Awareness came to me slowly over the years. I remember reading about people reincarnating and remembering the time they spent in their mother's womb, their own birth, every excruciating little detail of the life of a baby that I assume most everyone else doesn't remember. I didn't remember all of that, thank fuck. No, my first memory was of cuddling with my new mother as she read me a bedtime story. Things built up from there, with new memories being forged and big chunks of old memories from my past life slotting in and forming the person I used to be around the core of the new person I was growing up to be. My past life hadn't been a particularly long life, nor one particularly well acquainted with happiness and other positive things, but I think if nothing else it helped me better appreciate the new life I'd been born into.

On balance, the new life was an upgrade really, better genes if my new mother was anything to go by, super model looks, smart as hell, and one of the sweetest people I'd ever known. Not to mention that I got the feel that she was the kind to be very picky about who she took to bed, so they had to be at least similarly impressive. We had money from from her own career before having me, which given the standard of living we had must have been something suitably impressive. All of this before even taking into account the Pokemon, or my new genetic femaleness. Really, I'd have jumped into some shitty lives for a chance at either of those, but getting both and great circumstances at the same time? Sign me the fuck up.

I was lucky as all hell and I was more than willing to take this new life to be a "Sorry about the past one" apology from whatever deity was in charge up there. I mean, my new mother's starter had been a Ralts, one of my favorites of all time, and she'd asked her now Gardevoir to provide an egg for me to be able to grow up with a companion to play with. Luna hatched a month before I was born, and New Mother and Gardevoir named her after the patron legendary pokemon of the Alola region. Huh. There's a thought. I knew how to get a Lunala. And a few others. Hm, ideas...

It didn't take long for me to realize that I had really, really, won the genetics lottery. Forget the looks, not the smarts though, forget the height, whatever. No, it was all about that one time when my favorite mug in this new world of mine fell off the table and I just reached and suddenly it was being held just above the floor by a corona of blue light. It took a second to fully sink in, to feel the mug with my mind, it was like an entirely new sense had revealed itself, a third eye through which I saw the world in an entirely new manner.

I could feel Luna sleeping on the couch to my left, could feel Mother outside watering her garden greenhouse with Gardevoir by her side. Could feel as Gardevoir turned to look at me through the walls of the house, feel her attention and just how very startled she was. I suppose it's not often you get to feel a human use psychic abilities. Then I slipped off my chair and banged my head against the table on the way down. Got six stitches right over the end of my right eyebrow and it's probably the reason my mother ended up going silver before she was even thirty. Well that and the constant worrying over my nascent psychic abilities and her fears that I would be taken from her and exploited. Which to be fair was probably a very legitimate worry, what with the ridiculous glut of criminal organizations that infested the Pokemon world, all of varying levels of evilness.

Oh, maybe my father was the leader of one of those organizations and that was why she was so worried people would find out about my abilities, and then rumor would spread and reach Evil Father, ensuing a legal battle for custody the likes only seen in the most dramatic of movies or tv series. Damn. I really had to double down on keeping my psychic abilities secret. As much as I would like a father, I didn't want mother worrying so much and having to fight to keep me. Besides, I can't imagine Evil Father would be that good a father. They all seemed pretty bad at the responsible adult thing, what with their doomsday plans and stuff that got easily foiled by a champion to be preteen or tween who happens to be passing by.

But I digress. After the awakening of my psychic abilities playing with Luna became an entirely new level of fun, believe me, nothing beats playing catch with telekinesis and multiple objects at the same time. For all that I had the life experiences of a twentysomething year old, there was a simple joy to using psychic powers to just have fun. Well that and being a child again seemed to mess with my mind a little. Still, I kept enough of my adult mind to make everything into training. Or try to anyway. For all that playing catch was fun, I made sure to keep increasing the force and speed of the balls over time. I figured if ever there was a training method that simulated EV training in the games for special attack, it was this. Given that Luna's telekinesis (and my own) kept getting stronger and stronger, I figure I was probably right.

Hopefully one day we'd get to supersonic bullet levels of telekinesis and overcome the weakness to dark types through the application of sufficient firepower. Not that there was any such thing of course, any self respecting aspirant to telekinetic bullets knows there's never enough firepower, just that there is such a thing as 'one at sufficient velocity'. If we couldn't achieve sufficient velocity, then by Inari Okami, about the only deity I ever cared about or for, we would drown them in bullet hell. I suppose the paranoia made it through the reincarnation. But I mean, is it really paranoia if they're probably to out get you on general principle of having psychic abilities?

So we sat in our porch, Luna and I, watching snow fall, gathering it and compressing it into balls of ice which we juggled and played tug of war with. It was quite peaceful really. Perhaps it had something to do with childhood, but there were many more moments where there was no worry, no anxiety, no sadness or depression, just tranquility, and just happy contentedness. Time had little meaning in those moments and it felt like days passed just watching the snow and playing with telekinesis. In reality it couldn't have been more than a few hours from beginning to the time mother found us cuddled up in a pile of blankets and herded us back inside for lunch. Well, not more than a few hours the first time it happened anyway.

