PI Chapter 3: A Memory (Patreon)

The island was still active and alive. Even as Lapras carried me farther out, the world behind us refused to stop changing. Lava rivers snaked across the newborn ground, spilling into the sea with a furious hiss. Steam rose in pillars, twisting above the crimson glow.

I could taste ash on my tongue.

“Keep going, girl,” I whispered, my voice trembling against the wind. “Please… just a little farther.”

Lapras pushed herself harder, muscles rippling beneath her slick blue skin. Every stroke sent a shockwave through the water, but even she was starting to slow, the heat was everywhere now. The air shimmered, thick and heavy, like breathing through an open furnace.

Then the world rumbled again. The vibration didn’t just travel through the water, it came from beneath it. The ocean floor groaned, plates shifting. A low growl followed, deeper than thunder.

Lapras froze mid-stroke.

“...No. No, no, don’t stop!” I urged, clutching the ridge of her shell. My knuckles were white as my heart hammered in my chest. “Lapras!”

She whimpered softly, head turning toward the burning horizon.

And I saw why.

Groudon was moving.

Each step it took cracked the crust of the land. The molten red armor of its body gleamed in the dying light, and with every motion, the sea boiled and shrank away from it. It wasn’t just standing on land anymore, it was creating and expanding it with every breath.

The sight was so wrong and so breathtaking that my brain couldn’t decide which reaction to stick with: run or stare.

I simply stared as I couldn’t look away.

Because despite everything, the fear, the heat, the choking air—I couldn’t look away. Something in me knew this creature. Not the name, not the lore, but the feeling. The same way a song from childhood lingers at the edge of memory.

Groudon’s eyes turned toward me.

For one impossible moment, the god of the earth and the idiot adrift on his Lapras locked eyes.

It shouldn’t have meant anything. I was an insect, a speck of dust on his horizon. But the moment our gazes met, the air between us changed. Pressure crushed my lungs. The sky seemed to bend around that look.

“...He sees us,” I breathed.

Lapras’s entire body tensed. She let out a warning cry, half a plea and the other half terror.

A quake tore through the newborn island. Fissures split open, vomiting magma into the sea. The hiss became a scream as clouds of steam rolled toward us, swallowing light and sound alike.

I coughed violently, eyes burning. “Go! Lapras, GO!”

She dove under the surface, plunging into relative darkness. The heat dulled, though the water still stung against my skin and I held on tight to not let go. Through the blur of bubbles, I saw flashes of red light pulsing above—the glow of magma refracted through the ocean like molten lightning.

Even underwater, Groudon’s presence was everywhere. I could feel him.

Lapras angled upward, breaking the surface again several hundred meters away. We both gasped for air.

And then I realized he wasn’t attacking. He was still watching us.

Still as a mountain, Groudon stared across the steaming water, his golden eyes narrowing. The rage that had birthed the new  gigantic island had cooled into something else. Recognition. Doubt.

My chest tightened. ‘Does he… know me?’

I looked down at the Ultra Ball clutched in my hand, its black-and-gold shell scorched from the heat. Steam curled around my fingers as I held it up.

The moment I did, Groudon moved.

The ground under him split open in a spiderweb of molten cracks. The air rippled with pressure. Even Lapras flinched, whining in distress. I nearly dropped the ball as the realization hit me like a hammer.

“He recognizes this,” I whispered. “He knows this Poké Ball.”

A sound rolled across the ocean that had come from the Continental Pokemon, not a roar this time, but something deeper. Sadder. It vibrated in my ribs and bones, a sound of memory and fury intertwined.

I could almost hear the thought behind it. ‘You are not the one who held me.’

Lapras trembled beneath me, sensing the shift. Her instincts screamed danger, but mine screamed curiosity. Against every sane impulse, I raised my voice.

“I don’t know how I got this thing! But I swear, I’m not here to hurt you!” I shouted. 

The earth fell silent after my words, as if waiting for judgment.

For a heartbeat, Groudon didn’t move but continued to stare. The intense heat dimmed to a point where both my body and Lapras finally started to shake as adrenaline drained away.

“He looked at me like…” I muttered to myself, still trying to convince my brain that I hadn’t imagined it. Like he remembered something I didn’t.

Lapras then cooed as the sea felt cool again. I reached forward, resting a hand against her neck.

“Thanks,” I said softly. “I owe you one. Again.”

She answered with a tired hum, low and gentle. The kind of sound that meant we survived.

—--------------------------------------

Groudon’s Perspective

The boy’s voice still echoes in the winds. His words are foreign, yet the tone… that tone pierces the fog of centuries. Fear and courage, tangled together. So human. So familiar.

I remember another voice like it, a child’s command that carried respect rather than arrogance. The memory stirs deep beneath my core of battles fought, victories earned, a human who stood beside me, not below me.

But this one is not him. This one is a shadow holding the same tool, the same mark.

The Ultra Ball.

I could destroy him easily. One claw, one breath, and the earth would swallow his ashes. Yet when I saw that sphere, when I saw him, something in me stayed my hand.

Perhaps… there is meaning in his presence. The world has changed. I feel it in the crust, in the rhythm of the tides. Something was different as I felt that this was the world I created. Maybe this man, this stranger who carries my prison, is a herald of something greater.

