"To fight your future, you must kill your past."
---
The storm over Pallet Town had no clouds.
Only tears in the sky.
Reality shredded open like parchment soaked in flame, exposing fractured frames of time—the world pixelating and rebuilding every second.
Ash Ketchum stood on the old hill, the one he used to watch the sunrise from as a kid.
But this sunrise wasn't warm.
It was a broken halo—flickering with forgotten light.
He wasn't home.
Not really.
This was Episode 1.
But not as the world remembered it.
This was the uncut version.
The raw timeline.
Where the dream was still feral.
---
He looked down and saw himself.
Young Ash.
No scars. No knowledge of death.
No weight behind the smile.
He still wore that faded blue jacket. Still had dreams full of badges and league victories.
And beside him… not Pikachu.
Not yet.
But a strange, malformed Poké Ball.
One that had never been opened.
Ash's breath caught.
He remembered now. The first Poké Ball.
The one Professor Oak never gave him.
The one that held something… else.
> "That Ball was locked away for a reason," Arceus had whispered before fading.
"It wasn't a partner. It was a warning."
---
Present-day Ash stepped forward. But the moment he moved, the world twitched.
His reflection in puddles distorted.
Bird Pokémon screamed and crashed into trees mid-flight.
The sun blinked.
And Young Ash turned.
> "You're not supposed to be here," he said.
Not startled. Not afraid.
Angry.
---
Ash opened his mouth, but words didn't come.
This wasn't a reunion.
This was an invasion.
> "You gave up everything to win. Traded friends for victories. Chose to forget the pain. But I remember," said Young Ash.
"I remember the raw hunger. The obsession. The need to prove myself to a world that didn't care."
He stepped forward, the strange Poké Ball trembling in his hand.
> "You killed me to become you."
> "Then maybe it's time I took myself back."
---
Suddenly—
The Ball opened.
And what emerged wasn't a Pokémon.
It was Ash.
Another version.
Twisted.
Eyes black as dusk. Hair scorched at the ends.
Every inch of his body glitched, shivering in bursts of binary.
He looked like a man who'd died in every region… and kept going.
> "You made me when you chose vengeance," he hissed.
"I'm the moment you let Pikachu die the first time. The second. The third. I am all the timelines you won't admit happened."
The three Ashes stood in a triangle.
The dreamer.
The survivor.
The broken god.
---
Then, the sky collapsed.
Episode 1 fell apart.
Buildings melted. Pallet warped. The tall grass turned into screaming data.
Oak's Lab glitched into a cathedral of corrupted code.
And rising above it—a beast.
It looked like a corrupted fusion of Ho-Oh and Eternatus, its wings a spectrum of broken types.
Its cry?
A reversed version of the Pokémon theme song, layered over sobbing.
---
The Broken Ash pointed.
> "That is the original code. The Alpha Spawn. The beast before types. Before Poké Balls. Before balance."
> "Its name is KAIROS. The Error That Watches."
And then it spoke.
> "I REMEMBER EVERY TIMELINE YOU ERASED."
---
Ash ran.
Not from fear—but toward it.
Because deep inside that impossible beast—within its glitched heart—he saw it.
Pikachu.
Held in a stasis of memory, floating like a lost dream.
---
He dove headfirst into Kairos' maw.
Reality screamed.
---
Inside, he wasn't human anymore.
He was just remembrance.
He saw Brock, arms crushed under falling debris in one lost timeline.
May, staring into the void after her brother Max disappeared during the spatial rift.
Serena, burning her ribbon as Kalos tore itself apart.
Goh, crying while no one could hear.
The pain of forgotten friends carved into him like scripture.
And then—he reached Pikachu.
---
It opened its eyes.
For the first time in eternity.
And whispered:
> "You came back."
Ash wept.
Not tears of pain.
But of guilt.
> "I should've never left you behind."
> "You didn't," Pikachu said, nuzzling his face. "I waited. Because I knew you'd remember."
---
Then… Pikachu changed.
Its fur burned gold.
Eyes turned white.
Its tail snapped into the shape of the Master Ball's crest.
> "You gave everything to remember. Now take the spark. Finish the Last Act."
Ash grabbed its paw.
And screamed as energy ripped through him.
---
When he emerged from Kairos, he wasn't just Ash.
He was Ash Prime.
The Final Version.
Cloaked in every battle, every wound, every evolution.
The boy who ran late to Oak's lab…
was now the man destined to decide reality's fate.
---
As Kairos roared, preparing to erase Episode 1 entirely—
Ash Prime stepped forward.
One partner by his side.
> "Let's rewrite this world the right way, Pikachu."
---