This is being written for Pyroluminescene. I don't normally take requests anymore, but he asked for this idea last summer and so I finally got around to writing it this month. It'll be around eight chapters when done.
As always, I don't own anything but this keyboard.
RePlaced – Chapter 1
He stood in the door, staring at his room.
But of course, it wasn't his room any more, was it? His key still opened the front door, the kitchen still smelled of his mom's cooking, and the bedroom door still had the same dent at knee height from when they moved the dresser in. But the name, carefully arranged in the familiar Pidgey- and Rattata-print block letter stickers, wasn't his.
F I R E
What had happened when he had tried to catch that Pokemon off the coast of Cinnabar? One moment he had been surrounded by what he swore was the Northern Lights. The next he had awoken on the shore of Pallet, with no sign of his Pokemon or pack.
His fingers traced the peeling edges of the stickers.
He wasn't dead. Or maybe he was?
Everything was just a little too brightly colored. Like it was a little newer or a little more real than he remembered. That realness, in turn, gave everything an almost heavenly luster, as though this was all only an illusion.
A final dream before death?
It was all beyond confusing, but he wasn't going to get answers staring at his door.
It was time to open it and find out what was on the other side.
The bed was still tucked into the same corner, made carefully the way his mother had taught him, but not as crisply as when she made it herself. The posters on the wall were all in the right places, more or less, though overall they gave the feeling of being just a little too high, like he'd been taller when he pinned them up.
The first thing that seemed truly out of place was the game system sitting in front of the TV. He recognized it, but it was a newer one that had been released after he'd left on his journey. The idea that it might be a gift from his mom passed through his mind, but of course she wouldn't have set it up herself. Two controllers sat atop it, one plugged in, the way he'd kept his old Nintendo, but there was no dust as he'd expect from having been away for two years. In fact, in the whole room, only the TV seemed to have any sign of dirt or dust from the time the room had been unused - had his mom been cleaning it?
He remembered the photos downstairs. The ones he'd barely glanced at, because he never could bring himself to look at anything with his dad in it. The ones he hadn't thought to examine, because he hadn't yet seen the name on the door, because the feeling of unease and displacement hadn't had a chance to balloon into this knowledge that something was very, very wrong.
Red turned on his heel, abandoning the room and the sense of vertigo it instilled, and rushed back down the stairs. He no longer cared if anyone heard that he was here, even if the feeling of being a burglar in his own home had only grown.
His fingers closed around the frame before his eyes could focus on it, his thumb thankfully covering the face of the black-haired man he hadn't seen in half a decade. Not that it mattered right now. Who else was in the photo was entirely irrelevant compared to who wasn't.
He wasn't.
Himself, Red, replaced instead by a face that was similar enough for him to say it might be a long-lost brother – even a twin – and yet different enough that it was very definitely not him. The deep brown hair was the most obvious difference, matching his mother's shade, but it continued on in small details. The face was a little softer, the cheeks round not just from childhood but from smoother features. The nose was more pronounced, again resembling his white mother moreso than his Japanese father. The hairstyle, the lips, the eyebrows, those were all the same, right down to the same frustrated expression he'd worn in response to having to sit still on a fence long enough for the photo to be taken. If there was anything different there, it was too subtle for him to recognize in a photograph.
But the eyes. They were identical. Deep, mahogany brown that seemed to glow red in sunlight. Those were his, and his alone. Seeing them on another's face made his chest tighten past the point of pain, his hand shaking as though the photo weighed more than his wrist could bear.
The word "replaced" crossed his mind, but before he could decide whether to cry, to scream, or to simply smash the photo in rage, he heard a noise behind him.
A key in a door. Accompanying it, muffled by the wood, his mother's cheerful voice, and a deeper one he could just barely recognize as Professor Oak's.
Panicking, he bolted, barely remembering to drop the photo back on the end table, though he failed to place it upright. There was no time to get upstairs, and the back door would take too long to unlock, so he went for the one hiding place he knew of on the first floor. It was too warm outside for anyone to need the coat closet, so he'd be safe there.
He shut the door, pressing himself in between a rolled up plastic pool and his mom's favorite bidoof-fur coat, just in time to hear the front door swing open.
"-I really am thankful for the offer, but I just don't think I have the time to tend a garden clear out at your lab, Samuel."
"Well it was worth a try. You can't fault me for wanting to have a larger supply of your tomatoes though. They are the best!"
"It's not too late for me to plant another row. I could do just one row of pumpkins this year."
"It's quite tempting, but then there's that pumpkin soup my granddaughter makes... It's what makes November, November!"
Their voices traveled across the room from the door to the kitchen, their every word hanging in Red's mind even as the pounding of his heart vied for his attention. He finally managed a shaky breath once they passed the closet.
"If I could borrow a diglett then I might be able to do one more..."
Her voice trailed off, just a few feet away, and there was a slight clicking noise. It was the fallen photo, he was sure of it.
"Is something wrong?"
He heard her familiar sigh, the one she only did when she thought he wasn't listening. "Just this photo. He's always knocking it over... just because it has his father in it."
"Boys will be boys," the Professor responded sagely.
"On the bright side, that must mean he's back from that delivery already!"
Red braced himself for the shout that followed, but there was really no way he could prepare for it properly. To hear his mother's voice calling another name like it was his own...
"Fire! Fire, I'm home! Come down and say hello, Professor Oak is here!"
But of course there was no answer, because her son wasn't home. He was still off on some delivery, and the only person here was a teenager who, mysteriously, wasn't actually her son –even though he was quite sure he had been just the day before.
Replaced.
He had dealt with dozens of trials on his journey, from gym battles to the tricks and attacks of psychic and ghost type pokemon. Once, he'd even stumbled upon a legendary so powerful that he'd found himself thrown back in time for a few days.
Maybe this was like that. Another time and place.
One hauntingly similar to his own.
He had to figure out how to get out of here, to get back to where he belonged.
"I don't think he's here," his mother's voice said, disappointed.
"No, I guess not. I didn't see his bicycle outside when we came in."
For now he'd have to wait until it was safe to escape. But that would give him time to think.