodding as if satisfied.

  The Professor set down his mug, leaned back casually.

  Without a word, Alakazam's form rippled — and with a faint pop of displaced air, the psychic creature vanished, teleporting out of the room.

  Ren exhaled softly, tension he hadn’t realized he was holding bleeding away.

  Only later — long after the conversation had ended — did he piece it together.

  The timing.

  The presence.

  The silent signals.

  Oak hadn’t just been making polite conversation.

  He had been weighing him — testing him with a psychic mind as sharp as a scalpel.

  And he had passed.

  Oak returned to the conversation without missing a beat.

  "No memory, no home. A stray, dropped at my doorstep."

  He chuckled softly, but there was no mockery in it.

  "The world isn't gentle with orphans, Ren. You'll need something to stand on."

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  From under the table, he pulled a heavy manila folder and placed it before Ren.

  The boy stared at it.

  At the bold letters stamped cleanly across the top.

  Name: Ren Oak.

  His breath caught.

  Oak leaned forward slightly, tone steady.

  "Consider it a fresh start."

  Ren swallowed hard, fingers trembling slightly as he touched the file.

  "Why?" he whispered. "Why help me?"

  Oak smiled — a small, tired thing that somehow filled the room with warmth.

  "Because once, long ago, I was a stray too. And someone gave me a second chance."

  He rose from the table, stretching his back with a soft grunt.

  "Besides," he added dryly, "the League has enough idiots running around without losing the smart ones."

  Ren blinked at him, startled — then a small, unwilling smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

  Maybe — just maybe — he had landed somewhere he could survive.

  Maybe even thrive.

  He closed the file carefully.

  "Ren Oak," he said, voice steadier now.

  The name felt heavy. Solid.

  Real.

  He would make it his own.

  Oak grinned.

  "Good lad."

  The wind rustled the tall grass behind the lab, carrying with it the dusk-song of nocturnal Pokémon waking for the night. Oak stood at the fence line, hands resting on the worn wood, eyes fixed on the horizon.

  Ren was still inside, probably cataloging spores or flipping through one of the field manuals Oak had left out, pretending not to be tired. The boy worked hard — too hard sometimes. Oak saw himself in that. Or maybe just what he used to be.

  He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a photograph, the edges curled with age. Five faces stared back at him, all younger than Ren was now. All grinning like fools. All gone, save him.

  He exhaled, long and slow. Memory was a cruel companion — it stayed when others didn’t.

  There had been a time when he was like Ren. Bright-eyed. Eager. Unafraid.

  Back then, the world hadn’t yet taught him the price of arrogance.

  He still remembered the first time he saw a trainer die. A girl from Saffron. Thrown off a cliff by an Onix during a storm. She had screamed once. Then silence. They had buried what they could find. The League issued a letter to her parents. Standard condolences. Standard denial of liability.

  He had wanted to quit then. To walk away from all of it.

  But he hadn’t.

  Instead, he learned. He endured. And eventually, he survived long enough to become the one others came to for answers.

  That was the hardest part. Outliving the ones worth saving.

  He looked back toward the lab, toward the faint golden light spilling from the window. Ren’s silhouette moved behind the glass.

  The boy reminded him why he stayed.

  Why he taught.

  The world didn’t need more corpses. It needed survivors who remembered how to be human.

  Kindness, he’d learned, wasn’t weakness. It was rebellion. A choice you made, even after the world tried to strip it from you.

  He pocketed the photo and turned back toward the lab.

  Time to check on Ren.

  Tomorrow, they’d go over field triage. Maybe a bit of battle theory too.

  He wouldn’t coddle the boy. But he’d make damn sure he was ready.

  Ready to live.

  Life in Pallet Town moved at a different rhythm.

  Ren spent the next two years under Professor Oak’s care, working quietly at the lab, studying the basics of survival, battling, and Pokémon behavior.

  He learned quickly that this world was not a soft one.

  Wild Pokémon were not gentle companions waiting for friendship — they were forces of nature, territorial and deadly.

  Trainer deaths were once common enough that they almost became expected.

  Oak explained it late one evening, the two of them sitting outside under the stars, a fire crackling between them.

  "Used to be," Oak said, voice low, "children as young as ten would take off on journeys. Alone. Dreaming of becoming champions."

  He shook his head slowly.

  "Too many didn’t come back."

  Ren listened, silent.

  Oak tossed a stick into the flames.

  "Eventually, the four major regions — Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh — realized things had to change."

  He glanced sideways at Ren.

  "They formed an alliance. Built the International Trainer Academy. Mandatory training, survival education, battle proficiency. No one leaves for the open world now without passing through it."

  Ren mulled it over.

  It made sense.

  This wasn't the world of games and cartoons.

  It was real. It was dangerous. It demanded respect.

  "How long is the Academy?" Ren asked quietly.

  "One year," Oak replied. "The International Academy is a one-year crucible, Ren. One year of survival training, battlecraft, strategy, and endurance. No one leaves for the open world without passing through it — and not everyone survives even that."

  Ren looked into the fire.

  At that moment, he decided:

  He would not be weak.

  He would not be forgotten.

  He would carve his name into this world, no matter what it took.

  The seasons turned.

  Ren grew stronger — in mind, in body, in understanding.

  The scars of his lost past faded, replaced by quiet purpose.

  When he turned fifteen, on a crisp spring morning, Oak called him outside.

  The Professor stood waiting near the lab courtyard, the rising sun throwing long shadows across the packed earth.

  A polished silver tray rested atop a simple stand beside him — three Pokéballs gleaming in the light.

  "Ren," Oak said, his voice carrying the weight of tradition, "today, you begin the next part of your journey."

  He gestured to the tray.

  "League regulations require that all cadets receive their first Pokémon at fifteen, half a year before the Academy's September intake. No more, no less."

  A faint smile touched the old man's lips.

  "You're no different."

  Ren stepped forward, heart pounding.

  He knew what waited before him:

  Bulbasaur: growth and resilience.

  Squirtle: adaptability and calm.

  Charmander: raw ambition and danger.

  There was no hesitation.

  There had never been.

  His hand closed over the third Pokéball — the one that pulsed faintly warm against his skin.

  Oak chuckled under his breath.

  "A hard path," he said. "But worthy of you."

  Ren pressed the button.

  A flash of white light — and there he was.

  Charmander stood before him, tail flame flickering bravely, head tilted in curiosity.

  Ren knelt down, extended a hand.

  Charmander sniffed it, then pressed his small claw into Ren’s palm.

  A bond formed — simple, silent, unbreakable.

  Ren smiled, heart pounding.

  "Hello," he said softly.

  Charmander chirped, tail burning a little brighter.

  And under the endless Kanto sky,

  a boy with no past,

  a firestarter by his side,

  took the first true step toward destiny.