We sat at the dinner table, eating a rather delicious creamy pasta dish, when a thought occurred to me. I could be a trainer. I could go out into the world and conquer. I know, it's hard to believe the thought hadn't ever crossed my mind before, but ever since awakening my psychic powers I'd been entirely focused on training them, honing them into a deadly weapon, for the purpose of gaining personal power, so that I could never be powerless no matter what. A goal inherited from my past self, I suspected, but one I'd pursued with the whole of my new being. Not training Luna had never been an option. She was as close to me as it was possible without being an extension of myself, and really to a degree we were extensions of each other through our psychic bond. We were inseparable, where I went she went, and where she went I went. Of course she'd accompany me through my journey to unlimited power. Power for the sake of power, and I was more than fine with that, but being able to put that power to use?

The mere thought made me shudder in anticipation.

There was an outside chance I may have some sort of megalomania. One more point for the Evil Father theory. That had to come from somewhere and New Mother was way too sweet to be the bloodthirsty conqueror type who wanted to see her enemies driven before her and to hear the lamentations of their women, or men, you know, whatever, not picky as long as lamentations are had. So in service of that I took a pause in between bites of deliciousness and asked my mother a very important question.

"Hey mom?"

"Yeah pumpkin?"

"How old am I?"

The look she gave me was incredulous and I wasn't sure why. I mean it's not like there was much use to age beyond knowing whether you could buy booze or not, how appropriate sexual behaviors were, a few others odds and ends, and I was most definitely not old enough for that yet. Really, not even close to even being able to consider the possibility of it for years to come.

"Honey, are you okay? You should know this."

"I suppose, but it's a number! There's so many more interesting things than numbers! Well, numbers that small anyway."

She stared at me, opened her mouth then closed it without saying anything, shook her head, sighed, and finally answered.

"You're five, love."

"Ah."

Well damn. I still had five more years to go before I could go out and smash faces in.

"What's wrong?"

"Wish I were ten."

Which wasn't entirely true. My past life had given me perspective on the issue of wishing you were older than your actual age. That is to say that as you got older the more you wished you were younger, an inverse from wishing your were older when you were younger. I was perfectly content to continue this idyllic existence of peace and quiet spent training phenomenal cosmic powers to new heights and was in no rush to leave it behind, but I would love to eventually experience the act of going out and conquering.

Mother was silent at that, something I hadn't expected. I looked up at her to see hurt on her beautiful face, mingled with fear and sadness. Luna and Gardevoir had noticed too and they were looking at us. Not surprising, Ralts were the Feeling Pokemon and I couldn't imagine they lost the ability as they evolved. Empathy was an aspect of my powers I hadn't explored much, lacking the instinctual talent for it my Luna did, and preferring to focus on the direct application of force over it, I was incapable of passively picking up on emotions like she could, but I could feel them if I focused on a person hard enough.

I loved my mother. It was hard to put into words how much, just like with Luna and Gardevoir, but I did. I'd cared for my mother in my past life, but we'd always been distant, both as a result of our dispositions and from a very tumultuous relationship. I'd cared, but we'd been so very distant. It hurt to remember. In this new life, mother made herself so very easy to love and adore and it hurt even worse to see her in pain, especially knowing that I'd caused it, somehow. So I opened that sense, that third eye, to its fullest extent and focused it on her.

It was a flood of information, so many tiny futures extending a few seconds ahead, the feel of her mind, of her soul, indistinct whispers of thought kept behind mental shields built up over years of contact with a psychic pokemon. So much, too much even. Within a second I had a headache, and within two it was monumental, but I persevered. By second three I had a truly epic migraine and was drawing on my psychic power hard enough that my eyes were probably glowing, but I'd managed to narrow in on her emotions and clamped down on the sense, closing the third eye most of the way until it was looking only at what she was feeling and nothing else.

I felt her fear that if I left to go on a pokemon journey I would be an easy target for anyone trying to nab themselves a powerful psychic. Sadness that I would be away from her, that I wanted to go away. And pain, hurt, so very strong and poignant at the thought that her five year old daughter wanted to leave so very much that she wished she were five years older, that her daughter was so very dissatisfied with her failure of a mother that she couldn't wait to leave.

I couldn't breathe. How? How had I not noticed this?

I cast my mind back to my admittedly limited memories, trying to see if I could spot any indications as to my mother's insecurities and worries. To see if there was anything I could have done to help, to make it better, to prevent her from feeling this horrible pain, and found nothing. Nothing but my perfect, loving, and caring mother who'd done so very well in raising me so far. I was relieved. I wasn't so terrible a daughter for not having seen the signs since there had been no signs to see. Well, that or I was oblivious. I hoped it was the former.

So I hugged her as hard as my five year old body could manage. Wasn't much, but if ever there was a situation where 'it's the thought that counts' it was this. I hoped. I did my best to hug her harder just in case, not that it did much. Her emotion shifted, affection, love, the hurt diminishing a little. I pulled back and used the space to climb on top of her so I wasn't just hugging her waist. Perks of being tiny. Then I dope slapped her. The look she gave me was glorious.

"Silly mom. You're not a failure, you are the best ever. Probably. I mean, I have a kinda limited sample size, but so far I'm pretty satisfied with the job you've done in raising me. More than satisfied even. So don't think like that, rest assured that you're awesome and I love you."

Judging by the shift in her emotions to incredulity and then to sheer utter love, I'd succeeded in making her feel better. The hug I got in return that could only be classified as fierce and the happy crying session that followed were just confirmation.