That white hand on your shoulder...

It's not real. ... ... ... Or is it? _____________________ The old and new Pokemon Creepypasta stories you know, now with photographic evidence. _____________________ [Please do not use the photos here for your own readings of these stories without explicit permission.]

[pokemoncreepypasta]

M!A Summons the Unown King until the MOD Gets sick of it also if You're Whatt the Unown King Looks Like Well Here it is: "This ferocious beast can sleep for centuries and when it wakes it will kill anything for food."It had no number and its cry was the one that had sounded before. It was dark blue like the Unown, but its form only resembled them in the head where it had 3 spikes, like a crown and it had only one eye. Unlike the Unown, this one had a body, legs and arms ending in spikes staine.

[This is not an RP blog. This is an archive for Pokepasta stories with photos in them. Please do not send asks trying to roleplay here, they will be deleted.]

[pokemoncreepypasta]

[Main account is @sparklingdemon.]

[pokemoncreepypasta]

Tarnished Gold

[STORY SOURCE]

Early this morning, I was browsing the emails I had gotten during the night; a few Facebook updates, a little spam, a newsletter, and an email from a sender with the name "NO MORE". The address was "Hope_abandoned". The subject? Tarnished Gold. I was intrigued. 

I opened my email to find a wall of text starting simply with, "I hear you're in the market for creepy Pokémon things... Here's one for you. Enjoy." 

And then, I began to read...

Being someone who isn't nearly as computer savvy as someone from this generation should be, I know very little about what technology is capable of. Aside from email, IM, and the occasional download of something otherwise unobtainable for me at the moment, I have about the same amount of knowledge an eighty-year-old might possess about the electronic world.

For example, and for the sake of this tale I'm about to recount, I was totally unaware that someone is capable of hacking Pokémon games to make their own sub-story of the world, even less so that it was possible to make a physical copy of the game in a real cartridge.

However, I happened to learn about this in one of the most disturbing ways possible.

When I was younger, Pokémon Gold was my very first game from the ever popular franchise. I became very attached to the little creatures and my character (named after myself even though the character was male) and often fantasized about the adventures we would go through had a preset storyline not been in place.

That isn't quite important, though.

What is important is the fact that I never truly let go of my childhood fantasies, the memories I had from that first game were far too cherished to set free. As such, I still have my old Gold game, complete with a total abuse of the copy glitch. I refuse to restart my game though, as I'm afraid too much of the old magic would be lost.

I wanted to play a whole new game of the version that I recall being the happiest with, but older cartridges are rather hard to find outside of the Internet nowadays. The most my local flea markets have are GBA games... hardly any being Pokémon.

Fortunately for me, my grandmother still fully supports my long-standing love for Pokémon and often buys boxes of cards, toys, video tapes and other items she comes across during her frequent visits to local auctions. Granted, very little of these things she gives me are in good condition; long forgotten items stowed away in a musty basement after the phase in their owner's life had passed hardly ever are. But, as gifts from a dear relative, I cherish them as if they were made of gold... pun not intended.

Most recently, she gave me a box with a brand new video tape containing episodes from early on in the first season, several hundred battered and well used cards, and a game cartridge with no label.

The cartridge was the familiar metallic gold color of the game I had been looking for. Even though the label had been removed, and a large red X drawn in sharpie in the place where the sticker should have been, I could easily tell what it was... What other game had that color?  You can imagine my excitement for finally finding another copy! I hate ordering things online, so this was a rather big relief. I thanked her profusely and promised I would play it as soon as I got home, which I did.

Getting started was difficult, not because the game was faulty, but because I had sold my GBA to my little brother several years ago for some of his better Pokémon cards... Once something belongs to him, it's difficult to get him to lend it out to me. Such is sibling relations, I suppose.

After much bribery, I finally got my hands on my former GBA and quickly inserted the vandalized game. 

Chills ran through my body as the opening "movie" for the game began to play, sending a wave of nostalgia crashing over me. It was good to see it again.

The game opened normally, the pixelated image of Ho-oh flying through the sky beneath the title presented itself before leading into the normal selection screen. 

The person who owned the game before me still had the game on file, but I cared very little for what someone did before me. Considering the condition of their things, they must have been very young. I was bound to be met with a team full of Pikachu with ridiculous names.

I started a new game.

It was here that I realized something wasn't quite right with the game. The normal intro involving a Professor introducing you to the world of Pokémon didn't play out. Rather, it went more like this:

It started out with a black screen, which was quite familiar considering that’s how the Gold, Silver, and Crystal games begin. But, instead of the normal "What time is it?" dialogue, I was met with…

"………..……"

"… POKéMON are nothing more than tools." 

"Use them, and throw them away." 

"…….."

The black screen faded away, revealing an empty area at night. 

It looked familiar... I vaguely remember it being a route in an earlier part of the game, but since I’ve been away from the game for so long, I couldn’t place it.

In the silence of this scene, the sprite of your rival, henceforth noted as Silver, walked in from the left. He moved a little slower than normal as if he were hesitant about something. 

Once he had moved to the middle of the screen, he stopped and turned back to look at where he came from, turned towards where he was going, and turned back towards where he had come once again.

For a moment, he stood there simply staring towards the left side of the screen before a dialogue box popped up beneath him saying nothing more than, “…”. 

After that, he turned back around yet again, only this time, he continued off to walk off screen.

The scene faded away to be replaced with Silver standing in the place where you first officially see him, just outside Professor Elm’s laboratory. 

It was clearly in a slightly later part of the game than normal as the professor and his assistant exited the lab and went their separate ways. 

The assistant seemed to leave the town, and Elm walked further downward off screen, which I assume that meant he left for his home and remained in town. The character of Gold was nowhere to be seen.

After that small scene, it stayed on Silver. I thought the game had frozen for a minute, but I finally realized I was able to move him. Honestly, I was a little excited. Silver was, and always has been, my favorite of the rivals, and it was an interesting thing to be able to play as him.

