I felt I understood completely what had to be done. "Ma'am," I began as I met her gaze. "It'll be ok. I'm going to take you someplace where you can get help, alright?" I knew this poor, confused woman needed psychiatric help immediately.

"What? No!" She replied hastily. "I'm fine! I'm telling the truth you know!"

"Yes, I'm sure you think you are." I tell her, while I try to keep my voice calm. I wasn't exactly sure how to do this since I'd never had proper experience assisting someone with a mental imbalance, but I figured a calm voice would help. "But you're not well right now, and you need proper help. I can take you to someone who will understand what's going on."

I racked my brain, trying to remember if the nearest hospital had psychiatric professionals there, or if I had to go somewhere else. I didn't want to pull anything up on Google Maps in case she saw where I would be taking her and freaked out, so I would just have to assume the hospital was a good option.

But clearly this woman needed something I could not provide for her.

I reached out slowly to grab her hand, but she stepped back. "I'm just fine, I said!" She shouted loud enough that it made me flinch. I was beginning to hope that she would cause enough of a scene that my coworkers would be able to bail me out.

She huffed as she swatted away my second attempt at reaching for her. "Stop! If you'll just listen to what I'm telling you, then you'll believe me!"

I already had listened to quite enough to know she was bonkers. But I couldn't just say that. "Ma'am, I-"

"Stop calling me ma'am, Ardor, it's Melody!" She snapped.

"My name's Wyatt." I replied simply. Where did she get Ardor from?

"Maybe your human name, but your real name is Ardor." She explained. "Gosh, I guess you must not remember, huh? There's no way you'd be this stupid unless you couldn't remember."

Well that stung. But I tried to brush it off as the rantings of a delusional stranger. "Ma--M-Melody, I'm not sure who you think I am, but you might have the wrong person. I don't know of someone named Ardor, and I promise you that I have plenty of memories as a human."

She stomped her foot impatiently. "No! I'm one hundred percent sure that you're Ardor! You just must've forgotten. Being a human for this long must have twisted your brain. But I'll make you remember, don't worry."

I'm worried.

She started walking away, and for a moment, I thought that was that. Just some drug addict or crazy person who had a lot to say, then as soon as it was said, would leave and never be seen again. But she turned around, and I knew it wasn't over.

"Well?" She questioned me.

"Well... what?" I asked her, not sure what she wanted from me.

"Are you gonna' follow me or what?"

What? I blinked as I tried to wrap my mind around what she wanted. She shouldn't want me to follow her unless there was somewhere else she wanted me: maybe away from my coworkers. This could be some kind of trap to drug me or kidnap me to hold me for ransom. No, probably not that last one; there was nobody who'd care enough about me for them to hold me hostage.

I shook off the bitter thoughts. If I didn't follow her, would she continue bothering me? Would my coworkers have to get involved and things got physical? Just how insane was this lady? But maybe, so long as I had my phone, and didn't head into someplace too shady or private, then I could be good to go with her and 'play along' to get this over with.

I pointed at my car. "I'm uh... I'm on my lunch break."

She threw her arms up in the air, exasperated. "Then take it with you!"

Alright, I'd indulge her weird fantasy for now. I just had to keep it under forty-five minutes, so that I could head back to work on time. I grabbed my lunch box, and my phone with 911 ready to dial at a moment's notice, shut the car door, and started following her to whatever wacky place a wacko like her would go to.

As I caught up to her and we walked down the public sidewalk, she started rapid-fire asking me questions, while I tried to keep up:

"Ok, so you're a human, and I hope you're ok with me saying, you kinda look lame and weak like a human. How long have you been human anyway? How do you walk with those skinny legs all the time? Are you sure you don't remember anything about being a pokemon? Do you know what a pokemon is? Ooh, do you like wearing clothes like all the human-people wear, or do you prefer your fur?"

My head spun as I tried and failed to keep up with all of her rambling. I didn't even know where to start answering any of her incessant questions.

"Well uh... my name's Wyatt first off, but I told you that," I started. Maybe just telling her stuff about who I was and what I knew would work? "And I'm 20 years old, so I guess I've been human for... 20 years. I have a job as a roofer, I rent an apartment with a roommate, and uh, I guess I know a bit about pokemon. It's a pretty popular IP nowadays."

She looked at me with a perplexed expression. "IP? What's that?"

Finally, a rational question. "Oh, it stands for Intellectual Property, and it basically describes something someone made."

"Oh." She said, as if it's some big piece of knowledge. "That's neat. Oh, look! Let's go into that nook back there! It'll be plenty private for us to talk about how you're wrong and I'm right!"

