The young boy snapped to with a gasp, that quickly turned into a coughing fit. Everything hurt and he was desperately fatigued. He was also very confused as he looked around. 'I'm in a forest? What the fuck?' Was his first thought, the second was 'Why does everything fucking hurt?!'
He tried standing and the world started swimming, making him collapse back to the ground. 'Maybe not standing, just lying here is ok...' Then a horrible realization came over him as four years of feeble memories swam to the surface of his mind. As he reviewed his memories; panic set in as his head swam with anxiety. He quickly began to hyperventilate and proceeded to throw up everything in his stomach.
He laid back, eyes wide and unseeing trying to calm his breathing. 'This is not the fucking time to lose it, there's too much at stake here!' he admonished himself. If he learned anything in his long life, it was how to deal with anxiety and overwhelming situations. 'Though, this is definitely a new kind of overwhelming!' he thought to himself.
'I died...', this thought brought a new wave of panic and nausea through him. 'I died and now I'm here, in a four year old boy's body. I died and now I'm in a fucking death world filled with horrors!' he closed his eyes and started taking deep breaths in through his nose, slowly exhaling through his mouth. When his heart stopped racing as much, and the nausea died away, he opened his eyes and sat up.
'I died and now I'm here in the world of Pokémon, in the body of a four year old Giovanni. Or am I a four year old Giovanni with the memories from another life? Why? How did this happen?' He glanced around at the forest, remembering his mother and her Nidoqueen were here too. Then he remembered the beam of light and knew it had to have been a hyper beam. One of the most devastating moves that a Pokémon could use.
Clenching his eyes and holding his head in his hands, he realized that not only was his mind still overwhelmed with everything, but his young body made the myriad of emotions tearing through him almost unmanageable. Feeling stable enough to stand, he did so, slowly. He realized the sounds of battle around him were dying away, bringing an unholy silence to the dark forest. He stumbled over to where a tunnel had been carved through the thick trees and foliage hoping to find someone who was friendly toward him, namely his "mother" or her Nidoqueen.
He spotted both, not far away and walked slowly over to their unmoving bodies. An awful stench filled his nose as he got closer to Nidoqueen. She was burned horribly, missing her left shoulder and arm. The horrible wound was cauterized from the heat of the hyper beam, he detachedly observed that hyper beam must have properties akin to plasma somehow with the way the burn looked.
He turned from the very dead Nidoqueen, noting to himself that he was very much so pulling an old trauma trick from his past life. Suppress and detach so he could still function. Healthy? No. But in this situation, he didn't care anymore. This is beyond any expectation he had of an afterlife. He had always assumed once you died, you returned to the background energy of the universe. These thoughts kept spiraling in his head until he laid eyes on his "mother", at which point they went into the trauma induced suppression with everything else.
She laid there, bloody, broken, yet breathing raggedly. He tentatively moved towards her and kneeled at her side, moving a hand to her neck to check her pulse. Her eyes snapped open and her hand shot out grabbing his, almost causing him to tumble over backwards in surprise.
"Gio... I'm so s-sorry..." her breathing grew more ragged as she tried to gather the energy to speak. I glanced at her wounds, she was bleeding profusely. "F-find y-your father, Gio, t-tell h-him I tried. I l-love..." she trailed off, her eyes losing the light of life within them. Her hand loosened and fell from his, the slight thud against the ground as loud as a slammed door in the now deathly quiet forest.
"Well, shit." he whispered to himself, just kneeling there staring at the woman's now dim eyes. He reached out and lightly closed her eyes. Closing his own, he stayed kneeling. Unknowing and uncaring of how much time had passed, he realized he needed to get out of here. As he moved to stand, he heard snuffling sounds behind him.
Quickly standing and turning around, he came face to face with a very large dog-like creature. It had bright amber eyes, stood at least two meters more than his current meter height, and with its burnt orange and black coloring, could only be an Arcanine. He just stood there, surely staring at his death. 'Oddly', he thought to himself, 'I'm not scared. I guess dying once got me over any kind of fear of death.'