I moved him a little further downward to see if I was able to explore, but it stopped me each time I moved one step away from the front of the lab. 

A dialogue box popped up that said, “I can’t leave yet…”, and it backed me up a step. 

I moved back up to the place he had originally been standing and moved into the window. It worked much like a door as it allowed me to enter Professor Elm’s lab.

Aside from the regular equipment, bookshelves, computers, trashcans, tables, all that, the lab was empty; which was to be expected since the employees had left just a moment ago. 

On the table was a single Pokéball. 

Being without one at the moment, I walked over and took it.

A dialogue box popped up and said, "Obtained TOTODILE.", but no "item get" music played… 

Apparently, stealing wasn’t condoned even by the game. 

After pressing "A", it gave me the option of naming the Pokémon. I picked "yes", as I love naming these things. 

As it took me to the naming screen, another dialogue box popped up, interrupting the naming process.

“Don’t name it! You’ll only get attached.” 

“Don’t love it, use it.”

It was clearly the "voice" of the same person who spoke in the very beginning… I found it odd…

The naming screen faded away, leaving me in the empty lab. 

I quickly tried to leave through the front door, but was stopped by Silver saying, “Not through there…” 

Again, he backed up and I exited through the window I had come in from.

As if things weren’t strange enough as they were, when I left New Bark Town to begin the adventure and stepped into the grass, it was nearly impossible to get a random battle to start. 

Normally, I go out of my way to avoid them later on in the game, but during the beginning, it was something I enjoyed to get my Pokémon to level up… Being unable to find something to fight was a little frustrating.

After several minutes of walking back and forth in patches of grass, I finally encountered a Pokémon. A Sentret, nothing out of the ordinary. 

But when I sent out my Totodile and chose the only presently useful move he had, Scratch, the Pokémon fled. 

I was rather confused. Wild Pokémon never ran away so early in the game. 

After a few more tries, all with the same outcome, I continued on to Cherrygrove.

Just before I entered the city, I recognized the small area as the one Silver had walked through in the beginning. 

After entering the city, I bumped into Gold, who wordlessly challenged me to a battle.

His Pokémon, a Cyndaquil, was already a slightly higher level than mine. I was still stuck at level five, while he was already at level seven.

And, even though I had the type advantage, he beat me. 

Before whiting out, his sprite switched out with the Cyndaquil’s… He looked disappointed.

After exiting the Cherrygrove Pokémon Center, (I hadn’t used it prior, but it was apparently the only option I had), I walked back to the place he had challenged me only to find I was unable to battle him at this point again.

The game was getting a little annoying by now. I had no money, Pokégear, or Pokédex, and I was unable to battle wild Pokémon. 

Fortunately, once I entered Route 30 onward, there were other Pokémon trainers in which I could battle and easily beat…

Though none of them seemed eager to speak to me after I had won.

By the time I entered Violet City, my Pokémon's level was still too low to take on the gym leader. 

But with the money I had won from the trainers I fought before, I was at least able to buy some potions, so I felt I was set.

The lesser trainers of the gym were easy enough. 

I was only forced to use two of my previously purchased potions and I leveled up once. 

Though, as I took on the gym leader, he proved to me too much and I lost yet again. 

Upon winning, he did the very same thing Gold had done…and he looked disappointed as well.

When the battle ended, I didn’t white out, rather I had to endure a lecture about treating Pokémon correctly from the leader. 

Once he finished speaking, I received a one-worded option: "Steal?"

I chose the only option given to me, "Yes".

Silver backed up one step and slammed into the gym leader, kicking him backwards. 

Another dialogue box popped up telling me that I had stolen the gym badge, TM31, and $500.

After that, I whited out.

This is how it continued on for the remainder of the game. 

While I was able to defeat lesser trainers on the paths to cities and in the gyms, I constantly lost to the leader and was forced to steal their badges. 

The "steal" option also worked on people who would normally give you items in the game. 

This is how I was able to obtain key items such as the Itemfinder, the bicycle, the water pail, HMs, and many more…

They refused to give me anything otherwise.

Anyone I spoke to either refused to talk, greeting me only with “…”, or lectured me a little on how to properly treat Pokémon…

It was beginning to get that way with Nurse Joy as well. By the time I had progressed to Goldenrod City, she’d scold me anytime I whited out.

Pokémon continued to avoid me as well. If I wanted to better my team, I had to hope that the Pokéballs I used worked the first time. 

What was stranger about random battles is that, even if I locked the Pokémon in battle with Mean Look, the Pokémon passed out. Literally. 

After my first attack of Mean Look, (if I got to the first attack that is, sometimes the Pokémon had a higher speed than mine), before I was able to choose another, the Pokémon would faint on its own.

The dialogue box proclaimed, “[POKEMON] forced itself to pass out!” and the battle ended.

The only thing that seemed to go normally for me was the battles with Team Rocket. I always won against them and they always treated me like a punk kid getting in their way.

The rest of the game up until a certain point isn’t entirely important. Aside from win, lose, and steal, everything was more or less normal. 

While my Pokémon matured slowly due to frequent losses, they did grow to like me a little as I began giving them haircuts and other little things to boost our bond. 

The last I checked, the person who rated their happiness, (one of the very few people who spoke to me normally), said “It’s quite cute.” 

I know you must be thinking that this isn’t disturbing at all, and that I should just accept the fact that this is simply a hack made to tell Silver’s side of the story… Well, I did and it was, but I’m not quite finished yet.

Continuing the process of win, lose, and steal, I had finally made it to Kanto and ventured into Viridian City. The second I stepped foot into the city, the music cut off. I thought for certain that this was simply a glitch in the programming, that I was now to walk through a soundless game. But as I stood there for a moment, a very faint noise picked up and faded away.

I was now sure that the music had messed up, like it was trying to play, but couldn’t. But as I stepped back into the route I had just come from, the music picked up perfectly…it was only Viridian City that was silent.