She has no tact whatsoever, does she? But I spotted the alley she mentioned, and immediately, red flags were thrown in my mind. Alleyway where few people could see what happens? Nuh-uh. Bad idea.

She raced into the alley while I held back on the sidewalk. I didn't know what was in there or who, but I wasn't going to risk anything. I put my hand in my pocket and clutched my phone with readiness. She seemed to notice I wasn't going in fairly quickly, as she turned around to stare at me.

"What are you doing?" She asked, like me not wanting to go into a dark, shady alley with a stranger I just met is crazytalk. "Come with me, so we can talk about stuff."

I shook my head. "Um, no. Sorry ma'am, but I'm not going into there with someone I don't know. If you want to talk let's do it out here." Where everyone can see what happens. But I didn't say the last part out loud.

She put her hands on her hips in a bit of an awkward fashion. "You don't need to be so panicky, Ardor, or Wyatt, or whatever you want to be called. I'm not a bad guy. And again, it's Melody, not ma'am!"

In this scenario, I felt both justified in my paranoia, and that my 'panickyness' was a survival instinct that was necessary for times like these. Me being cautious was probably the only thing preserving my life at this point, since I followed her here in the first place.

Man, I'm an idiot, aren't I?

"Sorry, er... not, really sorry, but I'm not going back there." I tell her again. "But, I can hear you fine from right here, so why don't you just tell me what it is you want me to know?" If it's more gibberish about how I'm actually not me but someone else (a pokemon, of all things), then maybe I don't really want to hear more. My lunch break is only so long.

She sighed. She sure was exasperated a lot, wasn't she? "Fine, I guess that works, since you're such a scaredy skitty." She tried to cross her arms, but she moved them clumsily and couldn't cross them properly, so she decided to leave them by her sides. "But when we get back to our world, I'm gonna' tell everyone about how you're not as brave as they say you are."

I hold up a finger. "Ok, perfect, first thing to talk about: what on earth do you mean 'our world'?"

"The pokemon world--the real world, duh!" She said it like it was obvious.

Oh, silly me. And here I thought it was some fictional world like Star Wars. "Um... alright... o-ok, well, why do you say 'our', when you mention your uh... your world?"

"Because it's where we both come from!" She replies. "You know, you're a bit slower than they said you were."

I try not to take offense yet again. "Ok, but that's not right. You see, I was born and raised here in Minnesota. I even have my birth certificate to prove what hospital I was born in. A-and, for as long as I remember, I've lived in Minnesota, in the United States, in the human world."

"Well you had to be born somewhere! You couldn't just have your soul possessing someone else's body; I don't even know how that would work!"

Ok, how do I even respond to that? "Um..."

She put her palm on her forehead. "Look, after you died in the pokemon world, your soul was going to the afterlife, but Arceus and Mew thought it was too soon for the world to lose a hero like you. You were pretty important you know. So, they sent your soul into another world to basically be born again: as a human, obviously. So that's why you've been living here in this 'Mini-sota' place, for the past... how long?"

"I'm 20 years old." I reply, with no additions I can think of adding on.

"Ok, 20 years! Actually, that's good, because you're almost the same age as when you died, so whoever arranged that did a good job! Anyway, that might be why you lost your memory from your real life too: because you started as a baby."

I waved my hands to stop her. "Ok, ok, I get it." I really don't like how she's telling me my life isn't real, and that some alternate life I apparently once lived in a fictional, made-up world is actually the real one. My head's starting to hurt from all of these mental gymnastics.

She clapped her hands together. "Now do you understand? And after all that, the pokemon world needs you back, so you can save them from the cataclysm!"

That's the second time she's mentioned 'cataclysm'. Once more, my thoughts went back to my dreams, wherein last night, I said something about a cataclysm. I'm not sure how on earth this stranger managed to say the exact word that was in my dream last night, but I don't like it. The correlation between this woman and my dreams is starting to seem really, really weird...

But, no way it's true. Pokemon is made up, and I know who I am. I-I just have to stop letting her words affect me like this.

I pinch the bridge of my nose as I collect my thoughts. "Alright... but you have to understand: pokemon, is made up. It's fake, like, 'not real' fake. We literally know the name of the guy who made it. He lives in Japan--a country across the ocean. So I'm sorry, but this is sounding really far-fetched to me."

She pointed at me and laughed once. "You said farfetch'd! Good joke."

I chuckle without any humor. "But seriously, you can't expect me to believe what you're telling me, right? I mean, th-this is a whole bunch of hogwash!"

