Rule One: My goal is to become a Pokémon Master, not a "Flesh Collector."
Rule Two: My partner is Pikachu. It only says "Pika Pika." If it starts talking, run away immediately.
Rule Three: The Pokédex is for recording data, not for recording "recipes" and "optimal dismemberment procedures."
Rule Four: Professor Oak is a kind Pokémon scholar. He studies evolution, not "aberration." If he shows you a stitched-together Pokémon, praise his "masterpiece."
Rule Five: Remember, Pokémon battles are for honor, not for "devouring" the loser.
Red's eyes snapped open.
The ceiling above him was unfamiliar—white plaster with a hairline crack running from corner to corner like a lightning bolt frozen in time. His head throbbed with a dull, persistent ache, as if someone had stuffed his skull full of cotton and set it on fire. Fragments of text swirled through his consciousness, blood-red words that refused to fade even as he blinked away the fog of unconsciousness.
He groaned and pushed himself upright, pressing the heels of his palms against his temples. The pressure helped, but only marginally. His surroundings slowly came into focus.
A single bed with plain white sheets. A desk pushed against the wall, cluttered with papers and books he didn't remember reading. A red and white cap sat perched on the corner of the desk like it had been carefully placed there. Next to it, a bright red backpack leaned against the chair, its straps hanging loose.
Everything felt simultaneously familiar and alien, like walking into a childhood bedroom after twenty years away.
Red's gaze drifted to the space beside his pillow.
A ball of yellow fur rose and fell with steady, mechanical breaths. Long ears lay flat against a round head. A lightning bolt-shaped tail dangled over the edge of the mattress, swaying ever so slightly with each rhythmic rise and fall of the creature's chest.
Pikachu.
Those iconic red cheeks and adorable proportions sent a wave of relief washing through Red's chest. The tension in his shoulders eased fractionally.
"Thank god," he muttered, exhaling a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "It's the Pokémon world."
As someone who'd spent countless hours playing the games, browsing forums, and debating team compositions with other fans online, landing in what the internet universally called a "retirement paradise" felt like winning the lottery. No more grinding through a dead-end job. No more bills and responsibilities and the crushing weight of adult mediocrity. Just adventure, friendship, and a world where dreams actually meant something.
He reached out tentatively, fingers stretching toward the sleeping Pikachu. His hand hovered in the air for a moment before gently making contact with the yellow fur.
"Hey there, buddy," Red whispered, a genuine smile tugging at his lips. "Looks like we're partners now."
The instant his fingertip brushed against the creature's coat, Red froze.
Something was wrong.
The texture was all wrong. Instead of the soft, plush fur he'd expected—the kind you'd find on a well-groomed house cat—the surface felt rough and papery. Dry. Like touching something that had been left out in the sun too long. Like running your fingers over the pelt of a taxidermied animal, preserved but lifeless.
Red's smile faltered. A small knot of unease twisted in his gut.
Maybe it was sick? Maybe Pokémon fur just felt different than he'd imagined?
He leaned closer, squinting at the creature's back, searching for any obvious signs of illness.
Then the world glitched.
There was no other word for it. Reality stuttered like a corrupted video file, colors draining from his vision as if someone had pulled the saturation slider down to zero. The warm, sunlit bedroom transformed in the span of a single heartbeat. The cheerful yellow walls turned gray and lifeless. The bright morning light streaming through the window vanished, replaced by an oppressive, overcast gloom that seemed to press against the glass from outside.
The wallpaper began to peel. Curls of faded paper lifted away from the walls, revealing patches of sickly yellow-brown mold underneath. The stains spread like bruises across diseased skin, pulsing faintly as if something lived within them.
The air changed too.
Gone was the clean, slightly dusty smell of a lived-in bedroom. In its place came something far worse—a thick, cloying stench that coated the back of Red's throat and made his stomach lurch. It smelled like rot. Like meat left out in the summer heat for days, fermenting and liquefying in its own juices. Sweet and putrid and utterly wrong.
Red's heart slammed against his ribs. Ice flooded his veins. His breath came in short, shallow gasps that did nothing to calm the animal panic screaming through his nervous system.
Slowly, against every instinct telling him to look away, Red's gaze slid back to the creature beside him.
The "Pikachu" hadn't moved. It still lay in the same position, chest rising and falling with that same mechanical rhythm. But something about its shape had changed. The body looked swollen now, bloated in a way that made Red's skin crawl. The yellow fur covering its back no longer appeared uniform. Instead, it had a patchwork quality—different shades of yellow stitched together with thick black thread that looked disturbingly like coarse hair. Dark red liquid seeped from the seams where the pieces met, staining the surrounding fur in spreading circles.