I was now curious, so I stepped back into the silent city and began to explore. 

There wasn’t a person in sight… No one out in the open, no one in the houses, not even anyone in the Pokémart or Pokémon Center. 

The city was entirely empty… just the silence and the occasional soft noise which I still hadn’t identified.

As I walked towards the gym, the sound grew a little louder. I figured the noise was coming from the inside, so I entered. 

There was no one there either, but that was to be expected. The gym was always empty until much later.

The noise didn’t play in here, but it was still dead silent.

I walked up to where the gym leader normally stood and, as I walked past the spot and into the brink wall, (I do that sometimes, I like the noise), I was transported to another room… The wall had hidden a set of stairs. 

This place was silent as well…but the noise began to play yet again. It was much louder this time. Just a bunch of random, high-pitched noises…but it sounded like screams.

By this time, as you could well imagine, my heart was pounding…I don’t take screaming, or things that sound like screaming, very well due to an unfortunate experience with a very graphic haunted house when I was three years old… but I digress.

Regardless of my pounding heart and shaking hands, I explored the room…which was tinted in a muted red much like everything was in Pokémon Red. 

The room followed a sideways zigzag pattern and the “screams'' came at random, some short, some long and drawn out… It sounded as if someone was being tortured.

As I continued down the zigzagging hallways, I came across several disturbing images; sprites of NPCs without their heads, as well as heads without bodies. 

Anytime I tried to examine the bodies, Silver simply said, “Don’t look…”

The bodies and heads became more frequent as I went on, clogging up the hallways and leaving only a small path for me to follow… and the screaming became more frequent.

The screen began to flicker as I walked, just like it would if one of my Pokémon was poisoned…but none of them were. 

Just in case, I checked the status of my party. 

None of them were poisoned, but their health was going down. 

In an attempt to heal them, I picked a super potion out of my bag and used it on my Feraligatr.

A dialogue box popped up and said, “It won’t have any effect.”

Now I was disturbed, I knew none of this was supposed to happen. Regardless, I continued on, hoping that if they all fainted from this, I’d be taken back to a Pokémon Center and things would return to normal.

… It was stupid of me to assume that…

I continued along the morbid path, the screen flickering in and out. Finally, Silver stopped as the dialogue box popped up telling me that all my Pokémon had fainted… 

But it didn’t say what I had hoped…

It said "ALL DEAD."

By now, I was ready to cry, but I couldn’t stop myself from trying to get to the end of this disturbing experience… 

If I didn’t do this now, I’d just be tempted to try it again some other time…

Finally, I reached the center room, which was now tinted a deep red… I assumed this was to simulate the fact that the room was filled with blood. However, there were only a few bodies scattered around it. 

In the center, there were a few live figures, a man, a Pokémon, Gold, and another Pokémon I could only assume was his Typhlosion.

Gold’s Typhlosion attacked the man’s Pokémon, but it was quickly struck down, with its sprite first turning red, then grey, then disappearing… The man’s Pokémon had killed it.

Silver’s sprite stepped forward on its own and the man finally acknowledged he was there.

“GIOVANNI: Ah, son, you’ve made it.” 

“Come to see your rival’s demise, have you?”

This caused Gold to turn around to look at Silver. 

The only thing he said was “…”

Silver continued to move on his own. He approached the man and kicked him backwards…which obviously enraged Giovanni.

“GIOVANNI: You’re going to help him?” 

“HA! You’ve become just as weak as the others!” 

“If he seems worth saving to you…”

“Perhaps I should show you that there’s no sense in getting attached!”

“MEWTWO, take care of him!”

Mewtwo obeyed its creator’s command and approached Gold. 

I’m still uncertain of what it actually did, but it struck Gold, causing a scream much louder than before as the sprite of Silver’s rival lost its head and faded to deep red to grey.

“GIOVANNI: I told you long ago, SILVER, POKéMON are nothing more than tools! People are, as well.” 

“Use them and throw them away once they've served your purpose.” 

“MEWTWO, kill him!”

The Mewtwo didn’t obey this time; Giovanni’s words must have angered it. It turned to him and actually spoke.

MEWTWO: …You’re no longer useful…

It struck Giovanni just as it had done Gold and Typhlosion, but the scream Giovanni produced was much longer than any other I had heard…Mewtwo was torturing him.

Finally, the scream faded away into nothingness and Giovanni’s sprite did just as Gold’s did… leaving only Silver and Mewtwo alive in the room. As Mewtwo turned to face me, I knew that wouldn’t last for long.

MEWTWO: …Not useful…

It struck me, initiating a battle in which I was totally unable to participate. 

My sprite was in the place of any Pokémon. 

My health was full, but I knew it wouldn’t help. 

I chose to run, but I couldn’t…

I chose to attack, but I had nothing to use…

I just had to stand there as Mewtwo used Psychic on Silver’s defenseless image.

Even with the sound turned to a low level, the “scream” coming from Silver was disturbingly loud. 

Even as the battle screen faded away, the scream lingered until Silver’s sprite turned from red to grey, which I now assume symbolizes the coldness of death… 

Silver, along with Gold and everyone else who had been unfortunate enough to wander into this place from Viridian, was now dead.

The screen faded to black, all except for Mewtwo’s sprite, which remained in the center of the screen. 

My paranoid mind immediately made me think it was somehow going to turn on me next, but the words "THE END" simply faded in just underneath it and the screen cut to black, taking me back to the opening sequence.

I’m still unsure why this was made, why someone just shoved it into a box to sell, and why I happened to find it… But I can assure you that I’m swearing off all randomly found games… Either it’s new, or I’ll never risk touching it again.

The game I just described has slipped out of my possession since that first playthrough… 

I have no idea where it is, but I hope it’s rotting in a dump somewhere.

[pokemoncreepypasta]

[Thank you for your patience.]

