Thread by @Nymphomachy

Ash Ketchum is actually Amberthree. Researcher Delia Ketchum had taken some stem cells transported offsite to analyze during her vacation when Mewtwo went berserk

Climax of the game isn't defeating the Elite Four (you get a false ending), it's the final confrontation with Mewtwo

https://twitter.com/the_hitman/status/1119568371673182208

I mean

I have not been the first person to bemoan the lack of any non-bildungsroman Pokémon games but honestly I really do wish we could have a Pokémon game that had a little more of that wild, hyperactive SNES energy

Imagine if the Mewtwo battle had had a Kenji Ito-esque manic JRPG boss theme

Ugh I kind of love the idea of Ash/Leaf having a confrontation with their mom where she admits to them that, while she loves her child more than anything, she did, in fact, furtively create them in an archaeologist's clone lab in order to continue the Mewtwo Project

Ash/Leaf visits the Pokémon Mansion and it's basically like visiting the Shinra Mansion, they're struck by cryptic, unnerving flashbacks

All the scientists, thieves and squatters you battle tell you that somebody mysteriously came for the pertinent data over a decade ago

They go to face Blaine in the Pokémon Gym, but when they arrive at the final platform they find Blaine having tea with his good friend, Mr. Fuji

When he sees them, he looks like he’s seen a ghost

They tell Blaine their name and Fuji suddenly storms off, explosively apoplectic

Throughout the gym battle Blaine is distracted, as though something deeply unsettling has occurred to him but he knows he can’t do anything about it personally

After you defeat him he goes on a weird, rambling tangent about the peculiarity and impermanence of existence & leaves

Then when they exit the Pokémon gym they immediately get a phone call from their mom

She tells them she’s in trouble and they need to come back immediately

When they come home they find her—and her entire hulked-out Pokémon collection—in a full-on standoff with the police

Mr. Fuji is there, with the cops, having told them everything

And so now Delia Ketchum is under arrest for crimes against humanity and manufacturing biological weapons in defiance of international law

The whole yoke of the Mewtwo Project having been put around her neck

At first, Delia and her crazy-prepared Pokémon army absolutely plow through the police’s modest packs of Arcanines

Ash/Leaf fights through a few cops themselves, in an attempt to fight through to their mother

But Gary ambushes them in the battle, having returned to aid the cops

But by the time they’ve dispatched Gary, the police have received some timely reinforcements in the form of the entire Elite Four

Delia’s already heavily-taxed Pokémon squad is easily crushed under their might and then Delia herself is struck and pacified by an Alakazam

Just when it looks like Ash/Leaf is going to get arrested too, the Elite Four/police get hit with an explosive attack from all sides, followed by a hailstorm of poison gas

In the confusion, a squad of elite Team Rocket operatives swoops in and abducts them from under their noses

The next leg of the game is Ash/Leaf being brought before Giovanni and told that, despite their differences in the past, they’re now a wanted terrorist

Team Rocket are the only allies they have now

They have an operation planned to recover Delia and they want A/L to take point

(Of course, Giovanni’s the Illusive Man here, he wants this because he knows that Delia’s research and Amberthree is the surest bet to finding a way to control Mewtwo, but A/L still doesn’t know that)

So they don Rocket apparel and join a surgical strike on central police HQ

Also at some point they hear on the radio that all the Pokémon gyms in Kanto have been shut down for a national emergency

When A/L makes it to the detention block, they find every gym leader they've faced thus far, enlisted to guard Delia until she can be transferred to supermax

And obviously they have to fight through them all again

And all of them says gives some form of guilt-tripping speech along the lines of "we believed in you and supported your journey and this is who you are now? You joined up with Team Rocket?! You'll pay for this!"

The only one who doesn't is Blaine at the end, who is all like "listen, I plainly can see how much you love your mother, but you're very confused right now and what you're doing is only going to make things worse for everyone, you're meddling in things beyond your comprehension"

(Oh shit, just occurred to me these gym leader re-fights should be double battles with Jessie/James switching off as your partner)

When A/L gets through to their mom, Delia's super relieved and happy to see them, but she's also absolutely horrified that things have come to this

Delia tells Ash/Leaf that as soon as they get free, she promises that she'll explain everything to them

But then the Rocket operatives are like "uh, actually this is gonna play out a bit differently" and knock them both out with Poison-types

Ash/Leaf wakes up on an operating table with a bunch of electroencephalographs and EKGs and shit hooked up to them

And there's some creepo Team Rocket scientist who probably appeared somewhere earlier in the game and he's gleefully dictating his research notes about A/L

When he sees A/L is awake he starts gushing over how A/L is all their wildest dreams come true

Long has he lamented that he never had a chance to examine the legendary Ambertwo himself, but he would never have guessed that Dr. Ketchum had produced a viable backup copy

And obviously Ash/Leaf doesn't have any idea what this mad scientist is on about

So he cacklingly reveals that they're not really human—they're an unsanctioned clone of a clone of a clone that was designed to interface with an unstoppable Pokémon superweapon

And thanks to their gracious cooperation in the acquisition of their creator, rogue scientist Dr. Delia Ketchum—who is being quite skillfully tortured in an adjacent office for everything she knows about the Mewtwo Project—the weapon will soon be in their hands

And in the meantime, he wants to know Ash/Leaf's limits

He brings out a Nidorina, and tells Ash/Leaf that the Pokémon is, out of A/L's own vision, looking at a geometric shape projected upon the wall

They must tell him what the Nidorina sees. If they answer incorrectly...

...then the doctor will run a low but agonizing amount of electrical current through A/L's body, in rising increments, until they can correctly answer what it is that the Nidorina is currently seeing.

A/L guesses incorrectly and is immediately electrocuted

"Wrong. Again."