It was a dreary and stormy evening the day my life changed drastically. Before I get into all that, I should introduce myself. My name is Alexander Drake, and I am a fairly normal twenty-year-old guy, all things considered. I have short, thick, messy black hair and a job that barely pays for my rundown one-bathroom house, as well as a small amount put into the rainy day funds under the mattress. Sure, it wasn't some glorious existence, but I lived alone in America, which was quite the achievement, let me tell you. I was never very athletic, to be honest, so I had a little bit of a gut on me, but thanks to both a fast metabolism and only enough money to eat a single decent meal a day, I was by no means fat. I suppose I also got lucky in the genetics area, though, as I was a solid eight out of ten if my female coworkers and casual hookups were to be believed. Never really cared for trying to make myself look good and was likely to wear a pair of jeans and a t-shirt with some sarcastic saying on it to literally any event. I did have one rather big flaw that I mostly kept to myself, but those who knew me long enough were aware of it. I had a near-crippling level of apathy about everything since, as far as I could tell, there was honestly no real reason why I should care about anything. I wasn't emotionless, no, far from it, but I simply accepted that there was no point in getting stressed over things out of my control, which was everything. Some people strived for something greater than human, but I accepted that it simply didn't exist. Life is quite fair in that regard, as you were born, and no matter what you do, you will eventually die as nothing more than a human, just like everyone else. So, as far as I was concerned, why should I do more than the bare minimum to survive until my apportioned fate if it didn't matter? I am aware of that now that my situation is vastly different, but as I said, near crippling levels of apathy. That all changed, though, on this fateful day when I learned the hard way that reality is much more complicated than I realized. See, I was off on this particular day and, as a result, had a decent amount of free time on my hands. Most of my free time was usually dedicated to sleeping, as it was the only way for me to experience what it may be like to be more than just another human. Today, though, I had been doing my most recent hobby, playing Pokémon. To be honest, despite growing up with the franchise in high popularity, I had never even given it so much as a momentary glance. I had unfortunately been forced to grow up and realize that the world was a terrible place at the tender age of seven due to bullying. I'm not talking about harmless stuff like name-calling and mocking, but full-on getting punched in the gut and isolated by all of my classmates for years on end. For a couple of years after we moved away from that area and I started to get treated like a normal person, I was cruel and angry at the world. But after seeing that anger got me nowhere, I eventually settled for cold apathy. Sad, right? Anyways, my coworkers and the few people who might be considered friends had pestered me to no end about Pokemon this and Pokemon that until I decided to give in and see what all the fuss was about. The fourth generation and below was where the games made the most sense and came highly recommended. My coworker Jerome suggested I play Pokemon Emerald and Fire Red first, then Pokemon Heart Gold or Soul Silver, and finally Pokemon Platinum to get the full feel of the franchise. I refused to watch the anime, though, since everyone said that it was rather childish. It wasn't all that expensive to get all these games and the console to play them, either. It cost about two hundred dollars from my rainy day fund after taxes since I got everything from a reliable game shop secondhand. Thirty for each of the DS cartridges, seventy-five for the DS Lite itself, including the charging cable, and twenty-five for each of the Game Boy Advance cartridge games. I started with Pokemon Emerald and went through the story within two of my days off. Despite clearly being meant for children, the game was pretty comprehensive in its mechanics. The level system made the type system slightly less valuable to memorize when a higher level tended to mean a Pokemon could tank an attack of a type it was weak against if the level difference was high enough, and the opposite was true. If a Pokemon out-leveled its opponent, it could still seriously harm or even "knock out" a Pokémon strong against that type of attack. This was where things got a bit unbalanced, as it was doable to just have your character run back and forth in a specific area, defeating the random encounters repeatedly to over-level your party of six Pokemon thanks to the exp system in levels. Otherwise, though, the game had a fairly good thing going for it that made it fun to try and play through the game with various limitations. My personal favorite was the "adult" version of the game where if a Pokémon was "knocked out" in battle, you had to store it in your pc box and release it because it was "dead." This meant I was forced to be more invested in actual strategy than just brute-forcing my way through the story and gyms. Once I got too comfortable playing with emerald, I moved on to fire red, then heart gold after that, and finally, I was playing through Pokemon platinum for the first time when everything changed. I'd like to say that it was some grand spectacle, but in all honesty, it was not. One moment, I was watching the credits of the game after defeating the champion Cynthia, and the next, everything went black. I am pretty sure I was instantly killed by the bolt of lightning that I had no way of predicting. I am also pretty sure SOMETHING had grabbed my soul at the moment of my death, as when I woke up, I was very much no longer on earth. My first thought, of course, was 'What the Fuck?'