[Unfortunately, these kinds of projects take a lot of work, so posts will not be consistent or frequent.]

[Please do not view this blog as something you should expect regular updates from, but instead as one that gives a pleasant surprise when it does update.]

[I have another remastering planned for posting very soon. I hope you’ll enjoy it.]

[pokemoncreepypasta]

Blue Tears

[STORY SOURCE]

“Pardon me, Sir. How much do you want for this?”

“S’free, take it.”

“What? Are you sure? I can pay you f—-”

“I said you can take it! Now get out of here!”

The above was a brief exchange of words between a very edgy young man, possibly in his late twenties, and myself at a yard sale I happened by. I always find the most interesting things at yard sales and flea markets. I’m normally there for books, but I’ll occasionally happen across something else that I find worth my time.

I didn’t find any books this time around; the entire sale seemed to be comprised of children’s toys, clothes for both little boys and little girls, as well as some items I’d expect a young married woman to use. Silken night clothes, stacks of cheesy romance novels that I had no interest in (I can’t read pure romance, I need something like murder or mystery to make it interesting), jewelry, as well as several cases of makeup, most of which appeared to be half used.

I found the used makeup to be in bad taste. If you no longer had a use for it, throw it away. Don’t try to peddle what’s touched your face to other people… it’s disgusting. I kept these thoughts to myself, however, as the man running the small junk sale seemed far from stable.

As I was about to leave, something blue peeking out from underneath a small, grey plush caught my eye. Colors always catch my attention, especially blue, so I lifted the plush to examine it. To my surprise, it was a Pokémon Blue game. Not that I had been looking for one, but I felt like experiencing a little nostalgia… even though the first generation of games wasn’t my favorite, it reflects back to a much simpler time in my life.

The cartridge had the word "Tears" written neatly in black across the image of the Blastoise. I assumed it was a nickname of some sort, perhaps the previous owner of the game cried a lot. It was within a bunch of child things, perhaps they were young enough to be labeled a "crybaby" by others and "Tears" was just a nicer name… I’m not sure. Anyway, I got the game for free, but I left a dollar on the table just so I’d feel better for taking it.

When I got home, I inserted the game in my SP and turned it on. The sound at the start up screen was greatly distorted… it sort of fluctuated from being several tones lower than normal to being nothing more than a low rumble. It was… unsettling to say the least. Naturally, I assumed the game was faulty, but I thought I’d play through until something froze up on me.

The previous owner, this "Tears" person, still had a game on file (as would be expected with a used game) but no information about playtime, character name, or anything else of that sort was displayed when that option was highlighted. Curious, I chose the previously started game, just to see where they were with everything. A child was bound to have an interesting game with creative names… Insight into the innocent mindset that was slowly becoming rarer with each passing year…

Upon choosing the previously saved game, I was met with a black screen and silence. I felt disappointed; the game seemed to already have messed up on me. I was just about to turn it off when a dialogue box popped up.

I began to read, but the text was moving painstakingly slow.

".........."

"I’ve been robbed of everything…"

"My title as champion…"

"My grandfather’s respect…"

"… Even my Pokémon are dead because of you…"

"… I won’t stand for this…"

"I will come to find you."

I was confused… who was speaking? Who were they speaking to? My heart rate had picked up out of what I assumed was fear… it had been a while, but I knew this wasn’t normal… but curiosity continued to keep me locked onto the game.

As the black screen faded away, the music belonging to the inside of the Pokémon Tower began playing perfectly… the sound obviously wasn’t as broken as it appeared to be at the beginning.

The scene revealed when the black faded was that of the appropriate area, the Pokémon Tower. The not-so-familiar-to-me sprite of your in-game rival, Blue, was standing in front of one of the many graves inside the tower. He stayed there for several minutes, the disturbing music continuing to play throughout his silence, before he finally said something.

“This ends today… for the both of us.”

With that, he left the tower, my screen followed him. As he stood outside the tower, the music did not change to Lavender Town’s normal depressing music… rather, the haunting tune from inside the graveyard continued to play through on a loop… as much as I wanted to turn down the music, I couldn’t bring myself to do so.

I couldn’t move the character after that. I couldn’t tell if it was another assumed glitch of the clearly hacked game, or if it was hesitation on the character's part.

After another minute, he finally spoke again.

“… Fly…” Even though there was no voice connected to the character in the game, with the speed in which the text moved, there was an almost obvious feel of depression about him.

I opened the start menu and checked Blue’s party. All he had was a Pidgeot which had no level…

I checked its stats, the only move it knew was the requested action of "Fly," and all its stats (except for health) were at zero. Odd as I found this, I didn’t question it and chose to fly.

When the map opened up, it was black save for one small square that was marked "Mt. Silver"… I knew this was impossible. Mt. Silver was in Johto which had yet to be introduced in the original Pokémon games…

Regardless, it was my only destination, so I chose it.

The typical animation of the trainer sprite turning into the bird sprite and flying off took place and, sure enough, I landed in front of the cave entrance to Mt. Silver.

Rather than having the sprite shift back to Blue’s sprite, his image moved to the left of Pidgeot’s sprite.

They faced each other for a minute before a sound much like that of entering or exiting a room played but in a much higher tone. It sounded as if something had broken.

When Blue spoke yet again,

“Fly away, you’re free…”

I began to assume the noise was the sound of a PokéBall breaking.

The Pidgeot cried out once before doing as its former master commanded and flying away. After his final Pokémon flew away, the haunting music continuing to play, he faced the entrance.

“… I’m coming for you…”

I now had the impression that this was a mission of revenge… and with the way he was speaking, it was a revenge of the darkest sort.

It dawned on me to check the items he had on him. I don’t know why this thought crossed my mind… but given the ongoing circumstances, I felt there would be something there. And there was.

There was only one item in the list, KNIFE, an item that certainly wasn’t programmed into the game under normal circumstances.