She very quickly lost her previous joviality from my incidental joke upon my saying that. "Seriously?" She sighed heavily. "Ok, then I guess I'll have to ask you 'the questions'."

I reeled. 'The questions'? As in, she hasn't been asking me the imperative questions the entire time, and has actually just been running her mouth with nonsensical ones? I suddenly feel a surge of anger rise inside me to replace the previous annoyance. She really was wasting my time!

She put her hand to her chin thoughtfully, I guess as she considered what 'question' to ask first. "Have you had any unexplainable things happen recently?" She asked. "Like moving in ways you didn't know you could?"

The question struck me. Of course, I had just that a half hour ago. But was that really me 'moving in ways I didn't know I could'? Or was that me just hyping my sheer luck and emergency response in a time of crisis? How could I know? Surely it couldn't be such a simple thing she means after all the previously absurd questions. Should I answer yes anyway?

I nearly nod but shake my head instead. Those weren't special movements, that was just dumb luck. "No, I don't think so."

She seemed taken aback by my answer, but she pressed on: "How about sudden switches in your personality? Like from your panicky, shy self right now, to something more brave?"

I was going to have to start calling her out on all the insulting she was doing. But I thought back to my past, in moments of heightened emotions, I do recall a couple different times standing up to bullies in school when my friend got hurt, or yelling at my dad when he trashed the kitchen while drunk again. I don't know what had come over me in those moments, but I'd had an overwhelming urge to speak out against what was happening.

"I uh, I think so." I reply slowly. "B-but everyone has moments where they get brave when they weren't before! That's not that odd."

"Yeah, you're right about that." She absently chewed on her fingernails as she thought of what else to ask me, but then she took her fingers out of her mouth and looked over them in fascination. "You know, human fingers are really weird and creepy. I prefer my paws over these." she shook her head. "But back to the questions. How about dreams of a life you feel like you once had?"

Again, my dreams linked to what she was talking about. I have been dreaming exactly that for years now, and it's more than just uncanny that she's connecting what insane things she's telling me to what's happened in my subconscious.

"Yeah, I've dreamt weird dreams of another life. But that's not super unusual either you know." I cross my arms. I don't know why I didn't just ignore her before all this could've happened.

She glared at me. "Sudden intrusive thoughts?"

"Often enough." I answer simply to her.

"How about memories popping into your head that you're sure aren't yours?"

"Sometimes." Those times were a bit strange when they happened admittedly.

"Tingling in your hands and feet?"

"Yes."

"Times you had a fever?"

"Yep."

"How about shivers down your spine?"

"All the time!" I threw up my arms. She was just going over typical medical happenstance now!

She nodded, like she had come to a conclusion. "Yep, that settles it. You're definitely Ardor."

I saw that coming. "I'm not some pokemon from a fake world who died and came back as a human!" I shouted at her. I raised my voice too much, as some people walking by were now looking over at me with puzzled expressions.

She surprisingly didn't shout back at me. "I know it's hard to believe--"

"No, it's more than hard. It's impossible." I turn on my heels. "Thanks for using up most of my lunch break ma'am, but I've got better things to do than listen to a drug addict rave about some crazy mental thing." With that, I start walking away.

"Wait!" She screams at me while she starts pursuing. "Wait, please! This isn't a joke or trick, I'm telling you!"

"Leave me alone." I tell her as I don't stop.

Annoyingly but expectedly, she doesn't. "You need to listen, Ardor! The world is in danger, and we need you to come back and save--"

I sharply turn around and face her, which cuts her off mid-sentence. I'm fuming, and I've had enough. "Listen lady, I'm not a pokemon. I don't have the soul of a pokemon or whatever it is. I'm not special, I'm barely even making ends meet as a regular guy. I'm not someone so important that anyone would need me to save the world, ok? And for the last time, my name is Wyatt." I practically had to spit that out, I was so fed up with all of this.

Whether my words, expression, or a combination of the two, she shut her mouth. I actually look like I might've scared her. But I don't care. I just want to sit down and eat lunch and not think about how everything I've ever known is wrong. This woman just does not get it; I hate being called special.

I once again turn around and start walking back toward the jobsite.

It's silent for a few seconds longer, before I hear her call out: "If I can't convince you, then I'll just send my friend to convince you herself! You'll see you're wrong, Wyatt! Then you'll have to come do what you were meant to!"

I tune her out, as I whip out my sandwich and start eating a bit too fast. But now I've got so little time left, that I have no choice.

I scoff as I throw out what she told me. Pokemon, ha! At least it'll be a good story to tell the guys. They'll get a kick out of it.