"Pikachu?" Red's voice cracked. The word came out as barely more than a whisper, dry and trembling.
The yellow mass shifted.
It turned its head. Slowly. Deliberately.
Where there should have been cute, button-black eyes, Red found only two empty sockets—bottomless voids that seemed to pull at his vision like event horizons. The edges of those hollow pits were ringed with swollen, angry red tissue that glistened wetly in the dim light. Granulation tissue, Red's mind supplied helplessly, the kind that grows around infected wounds.
The creature's mouth was wrong too. So terribly, fundamentally wrong. Instead of the small, W-shaped opening that should have given Pikachu its characteristic adorable expression, the jaw had split open impossibly wide. The tear extended from ear to ear, revealing not a tongue or throat but a spiraling tunnel of needle-sharp teeth. Row after row of jagged points descended into darkness like the gullet of some deep-sea horror, each tooth dripping with clear, viscous saliva.
A drop of that fluid fell onto the bedsheet. It hissed on contact, eating through the fabric with a faint sizzling sound.
The thing wearing Pikachu's skin stared at Red with those empty sockets.
Red's mind raced, grasping desperately for any rational explanation.
It's not real. It can't be real. This is a hallucination. You hit your head when you woke up. You're dreaming. You're—
He squeezed his eyes shut so hard that stars burst across his vision. His fingers found his thigh and pinched viciously, nails digging into skin until sharp pain lanced up his leg.
The scene didn't change.
When Red opened his eyes again, he found himself back in the normal bedroom. Sunlight streamed through clean windows. The wallpaper hung smooth and unblemished against the walls. The air smelled faintly of laundry detergent and nothing else.
The Pikachu tilted its head, regarding him with wide, innocent eyes that sparkled with intelligence and warmth. Its little mouth pursed in what looked like confusion, as if wondering why its new trainer was drenched in cold sweat and shaking like a leaf.
"God," Red gasped, sucking in lungfuls of blessedly clean air. "Oh god."
If he'd been an ordinary person—someone who'd never encountered anything stranger than a vivid nightmare—he might have written the whole thing off as a sleep-deprived hallucination. His brain playing tricks after the trauma of suddenly waking up in a different world.
But Red wasn't ordinary. Not anymore.
That feeling—the primal, bone-deep terror of being in the presence of an apex predator—couldn't be faked. Every cell in his body had been screaming at him to run, to hide, to do anything except stay in that room with that thing. His hands still trembled with adrenaline. His heart still hammered against his ribs like it wanted to escape his chest.
He stared at the "cute" Pikachu sitting beside him.
It was too still. Too perfect. Like a taxidermy mount arranged in a lifelike pose but lacking that indefinable quality of life that separated the quick from the dead. Even its breathing seemed mechanical, the rise and fall of its chest timed with unnatural precision.
And that texture. That horrible, dry, papery texture that had nothing to do with living fur.
The blood-red text exploded across Red's vision again, searing itself into his consciousness.
Rule Two: My partner is Pikachu. It only says "Pika Pika." If it starts talking, run away immediately.
The words dripped and ran like fresh blood, the warning impossible to ignore.
Red's fingers slowly curled into the bedsheet, gripping the fabric tight enough to make his knuckles go white. Every muscle in his body tensed. His legs coiled beneath him, ready to launch him off the bed and toward the door at the first sign of danger.
"Pi... ka?"
The sound was familiar—high-pitched, almost musical. Exactly like the games and anime.
Red didn't relax. Couldn't relax.
Because he'd seen it. The way Pikachu's red cheeks had puffed out oddly, as if something squirmed beneath the skin. As if the sound hadn't come from vocal cords at all, but from something else wearing a Pikachu suit and trying its best to imitate the proper noises.
The sound changed.
It started as that same innocent chirp, but then it degraded. Deepened. Became wet and organic, like meat slapping against meat. Like a lamprey's circular mouth trying to form human words through rows of inward-pointing teeth.
"Mas... ter..."
Red's vision tunneled. Time seemed to slow as pure, undiluted horror crashed over him in waves.
Pikachu's long ears folded backward—not naturally, but as if the bones inside them had suddenly snapped. They hung limp and broken against the creature's skull. The skin of its face began to ripple and convulse, muscles twitching beneath the surface. The corners of its mouth started to tear. Slowly. Deliberately. The flesh split with tiny wet sounds, revealing the truth underneath the disguise.
What Red had thought was a mouth was actually a fissure that ran across half the creature's skull. As it opened wider, he could see that the entire structure was wrong. Rows of blood-flecked needle teeth unfolded like the petals of some grotesque flower, spiraling down into a throat that seemed to have no end.
"You... smell... good..."
The words oozed out of that nightmare maw—thick, viscous, hungry. Each syllable dripped with barely restrained desire. This thing didn't just want to hurt him.