When I picked the option to use it just to see what it did, Blue said, “Not yet…”

After that, I was unable to control the character anymore. It was as if he wanted me to get him there and see his single item just to get the gist of what he may be planning, but that was it… the rest was all his own.

Blue stepped into the cave, and as he trekked through the stone maze of the cave, he never encountered any Pokémon, but I could faintly hear distorted cries mixed in with the music… I’m not sure, but I believe they could feel the negative emotions coming off Blue… and they cried out in concern.

Finally, he reached the chamber that harbored Red in the Gold and Silver games.

Blue’s pace slowed a little as he approached his rival, and the music, dark as it was already, lowered considerably making it infinitely darker…

As the two rivals faced each other, Red simply greeted Blue with the silence I had become accustomed to in Pokémon Gold.

However, Blue didn’t take to this very well as he shouted in apparent anger,

“Don’t ignore me like you have everything and everyone else!”

A battle ensued but the normal music didn’t play, the darkened music of the Pokémon Tower continued. By this time, other people were home and were becoming quite annoyed with the volume of my music, so I was forced to put in headphones as I still couldn’t bring myself to actually lower the volume… disturbing as it was, the music had some sort of hold on me.

I stared at the game screen as the battle opened up. Obviously, since Blue had no Pokémon, he never called anything out. Neither did Red.

In the battle option box, the four options of "Fight, PKMN, Item, and Run" weren’t all there; all there was to choose at the moment was "Item" so, obviously, he chose it.

The only item there to use was the one I had mentioned before, the KNIFE. It was quickly selected on its own and went back to the battle scene.

Now, the only battle option available was "Fight."

In the fight menu, Blue only had one attack at his disposal…

MURDER... I couldn’t regain control of the game, there was no option to run, I couldn’t bring myself to turn the game off and end what had quickly become a disturbing experience… the only choice there was to sit there and allow Blue to murder Red.

After selecting the attack, Blue shouted, “This is for everything!” and a typical attack animation much like Tackle played out only, instead of a single strike, Blue attacked repeatedly. The dark music in the background began to pick up its pace and become more high-pitched… it was painful to listen to as it reverberated through my headphones, but I never removed them.

Red’s sprite flickered in and out as he took the damage and, as his health dwindled to zero; a gurgled screeching sound broke through the noise of the music, replacing it only briefly as Red’s sprite faded into something that looked more like a decaying body before fading away completely with the screech.

My heart was pounding, I was beginning to get a throbbing headache, and yet my eyes remained glued to the screen as the remainder of the scene played out. As the music replaced the screen once again, another dialogue box popped up as Blue spoke yet again.

"............................"

"................."

"........."

"See you in hell..."

The battle options box popped up again, "Fight" the only remaining option.

Blue selected it yet again, but instead of "MURDER" the attack option available was "SUICIDE."

There was a moment of hesitation, but Blue finally attacked himself with less fury than he had Red. As his own health fell to zero, a lower gurgled screech replaced the high-pitched Pokémon Tower music, his sprite faded away.

Only when the "decayed" sprite faded in, he wasn’t facing the battlefield…

He faced me.

His screech continued on, growing in volume to the point where the pain it caused equaled that of a migraine... and yet I still kept the headphones in. My eyes locked onto the dead, hollow eyes of Blue as he continued to scream before the screen began to flicker. It was slow at first, but it quickly picked up to a rapid strobe effect. The "scream" grew in volume and pitch one more time before the screen simply cut to black.

I held my breath, my heart pounded so hard against my chest that it hurt. I deeply hoped that it was over but considering the fact that I couldn’t move, or even hear any noise outside of my headphones, I fearfully assumed that it wasn’t… and I was right.

White lettering began slowly typing out across the black screen and, as each word formed, I read,

"I finally got my revenge."

"The life YOU ruined has now faded away."

"But don’t think it’s over yet."

"My suffering has ended, but yours has only begun."

"I’ll be watching your strife with a grin on my face."

"And when it all ends…"

"…"

"I’ll see you in hell…"

Though I had a full battery just a moment ago, the light turned red and the system turned off. My nose began to spill blood for several minutes… and... I… I’ll never be able to describe the terror I felt afterwards… I’ll never be able to describe the terror I still feel…

You see, the very next day on the news, they announced that the very same man I purchased the game from, I won’t release his name, had called the police saying that he had killed his wife three days prior and buried her in the backyard… When they reached his house, they had found him by the phone, dead… he had slit his throat and committed suicide. It was also mentioned that, several weeks ago, his eight-year-old son had murdered their six-year-old son and then killed himself…

I assume that the game had done all this, and I’m next. I don’t know how much longer I have, nor do I know who will die at my hand... but you deserve to know this…

Never play Blue Tears.

[pokemoncreepypasta]

I love you, DOLL!

[STORY SOURCE]

Author: @jesterfox6​​

Let me start off by saying that I’m not that much of a Pokémon fan. I’ve only played a few games in the franchise and have completed even fewer (by completing, I mean defeating the Elite Four and the Champion. I would never be able to catch every single Pokémon in any game).

If you are looking for a diehard Pokémon fan, look at my brother. He has pretty much everything related to Pokémon, I’m talking multiple sets of still boxed games, heaps of Pokémon themed accessories and consoles for those games, and enough other kinds of merchandise like plushies and figurines to fill multiple rooms!

Anyway, this story isn’t actually about him. To be honest, I’m not really sure if it’s even about me either. 

See, earlier this week I had received a phone call from my mother who told me that one of my aunts had unfortunately passed away. While I was of course upset about it, I had never known her well enough to be bawling my eyes out or anything.

The only things I really knew about her was that everyone had called her “Kris” and that she was sort of the odd one out in the family, always having strange obsessions with “all sorts of meaningless objects” as my mother would say.