The Arcanine leaned forward and sniffed him all over, before licking his face urgently. He just stood there realizing this Arcanine was friendly and seemed somewhat familiar somehow. He slowly brought his hands up to either side of the Arcanine and stroked his very fluffy coat, idly noting that there was blood streaked through his coat, but none of it seemed to be his own.
Over the sounds of Arcanine licking and nuzzling him, he heard the thump-thump of heavy boots running through the forest getting louder and realized that meant whoever it was, was getting closer. A tall man with jet black hair, dark brown eyes, pale skin, clean shaven, wearing some kind of military officer's uniform burst into the clearing.
The man stumbled forward, ignoring me entirely and fell to his knees with a loud wail of pain that tore through the forest and caused me to somewhat snap out of the detached state I was in. I realized this is my "father" in this world, murky as my memories were - there were not a lot of them around this man. It seemed he was not home often at all. Thus, ignoring me didn't surprise me. Though with the unstable emotions of my young body, it still hurt. I shook my head at that, trying to clear the mental fog and think straight.
Before I got the chance to, Arcanine seeing his master wailing, started to howl. This struck a chord deep within me and I felt the sadness conveyed through the howl. Whether it was from empathy for his master or for my mother being dead, I knew not. I only have a handful of memories of Arcanine and my "father", and none of them were anything special. My current opinion of him was that he sucked as a father, but maybe he was a good partner to my "mother" at least? I didn't know, and honestly could not bring myself to care. I'm an old man in a four year old's body, or a four year old who's gone insane… I can't even remember my own name from my past life, I'm so fucked... I clenched my eyes again and started the calming breathing exercises again to stop the spiraling thoughts. 'I can fall apart later, focus for now.'
The man, I realized I didn't even know his name, suddenly stood up and grabbed a small brown and white ball from his bandolier, which I realized were the old apricorn version of Poké Balls. He pushed the button and an extremely large metallic bird appeared from the rainbow of lights, it looked nothing like what I had seen in my past life the way the Pokémon appeared. My eyes widened as I realized he was about to just leave me here, "Hey!" I yelled at his back while he walked towards what must be a Skarmory, "what about me...?" I started off yelling and then trailed off at the look he gave me as he turned towards me. It was one of rage and hate, this surprised the hell out of me, wasn't he supposed to be my father?
"You worthless little shit!" He roared as he started advancing on me. I had little time to react before he was on me, hands wrapped around my tiny neck as he lifted me easily. I only had time to think, 'Well, this life didn't last long, at least it seems to be a universal truth, I'm never going to have a good father', when there was a dangerous-sounding growl that made my hair stand on end. Arcanine was still standing next to me, he had his teeth bared and was giving my "father" a look that almost had me pissing my pants in fear.
He loosened his hands and I dropped to the ground, rubbing my neck and coughing. Arcanine advanced on him moving between me and my "father". There was a look of pure disbelief on his face that quickly turned into a scowl. He hopped backward somehow, no ordinary human could've covered that distance that fast and proceeded to leap up onto Skarmory. Arcanine barked at him, I could almost feel what he was saying, it felt like "Back off/I'm disappointed in you/fuck off and die". Though as my "father's" scowl deepened, I think it was definitely more along the lines of "fuck off you utter disappointment" - but that could have been wishful thinking.
"She said to tell you she tried, asshole!" I screamed at him. The words flew out of my mouth before I recognized I was screaming and sounding entirely wrong coming from a four year old. I clenched my fists, dammit, I really need to get control of myself now!
The man had a truly murderous look on his face now as he glared at me. A red aura started leaking from around him as I felt a huge amount of pressure all around me, pressing down on me, trying to force me to submit.
Arcanine started emitting an aura of red and orange as his growls deepened, pushing me behind him with his paw. The man roared wordlessly as he tore another old style Pokéball off of his bandolier, showed it to Arcanine and broke it in half with a monstrous look on his face. Then without another look, he left on the back of his Skarmory.