The Magikarp nudged me again, this time toward a cluster of green plants near the riverbed. It nibbled at one, then looked at me expectantly.
You want me to... eat that?
"Karp!"
I eyed the plant. It looked like underwater lettuce. Eh, what the hell. I took a bite. It was bland, but as I swallowed, a strange warmth spread through me. The deep, cellular ache of my exhaustion began to fade. A familiar blue screen popped into view.
[HP: 1.2/48]
What? I thought, my fishy brain struggling to process the information. My health... it actually went up? Yes, a very tiny bit, but from eating this... this underwater lettuce?
With a mental "click," I pulled up the system interface, ignoring the HP bar and focusing on the logs. A new entry sat at the top.
[User has consumed [Riverweed].]
[Effect: Restores a small amount of HP.]
It was so simple. So elegant. So beautifully, wonderfully exploitable.
I thought it was only potions and pokemon centers that could heal me up, but eating things do that too?
My gaze shifted from the glowing blue screen to the oblivious Magikarp floating beside me. It blinked its vacant eyes, probably wondering why the new orange blob had suddenly stopped moving.
You... I thought, my entire being filling with a profound, almost sacred gratitude. You beautiful, magnificent, gloriously stupid bastard.
An overwhelming urge washed over me, an emotion so pure it momentarily eclipsed even my lingering horniness.
I could kiss you. I swear to Arceus, I could plant one right on your dumb, gaping fish mouth. I had to mentally reassure my long-lost human anatomy. Don't worry, my sword. It's not like that. This is a kiss of pure, unadulterated respect for a true bro. A fish-bro.
"Karp?" the Magikarp questioned, tilting its head.
It then promptly swam a few feet away and started nibbling on a rock, its moment of genius apparently concluded.
Right. Attention span of a... well, a fish, I mused, before turning my attention back to the buffet before me. Ignoring my fish-bro's questionable dietary choices, I began systematically chomping down on more of the riverweed. Each bite brought a minuscule bump to my HP, a tiny victory in my war against being a half-dead puddle.
It also tasted like absolute shit.
It was stringy, with the texture of soggy cardboard and the flavor of mud and disappointment. By the time I forced down the fourth plant, my new fish stomach clenched in protest. I felt a distinct, gurgling urge to heave.
[HP: 1.8/48]
The slow, agonizing trickle of health was barely worth the culinary torture. There had to be a better way.
Wait a minute. Wasn't there an item called Fresh Water in the games? It healed a decent chunk of HP and was way cheaper than a Potion. I was fucking swimming in fresh water, but my HP bar wasn't budging. Did it have to be from a specific spot? Like, was there some blessed vending machine somewhere that dispensed holy, HP-restoring water while this river was just… tap water? Dammit, how much would I pay just to have a phone with Bulbapedia on it right now.
Then my thoughts drifted to Potions. They were the lifeblood of any game playthrough. But thinking back on the anime... did Ash and company even use them that often? I seemed to recall them using some kind of antiseptic spray or oran berries more than anything. I never saw the cast meticulously fill their pockets to the brim with Potions, Super Potions, and Hyper Potions before heading into a new route. In the games, you'd be royally fucked without them.
Dammit, don't tell me they don't even exist here? How am I supposed to heal up then? Eating grass and shit for the rest of my life?
Oh god, the taste. It lingered in my fish mouth, a foul, vegetative aftertaste. My mind, desperate for a pleasant memory, conjured an image from my past life: a bucket of crispy, succulent fried chicken thighs. The taste, the crunch, the juicy meat...
After you experience the good things, it's hard to go back to the bad ones.
Wait. Chickens?
My train of thought derailed completely. Do chickens… exist here? I felt like I had seen Ash and his gang eat something that looked suspiciously like chicken or a roast turkey, but my memories of the anime were a hazy, convoluted mess.
Where do they come from in a world where the primary chicken analogue is a Fire-type starter Pokémon?
The thought was both morbid and fascinating. Did people just… eat Torchics?
I mean, I wouldn't put it past a world where Krabby are considered a delicacy and Slowpoke tails are a marketable commodity. But it just didn't feel economical. Torchics don't seem like a widespread farm animal. You don't see them roaming in the wilds; in the games, the only way to get one was as a starter from a Professor. You couldn't just set up a Torchic farm like you could with, say, Miltank.
And that was another thing. Other than that one famous Miltank farm, I couldn't remember seeing large-scale farms for any other Pokémon. Not for meat, anyway.
So… are people here largely vegetarian or something?