Regardless, the thing that really surprised me was that Kris had left some items for me in her will. I was very confused because of this, as I only used to see her once or maybe twice a year at the housing facility she lived in. Though I didn’t know her much, barely at all, I thought that any kind of gifts would be appreciated and went to pick them up.

I returned home with a handful of Items that I was sure weren’t for me until we checked multiple times. Even then I still wasn’t entirely sure that these items were really meant for me and not my brother as despite not being a Pokémon fan I had received a slightly worn but still in great condition Gameboy Color, A copy of Pokémon Crystal Version, and a strange plush toy that looked similar to a Clefairy but not exactly like one.

The plush had the basic body design of a Clefairy - if a bit more circular, black ears compared to the brown of a normal Clefairy, and only black ovals for its eyes and mouth instead of the more detailed features seen in the countless plush toys my brother had. I couldn’t even find a tag on the thing, giving me no clue as to when or where it was made. I considered asking my brother about it, but figured it wasn’t too important to know.

Letting the plush sit on a shelf that faced the door of my room, I found it a little strange that I was given Pokémon Crystal specifically; wasn’t “Kris” just a shortened version of “Crystal”…? Not putting too much thought into it, I decided to insert the cartridge into the Gameboy Color and give the game a try, as the second generation of Pokémon was not one I had played before.

After the infamous Gameboy start-up screens, what seemed to be an intro cutscene of the game loaded, showcasing features like the different forms of Unown and baby Pokémon, things that I believe were new additions to the second generation. I also recall that Crystal Version specifically was the first Pokémon game to introduce a female playable character, was this the reason why my aunt had the game on her?

After the intro, I was loaded into the main menu of the game with only two options: NEW GAME, and OPTION.

It was a little upsetting that the cartridge had no saved file on it, as I was excited to see how many and what kinds of Pokémon Kris had caught. It was fine that the cartridge had no saved data on it though, as now I could freely experience the game myself without needing to feel guilty for deleting the old save.

After going into the OPTION menu and changing the text speed to fast, something my brother always told me to do on the off chance I wanted to try one of his old Gameboy versions, I finally selected NEW GAME.

After the screen faded to black, it faded to a light blue color for a second, then back to black again. I was a little confused but brushed it off as nothing important.

Soon after this, some text appeared with an unnamed character saying that I had woken them up and asking me what time it was. I entered the current time and was then taken to the next scene.

Just like with the Generation 1 games, Professor Oak appeared on the screen and quickly described the world of Pokémon, saying that some play with their Pokémon, some battle using them, and that there were many mysteries about Pokémon that remain unsolved.

The screen faded to white and in the place of Prof. Oak was the sprite of a young girl with blue hair, which I correctly assumed was the sprite of the female player character. The text on the screen confused me, though. I found it a little strange that I couldn’t select the gender of the trainer but figured that most people would pick this version just to play as a girl. What confused me more was the lack of name choice and specifically the default name chosen for the character, the same name my aunt went by.

For some reason this similarity intrigued me immensely, and I decided that I would at least get to the end of the game and defeat the champion if nothing else. After a few more encouraging words from the Professor, KRIS and I were sent into the world of Pokémon.

The proper gameplay started with KRIS standing in the middle of what seemed to be the upper floor of a house. Before doing anything else, I decided to open the menu to see if I could do anything there.

Strangely, I found that the POKéMON option in the menu was available despite my knowledge that Pokémon games never open with you already having any party members at all.

Entering the menu out of curiosity I found a single Pokémon in the list, simply named “DOLL”.

To my knowledge there was no Pokémon with this name, perhaps it was a nickname? I opened the STATS menu for more information.

In the menu, I found that DOLL was a Level 1 genderless Clefairy with a Pokédex number of 000 and the NONE typing.

I found this very strange, wasn’t Clefairy a Normal type? I also couldn’t remember what Pokédex number Clefairy was, but I was sure it wasn’t zero. Looking closer at the sprite and animation itself, I found it to be strange as well. Instead of bouncing around or striking a pose like I imagined a regular Clefairy would, DOLL just sat there, not moving an inch. Thinking back, I also realized that DOLL had no cry when selected, it had made no noise of any kind. Perhaps this wasn’t a Clefairy after all?

Feeling slightly unnerved by this strange “Pokémon”, I closed the menu and led KRIS downstairs to continue the story of the game. After reaching the bottom floor, I was quickly stopped by a character I assumed to be KRIS’ mother, who mentioned to her that someone named Prof. Elm was looking for her and then gave KRIS some Pokégear which had just returned from the repair shop.

There I also set the day of the week and if it was Daylight Savings time. After being told of the Pokégear’s Phone system, I was on my way to look for Prof. Elm.

After searching around New Bark Town, I found the professor in his lab building.

When I spoke to him, Prof. Elm asked KRIS to raise a Pokémon that he had recently caught to help him study for some sort of paper.

Strangely, my only option here was NO, and selecting that prompted the professor to say this cryptic message.

“…Right. You already have a ‘POKéMON’, don’t you…?”.

The fact that “Pokémon” was in quotes unnerved me even more than I had been before. Was this “DOLL” a Pokémon or not? The ellipses before the question mark confused me as well, it seemed as if the professor was speaking with a hint of disrespect. Straight after that, Prof. Elm went back to his normal cheery tone of voice, stating that he had  received an email from someone named “Mr. Pokémon” and asked KRIS to go and see what kind of discovery he’s made, in the Professor’s place.

He directed me to go past the next city over, which I figured would be my next destination anyway.

As soon as I was allowed to move again, I attempted to have KRIS take one of the starters. I didn’t care which one it was, I would take anything over this creepy doll.

“KRIS: (I can’t replace DOLL...)”

Selecting any of the Poké Balls on the table only prompted this message to appear though, confirming that I would be stuck to only having DOLL for at least most of the entire game.

Still feeling unnerved and now a little disappointed, I decided to leave and finally get the journey started.

After walking through the tall grass for a short while, I ran into my first wild encounter, a Pidgey.

