"June 29, 1966, 3:39 AM — In the Wake of the Storm Named Kisa"

**Written by Ori-ko**

The pitiless, torrential downpour of the monsoon was slowly submerging the neon-drenched streets of Tokyo into the very depths of the night. It was the twenty-ninth of June, 1966.

By the whimsical malice of Typhoon "Kisa," the hands of the clock pointed with ominous precision to **3:39 AM** the exact moment those four extraordinary monsters made landfall upon the tarmac of Haneda Airport.

Their electrifying, scandalous melodies had already driven the entire world to the brink of absolute madness. Yet here, behind the heavy, suffocatingly thick curtains of the Tokyo Hilton Hotel, a bizarre rumour had already begun to breed silently in the dark, spreading like damp mould.

"...Oi, Pika. You've stepped out with your right foot again, haven't you?"

Squirtle, clad in rugged denim at the very rear of the procession, let slip a low, cynical murmur from the deep recesses of his shell.

Before his gaze, Pikachu, draped in a tailored charcoal-grey suit, offered no verbal reply. Instead, he merely exhaled a thin, lazy stream of herbal smoke from the corner of his mouth, letting it drift with a certain lethargic grace toward the right.

"Pay it no mind, Zeni. It's hardly news that he's left-handed, or that his stride refuses to align with the living."

Charmander, leading the solemn procession in a pristine, pure white suit, stroked his whiskers thoughtfully, his eyes gleaming with a faint, mysterious malice behind his dark sunglasses. Behind him, Bulbasaur, enveloped in a jet-black long jacket, trod silently upon the damp asphalt, as though locking away every profound secret of the universe within the tightly closed bulb upon his back.

The world continued to whisper its dark conspiracy: _"On that stormy night of 1966, the true Pikachu was already at death's door, replaced entirely by a carefully crafted double."_

Their five legendary performances spanning three days at the Nippon Budokan were a fleeting, ephemeral frenzy—a mere thirty-five minutes of madness following the opening acts. Every soul in the audience meticulously feigned ignorance, deliberately averting their eyes from the looming 'shadow of death.'

Yet—there was a fifth witness, observing their unnatural stride with chilling detachment.

Far beyond the stark white zebra crossing, standing perfectly still before the iron gates of the studio, was a solitary white silhouette. It was Absol, the Disaster Pokémon, bearing a horn like a razor-sharp scythe.

The fanatical devotees, upon spotting that pale figure camouflaged in the background of the imagery, felt a sudden terror pierce their spines. _"Look, Absol is there! I knew it—that Pikachu is dead! The disaster has already come to pass!"_ They cried out in despair.

Yet, they completely misconstrued the true essence of the matter.

Absol's resolute stance there, its crimson eyes transfixed upon the retreating backs of the four, was by no means born of a macabre desire for further ruin.

The overwhelming madness of the masses, the tangled web of ominous lies, and the bizarre curse known as the 'double theory'... To prevent these volatile, negative energies from corroding the four any further and manifesting into a genuine catastrophe, Absol stood firmly as a celestial bulwark, silently preserving the delicate equilibrium of the world. As long as he remained anchored to that spot, no further calamity would break.

"Goodness, wherever we go, a ruckus always seems to follow."

Without so much as a backward glance, Pikachu continued forward, stride by stride, always leading with his right foot, his bare paws firmly feeling the raw, grounding texture of the earth.

Until their aircraft vanished into the skies above Haneda shortly after 10 AM on July 3rd, destined for Manila, not a single soul spoke of the truth behind the silent pact sealed by that fleeting exchange of glances between the four and that solitary Absol.

Later, when the Master of the Great Fortress captured this luxurious instant within a frame of the golden ratio, only a single word was inscribed at the bottom left:

**OOPARTS**

Any other words were entirely powerless to narrate the tale of the white guardian repelling disaster, and the solitary footprints of the four.

**(End of Part One.)**