It wanted to eat him.
Red's survival instincts overrode everything else. Pokémon Master? Dignity as a transmigrator who should have plot armor and cheat abilities? None of it mattered. The only thing that mattered was the screaming certainty in his hindbrain that told him if he didn't move right now, he was going to die.
This wasn't the Pokémon world.
This was hell wearing Pokémon's skin.
Red's legs tensed, muscles coiling to launch him toward the door—
Click.
The sound of the doorknob turning cut through the silence like a gunshot.
Red's body locked up mid-motion, frozen between the bed and escape. His heart stuttered in his chest.
The door swung open with a faint creak.
A figure stepped into the room. White lab coat. Gray hair neatly combed. A kind, grandfatherly face lined with wrinkles that spoke of a life spent smiling. Wire-rimmed glasses perched on a distinguished nose. A clipboard tucked under one arm.
Professor Oak.
"Oh, Red! You're awake."
The professor's voice was warm and mellow, carrying exactly the sort of gentle concern you'd expect from a beloved mentor figure. He reached up to adjust his glasses, and the light caught the lenses at just the right angle to turn them opaque, hiding his eyes behind two circles of reflected glare.
"It seems you and your new partner are getting along well."
The thing that had been about to devour Red froze.
Its impossibly wide mouth snapped shut with an audible click, teeth folding back into wherever they'd come from. The torn flesh of its face pulled itself together like elastic rubber, seams vanishing as if they'd never existed. The broken ears straightened with small popping sounds, bones resetting themselves with disturbing ease. In less than a second, the nightmare creature had transformed back into an adorable yellow mouse.
It even nuzzled affectionately against the back of Red's hand, making a sweet little "Pika~chu~" sound that would have melted hearts anywhere else.
Only the cold, sticky residue left on Red's skin—half saliva, half something worse—proved that what he'd seen had been real.
Professor Oak walked closer, his dress shoes clicking softly against the wooden floor. His gaze swept over Red's pale, sweat-drenched face before sliding meaningfully toward the Pikachu.
"What's wrong?" Oak's smile didn't waver. "You look pale. Are you feeling alright?"
He came to stand beside the bed, looking down at Red with those kind, unreadable eyes.
Rule Four: Professor Oak is a kind Pokémon scholar. He studies evolution, not "aberration." If he shows you a stitched-together Pokémon, praise his "masterpiece."
The rule crashed through Red's mind like a hammer, making his vision swim.
The door was blocked. Professor Oak stood between him and the only exit. If Red didn't play along—if he broke the rules—then this kindly old man was probably far more dangerous than the man-eating Pikachu currently pretending to be harmless.
Red's throat clicked as he swallowed. His mouth had gone completely dry.
"It's... nothing, Professor." The words came out strangled. He forced his facial muscles into something approximating a smile, though the expression felt more like a grimace. "Just... just a little disoriented from waking up, that's all."
Professor Oak didn't respond immediately. He simply stared down at Red with that unchanging smile, the silence stretching between them like taffy. The moment lasted several seconds—or maybe several hours; Red couldn't tell anymore. Time felt slippery in this place.
Red slowly turned his head. Every instinct screamed at him not to look, not to acknowledge the creature sitting inches away from him. But the rule was clear.
He looked at the monster wearing Pikachu's skin.
It stared back with those big, innocent eyes.
"It's... it's perfect," Red forced out. The words tasted like ash in his mouth. "Really. Perfect."
For a long, terrible moment, nothing happened.
Then Professor Oak's smile deepened.
"Very good." The professor's voice carried a note of satisfaction that made Red's skin crawl. "Since you like it so much, then you should start your journey together with it. After all..." Oak's hand came to rest on Red's shoulder, fingers squeezing gently. "That's what Pokémon trainers do, isn't it? They bond with their partners."
Red managed a jerky nod, not trusting himself to speak.
"Wonderful." Professor Oak straightened, adjusting his clipboard. "I'll let you two get better acquainted, then. Your journey begins today, Red. I'm sure you'll make me very proud."
He turned and walked toward the door, shoes clicking against the floor with the same measured rhythm.
Just before leaving, Oak paused in the doorway. He glanced back over his shoulder, glasses catching the light again.
"Oh, and Red? Remember—Pikachu is your friend. Always listen to what it has to say."
The door clicked shut behind him.
Red sat frozen on the bed, heart hammering, as the "adorable" Pikachu beside him tilted its head and made another sweet, harmless sound.
"Pika?"
Red didn't move. Didn't breathe.
He just stared at the thing that was definitely not a Pikachu and wondered how long he could survive in this nightmare masquerading as a children's game.
The answer, he suspected, was not very long at all.
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