KRIS’ sprite slid onto the screen, her arm outstretched as if ready to throw something, but nothing was in her hand.

She sent out DOLL in retaliation and again it made no sound, still not moving at all. What could this thing even do in a battle?

I decided to see what moves DOLL had in the FIGHT menu, as I had forgotten to look at its moveset earlier in my confusion.

DOLL only had one move, “LOVE”, a typeless move with 99 Power Points. Using this move prompted the familiar phrasing that noted a Pokémon using a move:

“DOLL used LOVE!”

And with this phrase, several red hearts formed from DOLL’s body, which then surrounded the enemy Pidgey. After this animation finished, the following messages appeared:

“i love you!”

“Wild PIDGEY feels cherished!”

“Wild PIDGEY fled!”

“KRIS: I love you, DOLL!”

And with that, the battle simply faded out with no Pokémon being damaged or hurt. I suppose there really were ways out of potentially harmful situations other than fighting back.

Regardless, all other wild Pokémon battles played out in a similar manner, with the only real change being the phrase said at the end of the battle.

Sometimes the text would instead pick from a selection of a few similar phrases, such as “KRIS: Great work, DOLL!” or “KRIS: DOLL, we did it!”. However, the most common phrase by far seemed to be “I love you, DOLL!”.

The repetitive nature of the battles allowed me to notice that the Power Point value of LOVE never decreased, no matter how many times I used it. I also noticed that DOLL always used its move first, even though I was sure that some of the early game Pokémon knew Quick Attack.

After travelling for a short while, I eventually reached my destination:

“MR. POKéMON’S HOUSE”

Inside the house there were two people, Mr. Pokémon himself, as well as Prof. Oak.

Mr. Pokémon gave KRIS his new discovery to give back to Prof. Elm, which was what seemed to be a Pokémon Egg. Honestly, I was surprised that KRIS even agreed to hold on to it at all.

Prof. Oak walked over to KRIS, admiring her “Pokémon”. Again, the word was in quotes, but this professor at least seemed nicer about it.

The professor also commented on the reason why KRIS was given the errand, saying that it was because Prof. Elm saw that she took care of DOLL so well.

After talking for a little while longer, Prof. Oak handed KRIS a Pokédex, and as soon as I was able to, I eagerly looked through it hoping to find more information on DOLL.

Disappointingly, I found nothing on this strange “Pokémon”, and not even anything on Clefairy itself, proving that whatever this “DOLL” was, it was clearly not a Clefairy.

However, I also found out that the Mystery Egg was an item rather than a Pokémon itself. That would explain why KRIS was willing to carry it. If they wanted her to hatch it, though, I assumed that would be a different story.

As soon as I had stepped outside Mr. Pokémon’s house, Prof. Elm called on the Pokégear, and asked KRIS to return to his lab. From this point I continued the game’s story absent-mindedly, what I was mostly looking for now was more information about DOLL, which unfortunately didn’t seem to come easily.

The next change in battles occurred when I came across my first trainer battle. The trainer, one I recognized from New Bark Town, had walked up to KRIS. In their dialogue, they said the following:

“You’ve got a ‘POKéMON’, right?” 

“What a waste. A wimp like you.” 

“…… …… ……” 

“Don’t you get what I’m saying?” 

“Well, I too, have a good POKéMON.” 

“I’ll show you what I mean!””

Finding it strange that only KRIS’ “Pokémon” was referred to in quotes, I watched the battle start up.

The trainer’s name was only given as “???”. I assumed that this would be the rival character for this game, and that I would get the chance to name them later.

Everything started the same way as expected, with the rival sending out a Cyndaquil and KRIS sending out DOLL.

Again, I used LOVE, and was shown the same text as before.

“Enemy CYNDAQUIL returned to its POKé BALL!”

The only difference was that during trainer battles, instead of the Pokémon fleeing, it would return to its Poké Ball, unwilling to fight anymore.

After using the move on the rival’s Cyndaquil and winning the fight, the battle and story seemed to progress as if I had defeated the rival’s Pokémon in a normal manner.

Just as I assumed, after returning to New Bark Town, I was allowed to name my rival.

I couldn’t think of any good names, though, so I simply went with the default one, SILVER.

After the rival was named, Kris then gave the Mystery Egg to Prof. Elm as asked. It seemed like she was fine with doing things for others, if it wouldn’t affect DOLL in any way.

After a few lines, Prof. Elm suggested that KRIS should try the Pokémon gym challenge, which I assumed would be the same as the other games. Get the Eight Gym Badges, defeat the Elite Four, and then defeat the champion. The story direction was set, so I was ready to get the main part of the game started even though the gameplay most likely wouldn’t be any different from before.

Before I could leave the lab again though, I was stopped by one of the Professor’s assistants. They attempted to give something to KRIS, saying that it would help her with the Pokédex. Could I finally be getting Poké Balls?

…Of course not. The assistant seemed to mirror my disappointment as well.

“…You’re not going to change your mind, are you…?”

Regardless, at least having the ability to win fights effortlessly made for an easy game. I doubted I would need much time at all to finish this.

After the cutscene ended, I was allowed to leave the lab, and I started searching for the first gym.

At this point, I knew that this wasn’t what regular Pokémon Crystal was supposed to be like, but I was still curious and eager to continue as this copy seemed more… personalized.

The story of the game itself had started to become a bit boring at this point, though. I was never too interested in Pokémon to begin with, and when the hardest difficulty of the game was mashing the A button, it was hard to stay invested. Despite my lack of interest in any part of the game or story except for KRIS’ strange behaviour and what little I could find about DOLL itself, I stayed true to the promise I made earlier and continued.

I knew that I wouldn’t be able to find any interesting things about KRIS or DOLL by just going along with the story normally, so I started to look in other places. My first destination was the Pokémon Center.

There, I was surprised to find that DOLL could be healed there just like a normal Pokémon, and shockingly it even had its own custom sprite when doing so.