The idea was strangely unsettling. As a former human who very much appreciated a good steak, the thought of a world without a proper butcher shop was a bleak one. Would eating an actual animal, if I could find one, give me more health than chomping down on this god-awful weed? Or was this weed special in some way?
I glanced at the totally unremarkable green plant I'd just spat out. The system logs didn't mention anything special about it. Just "[Riverweed]". Okay, so the latter option was probably out.
A new, far more practical quest began to form in my mind, overshadowing even my immediate need for healing. I had to find civilization. Not just for a Pokémon Center, but to solve the single most important culinary mystery of this reality.
My fish-bro nudged me again, having apparently decided its rock was no longer appetizing. It looked at me with those big, dumb eyes, blissfully unaware of the existential crisis its new friend was having about poultry. With a flick of its tail, it turned and began to swim away, heading deeper into the main current of the river.
I watched it go, a strange sense of camaraderie warming me despite the cool water. But as it got further away, something odd happened. Its familiar, vibrant orange form began to lose its sharp edges. The colors bled slightly into the watery green backdrop, its movements becoming less distinct, as if I were watching it through a frosted glass.
Must be some silt kicked up from the riverbed, I reasoned. The water here probably wasn't crystal clear.
My fish-bro, now about twenty feet away, swam toward what looked like a mobile, silver-grey cloud suspended in the mid-water. It was a shimmering, indistinct haze, something I'd vaguely noticed before but had dismissed as a patch of particularly murky water or a trick of the light.
But as my companion swam straight into it, the cloud didn't just dissipate. It seemed to… peel away from him, a living curtain of silver that swirled and then coalesced behind his passing tail. It pulsed and shifted with a life of its own.
What the hell was that?
My curiosity overwhelming my lingering exhaustion, I flicked my new tail and propelled myself forward. I needed a closer look. As I swam, the world began to change. The blurry green shapes of distant river plants started to gain texture. The soft, undefined pebbles on the riverbed resolved into sharp, individual stones.
The silver haze grew larger, and as I closed the distance, I saw that it wasn't a haze at all. It was composed of countless tiny points of light and motion.
Then, I was upon it, and my fishy brain stalled.
The cloud was a school of fish. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them. Tiny, silvery fish with translucent fins and little black-dot eyes, all moving in perfect, hypnotic unison. They parted around me just as they had for my friend, their collective form flowing like liquid mercury.
It was breathtaking. And confusing.
Wait. Why could I only see them now? When I got this close? They were practically invisible from twenty feet away.
A disquieting thought began to form. I stopped and looked back toward the riverbank where I'd started. The tangled roots and muddy shore were a blurry, impressionistic mess. I then looked down at my own orange fins, holding one up right in front of my face. It was perfectly, crisply in focus. Every scale, every ray was crystal clear.
Then it hit me. A realization so sudden and so stupid that I almost laughed, a sound that came out as a series of bewildered bubbles.
Holy shit. It's not the water that's blurry. I'm blurry.
Magikarp are… nearsighted. Profoundly, idiotically nearsighted. I had inherited not just its form and its ability to breathe underwater, but its god-awful eyesight.
The entire time I'd been in this river, I'd been experiencing the world through a low-resolution filter without even knowing it. It was like being a child with myopia who grows up thinking the whole world is supposed to be in soft focus, never realizing that 4K HD graphics are even an option. The world I'd seen before—the hazy plants, the indistinct shapes—wasn't the world as it was, but the world as a Magikarp sees it.
The Goldeen, my fish-bro—I could see them because they were either close or large enough to register as more than just a vague blob. I had been swimming through a world teeming with life, a vibrant, bustling ecosystem, and had been completely, utterly oblivious because my new eyes had the functional range of a foggy pair of reading glasses.
It wasn't an asspull. It was a biological limitation I was too new to have even considered.
My entire perception of the last hour shifted. The "beautiful, shimmering ribbons of light" were just unfocused sunbeams. The "living kaleidoscope" was just... a river, seen through nature's worst prescription lenses.
But nevermind that. A much, much bigger topic was at hand here.
FISHES FUCKING EXIST HERE!?!
Not Pokémon fish, not Remoraid or Luvdisc, but actual, mundane, non-powered, non-sentient fish. The gears in my head, lubricated by this revelation, began to spin at a terrifying speed. If these exist, then do other animals exist here too? Deer? Boar? The chickens I was just having an existential crisis over?
And more importantly—did eating them heal me faster than this godforsaken riverweed?
There was only one way to find out.
___
An Early Chapter for today!
Stone me dear readers, this story needs it, that is, if you liked it! (I sure hope you did, otherwise get ready to recieve some slimy substances in your food hehehe)