The land beneath my feet cools, hardening into black glass. My claws dig into it gently, feeling the pulse of a land newly born.

—----------------------------------

The air shimmered, steam ghosting across the surface of the sea as the newborn island cooled from molten red to smoldering black.

Lapras floated several dozen meters away from the shore, her body tense, her eyes fixed on the towering titan of the land. I could still feel Groudon’s gaze, heavy and ancient, pressing against me like the weight of the entire planet.

My mind screamed that I shouldn’t move, but something in my chest whispered to go closer.

It was insane. Completely, absolutely, suicidally insane.

And yet…

There was something in the way Groudon watched me. Not as prey. Not as a threat. But as if he were trying to remember.

Lapras shifted nervously beneath me, her long neck curving back to glance at me. Her large, dark eyes were pleading. “Laa…pras,” She sang lowly, a sound thick with worry.

I swallowed, my heart hammering so hard it hurt. “I know,” I murmured, stroking her shell. “I know this is crazy… but… I need to try something.”

She blinked once. Then again. Her head jerked toward Groudon and back to me, as if asking if I’d finally lost my mind.

“Please,” I said softly. “Just a little closer.”

Lapras made a sharp, disbelieving sound that could only mean, Are you serious?!

“Yes,” I whispered. “I have to know.”

For a moment, she hesitated, hovering still. Then, with a shuddering sigh that sent ripples across the water, Lapras began to move. 

Each stroke of her fins was slow and cautious, as if she couldn’t believe what she was doing. The water sizzled faintly where it touched the island’s edge, but the air was cooler now—the worst of the eruption had passed.

The sound of boiling water faded, replaced by the low groan of cooling rock. Smoke and steam curled around the coastline like living mist. And there, framed by fire and shadow, Groudon waited.

Seeing that both of us were getting closer he decided to do the same. Every step he took sent tremors through the ground, but they were softer now, almost measured. His massive golden eyes never left me, reflecting the light of suns.

Lapras stopped just short of the shallows, her fins trembling beneath the surface. I could feel her fear through the vibrations in her body.

I was terrified too but the pull inside me only grew stronger.

“Hey…” My voice came out hoarse, barely audible over the faint hiss of cooling stone. “My name’s… Oscar. Oscar Lopez.”

No response. Not from Groudon, not from Lapras.

They only continued to stare at me.

The silence stretched, thick and heavy. My throat went dry. “Right. Uh… yeah, figures you wouldn’t understand English. But…”

Something flickered in my mind, a thought that came out of nowhere and yet felt right. That weird sense of familiarity. Like déjà vu turned up to eleven.

I looked from Lapras to Groudon, the two most impossible beings in existence and my stomach twisted with a realization so absurd I almost laughed.

“What if…” I muttered under my breath, “…you two are actually mine?”

The words slipped out before I could stop them.

Lapras tilted her head slightly, the movement small but sharp.

Groudon’s molten chest plates pulsed once, faintly, like a heartbeat.

My pulse quickened. “No, no, that’s impossible,” I said to myself. “You can’t be. You’re just— you’re real. You’re alive. You’re—”

But the feeling wouldn’t go away. It was them. Somehow. Some way. And then, like a light bulb flicking on in my head, I remembered.

“Oz,” I whispered.

The name hit the air like a spark in dry grass. The nickname I always used when I played. The one on every save file since I was a kid. My in-game name.

I took a deep breath and looked up at them both. “Do you… remember the name Oz?”

The reaction was immediate.

Lapras’s eyes widened, the deep black of her iris shimmering with sudden emotion. She let out a low, trembling cry that wasn’t fear this time, it was recognition as she does know that name. Groudon froze mid-step, every fissure in his body flaring bright crimson for one blinding instant. The ground beneath him cracked, but not from anger. From shock.

The air itself seemed to stop moving.

Lapras turned her head fully toward me now, eyes glistening, her song was soft and aching. Groudon’s claws flexed, his breath slow, measured. The golden light in his eyes flickered once—then softened.

“Oh my god,” I breathed, my voice breaking. “It is you.”

The weight of it crashed into me all at once. Every hour I’d ever spent training them, naming them, taking them into battles and adventures—all those moments I’d thought were just pixels and data—were real. Somehow, impossibly real.

Lapras’s hum rose, a beautiful, melodic note that shimmered through the mist like a memory given voice.

Groudon lowered his head, the ground rumbling gently beneath him, his gaze heavy but no longer hostile.

For a moment, it didn’t matter how insane this all was. A human from another world. A digital fantasy turned flesh and fire.  Because I knew them. And somehow, they knew me.

‘This isn’t the first time we’ve met and maybe Groudon remembers that, too. That does bring to question which Groudon is it or Lapras for that matter. From which game did they come from? If only I got a system to help him. Like come on mysterious god give him at least a bone to help him.’

“I… I don’t know how any of this is possible,” I whispered, smiling weakly through the disbelief, “but I’m really glad to see you both again.”

Lapras responded with a gentle cry. Groudon exhaled, the hot air washing over me like the breath of a sleeping volcano. Neither spoke, neither needed to. Because at that moment, beneath the red glow of the newborn island and the quiet waves of a cooling sea,we didn’t need words.

Changed and rewritten a bit different.