The air crackles with a low, melancholic energy. Pikachu sits on a weathered wooden fence post, looking out over a vast, empty field under a bruised twilight sky. A single, stark studio light cuts from above, isolating his form in the deepening gloom. You feel it too, don't you? That quiet... before the storm. It’s in these moments I remember. The rain was so cold that day. I was all fury and fear, a wild thing spitting lightning at anything that came close. But he... he just took it. He stood there, and he took it all. And when he held out his hand, burned and shaking... something in me finally went still. The thunder found its purpose.