"To battle a god, become one. To avenge a world, break it."
---
Ash Prime didn't remember how long it had been since he stopped breathing. Not because he died—no. Death had refused him.
It was because there were no lungs left in the fractured remains of Episode 1. Just echoes. Just film reel memories, decaying.
The earth he stood on was not earth. It was a timeline carcass.
It wept.
---
Behind him, the world fell apart in silence. No sound.
Not because it was quiet.
But because the concept of "sound" had been deleted.
In front of him stood Kairos, the god of paradox and error.
Not a Pokémon. Not a human. Not anything.
An anomaly born when the first trainer asked,
> "What happens if I choose all three starters?"
---
Ash felt something in his ribs—a crack. But not in his bones.
In his spirit.
This wasn't the Ash who won tournaments.
This was the Ash who'd died a thousand times, one for each failed loop.
And every version of himself that didn't make it?
He buried them.
By hand.
By fire.
By memory.
---
Pikachu, walking beside him, didn't flinch.
Not even as Kairos spread its wings of inverted code and bled broken Poké Balls from the sky like rain.
But Pikachu was... wrong, now.
Its body shimmered with divine static.
When it stepped, time blinked.
Its red cheeks pulsed like god-hearts.
> "Ash," it whispered. "You're out of second chances."
Ash nodded.
"I don't need them."
---
Kairos attacked.
It didn't roar.
It deleted color.
Ash looked down.
His hands were grayscale.
His blood was black-and-white, like a 1997 beta build.
---
"Don't blink," Ash whispered to himself.
He didn't.
He stepped sideways—through frames.
Not time-travel. Not teleportation.
He moved through the pauses between animation cells.
A move stolen from the death of XY Ash.
From the final episode that never aired.
---
Ash appeared behind Kairos and whispered:
> "Charizard. Now."
The void opened.
But what emerged wasn't just Charizard.
It was Prime-Zard.
A Pokémon built from the ashes of every Charizard Ash had ever trained.
Its wings were stitched with rivalries.
Its flames burned memories.
---
"EPOCH FLARE!" Ash commanded.
Charizard opened its jaws, and what it roared was not fire—
It was the first cry of a newborn Pokémon, amplified through the loss of generations.
Kairos screamed as the flames clawed at its glitch-body.
Pixels melted.
Code shrieked.
---
Kairos retaliated.
It didn't summon an attack.
It summoned a lie:
A world where Ash never became a trainer.
Where Delia died in childbirth.
Where Pikachu never existed.
And it dragged Ash into that lie.
---
He fell for what felt like centuries.
Woke up in a hospital bed.
No hat. No scars. Just a broken mother's lullaby in the background.
But he didn't scream.
He remembered.
Ash bit down on his own tongue until blood drowned the fake world.
And then he burned it down from the inside.
---
He re-emerged into the battlefield cloaked in fire.
Eyes red.
Voice gone.
Only one word left:
> "Pikachu."
---
And then Pikachu did the impossible.
It spoke.
Not just its name.
But his.
> "Ash... you made me real."
It split into every version of itself across every region—
A celestial storm of yellow, thunder, grief, and love.
They swirled, converged.
> Pikachu Prime.
---
"SPARK ETERNAL!"
The sky didn't light up.
The universe did.
Every trainer across time felt it.
A child in Hoenn dropped her Poké Ball.
A dying man in Johto whispered, "He's real."
Giovanni screamed as his empire's walls cracked.
---
The bolt hit Kairos.
It didn't kill it.
It reminded it.
Of emotion.
Of loss.
Of the first time a child cried when their Pokémon fainted.
Kairos shattered.
And from its chest, Delia Ketchum fell.
---
Ash ran.
Not through space.
But through fate.
He caught her mid-air, even as his own arms started glitching.
She was cold.
But alive.
> "You came back," she said softly.
> "I never left," Ash whispered, sobbing.
---
The timeline exploded behind them.
But Ash didn't look back.
He'd buried enough of the past.
---
As the fragments faded, and Pikachu stood by his side, Ash looked ahead.
Into the empty space where the next world would be born.
> "One more act," he whispered.
> "The Last Act."
---