"Some stories are too powerful to be forgotten. Even when the world tries to erase them."
---
The sky didn't fall.
It bled.
A rift tore through the heavens like a wound too deep to heal. Black ink dripped from the clouds. Every star turned to eyes—watching, judging, mourning. The world groaned as if cracking under the weight of its own rewritten past.
The Origin Rewrite had begun.
---
Ash stood at the heart of the storm.
His shadow was gone.
Not because of the light—but because he no longer had a past to cast one.
All around him, the world reshaped itself. Trees turned to lines of script. The earth folded into panels. Roads became ribbons of forgotten canon. The Pokémon League was a ruin—not from battle, but from editorial erasure.
And in the center floated Archivus.
White cloak fluttering, crown of ink quills on his head, expression blank as a page waiting to be written.
"You have defied the Great Edit for too long, Ash Ketchum," Archivus said. "Your story was supposed to end years ago."
Ash looked around. Misty's badge, crumbled. Brock's fossil, erased. Pikachu's voice—static.
"But I'm still here," Ash whispered.
Archivus's eyes narrowed.
> "Not for long."
---
Then it began.
The Origin Rewrite surged.
Everyone screamed.
---
Red dropped to his knees. His Poké Balls shattered like glass. Charizard disintegrated mid-roar. Red clutched his chest—not from pain, but from absence.
> "I—I don't remember how we met…"
Serena forgot Ash's name mid-tear. Her memories fluttered away like burned photographs.
N clung to Zekrom's empty husk. "They're taking our beliefs. Not just our bodies—our truths."
And Pikachu—
He leapt at the Rewrite tendrils, screaming lightning into the storm. But the tendrils edited his attack. The Thunderbolt became a dot. A typo in the story of battle.
> "You are not canon," Archivus said to him.
And Pikachu fell.
---
Ash screamed.
But no sound came out.
He tried to move—his legs wouldn't respond.
Not because they were bound.
But because they'd already been written out.
---
Then came the Visions.
Fragments of every version of Ash that had ever almost existed:
A version who never left Pallet Town, still dreaming by a window.
A version who became Champion, only to be betrayed by the Elite Four.
A version who lost Pikachu in the first episode, and never recovered.
Each of them stared at Ash. Judging. Begging. Suffering.
He saw a version of himself that died to save May. Another that let Team Rocket win. One that never made a friend in his entire journey.
And worst of all—
He saw a version where he gave up.
> "You are the mistake," Archivus whispered. "The deviation. The glitch."
---
But Ash stood.
He staggered. Broken. Bleeding from the eyes. But he stood.
Because one memory still burned inside him.
Pikachu's first smile.
And that—
That couldn't be rewritten.
Ash reached into his jacket and stabbed himself with the Final Casket.
---
The world shattered.
Ash plummeted into the Rewrite Core.
A void of ink and code.
Where emotions became data. Where tears were counted in word counts. Where love was reduced to a sentence.
But Ash fought.
> "You can erase my wins."
"You can delete my medals."
"But you will never take my bonds."
He reached for them—
And they came.
One by one.
Charizard, wings of flame.
Greninja, water shuriken in hand.
Sceptile, silent and deadly.
Infernape, roaring defiance.
Lucario, glowing with aura.
Pikachu, sparking like a god.
Each one appeared—not because they were summoned.
But because they refused to be forgotten.
---
Ash stood surrounded by his legacy.
And he burned.
His heart burst open. Not with blood—but with remembrance.
The Rewrite tried to twist it.
But it couldn't.
> Because Ash's story wasn't built on power.
It was built on people.
Every friend. Every Pokémon. Every loss. Every triumph.
A living archive of emotion.
---
And then—
Ash punched Archivus in the chest.
Not with power.
But with proof.
> "This is who I am."
And the Rewrite screamed.
Archivus's body cracked into a thousand chapters. His crown shattered into commas. His robe turned to torn scrolls.
> "Impossible—stories can be controlled—"
Ash stepped forward, eyes glowing with a power beyond types or tiers.
"Not mine."
---
The world imploded.
Then—rebuilt.
And at the center, Ash fell to his knees.
Exhausted.
Empty.
But alive.
Serena crawled beside him, her face streaked with ink tears. She touched his cheek, trembling.
"Do you remember me?" she whispered.
Ash blinked.
And smiled.
> "You were the girl who believed in me... before the world did."
---
Above them, the heavens calmed. The stars rewrote themselves.
And Arceus wept.
Not because Ash had won.
But because Ash had survived the story.
---