Next I attempted to using the PC’s features, despite knowing the outcome already.

Sadly I couldn’t test trading as I didn’t have any other Generation 2 games myself, and I knew my brother wouldn’t want to trade with an edited game, so that was out of the question.

Next, I moved on to the Poké Mart, and was surprised to learn that Poké Balls were an available option, but…

…I wasn’t even surprised anymore.

Eventually I had reached the first gym leader, and their Pokémon went down just as easily as everyone else’s’ so far.

At this point I wondered if anyone was even trying. Even the weakest of Pokémon could take on a simple plush toy, right?

After the battle, KRIS received the first gym badge, as well as a TM. I knew I probably wouldn’t be able to use it, but I still attempted to use it anyway.

Just as expected, DOLL couldn’t learn any other moves. Because of this, I wondered how I was going to progress. HM moves were required to beat the game, after all.

Reasoning that I would find a way to progress in time, I made my way to the second gym leader, the repetitiveness of the game causing me to almost forget that I had been taking pictures.

After the battle, Prof. Elm called again, asking for KRIS to take the Pokémon Egg from his assistant who was waiting in the Poké Centre and to wait for it to hatch.

Obviously that wasn’t going to happen, but it seemed like they didn’t have anyone else to ask. I couldn’t even tell who the person in the wrong was in this situation.

The only thing I could do in this position was to continue and silently hope that the professor could hatch the Egg another way.

Soon after this I came across a dark forest area, which was where I received my first HM for the move ‘Cut’.

However, as expected, I was unable to use it. How was I supposed to progress now?

The answer was simple, apparently. All I had to do was interact with the tree, and it gave me the option to cut it down. It was a little strange to actually have a choice for once, but I needed this tree cut to continue.

Just like that, the tree was cut down and I was on my way to the third gym.

It was just as easy as every other battle, what else am I supposed to say?

I also received a new HM soon after but had no use for it at the time.

It wasn’t until after the next gym leader was defeated that I needed to use the HM move, ‘Surf’, and it worked just like before.

I was able to get the 5th and 6th badges effortlessly, though unfortunately nothing interesting happened during this time.

I managed to find a shiny Gyarados before the 7th Gym, not that I could catch it or anything. However the NPC dialogue in the area clued me into the fact that the encounter was forced to be shiny anyway.

I suppose I’m not really cut out to be a shiny hunter, though even if I did happen to have the best luck ever, I doubt I would be interested for long.

Just like always I took on the last two Gym leaders without any issue, but to get the last gym badge, I had to do a small side quest where I answered a few questions about raising Pokémon.

“What helps you to win battles?”

Well…

“Cheating” seemed to be the most honest answer here, but selecting that option only made the question repeat, so I went with “Strategy” instead. Quite ironic, but that answer seemed to let me pass.

“What is most important for raising POKéMON?”

I of course selected “Love” here, as that seemed to be a main theme with the “Pokémon” at hand. Thankfully this answer let me continue with no problems.

With the questions finished, I finally received the 8th gym badge, and I made my way to the Pokémon league.

I was only stopped by SILVER, who once again challenged KRIS to a battle, and everything went just as you would expect.

SILVER wasn’t going to be anywhere close to the greatest trainer if he couldn’t even take out a harmless plush toy, I thought. However it’s not like anyone else had done any better; was anyone even going to try at all? Was anything ever going to change?

Anyway, with the rival now out of the way, nothing else stopped me from finally reaching the Pokémon League.

…And just like with every other fight so far, I won each battle in a flash.

With the Elite Four defeated, I was now onto my final challenge, if you could call it one: the League Champion, Lance.

While most of the game had been quite boring with just pressing the A button and watching the same scene play out repeatedly, I still wanted to play to the end to see if anything would change, either from the formula of the few Pokémon games I had played or from the monotony of mashing the A button for days straight. Now I was finally here. Regardless of if things changed or not, this would be the final battle.

I led KRIS to talk to Lance, and he told her that he had been waiting, and that the both of them would battle to determine who was the strongest out of them and who really deserved the title of Pokémon League Champion. Lance accepted KRIS’ challenge, and then the battle started up.

Most of the fight was quite uneventful, something I had come to expect from the game.

As I sapped the will to fight from Lance’s Gyarados, Aerodactyl, and his three Dragonite effortlessly, I knew that once again I had this fight in the bag.

Then, the rules of the world suddenly changed as Lance sent out his final Pokémon, his Charizard. Again, I selected the move LOVE, expecting an easy victory.

However…

“But it failed!”

My heart sank at the message, and with my interest in this strange game flooding back, I wondered what was going to happen next.

Charizard then got to attack, using the move Slash. An animation played of a pair of sharp claws digging into DOLL, while the screen started to fade to white.

As it faded, I saw something leap in front of DOLL, but I wasn’t too sure on what it was.

 The screen soon faded back in, and I almost let out a gasp as DOLL’s sprite now seemed to show it as torn and falling apart, with two large gashes taken out of its body, showing the stuffing inside. Overtime I had grown somewhat fond of DOLL’s strange antics, so seeing such a sudden dark turn filled me with fear and dread.

I didn’t get much time to look at DOLL’s new sprite however, as DOLL’s HP had reached one. Even though the value did not drop to zero, DOLL made a slow and distorted noise like a cry of some sort, then dropped off the screen.

The game then entered what looked like a normal losing sequence, with the game noting that DOLL had fainted, and that KRIS had no more “Pokémon” left to fight with.

As the screen started to fade to white again, KRIS’ sprite slid back onto the battlefield, seemingly shocking the game into fading back in.

I was shocked too, as instead of KRIS trying to talk with Lance, the four battle options appeared again.

I attempted to press the RUN option to get KRIS to flee, but the game only made a noise which I recognized as it informing me that I couldn’t select the option. The same noise played when attempting to access my items or look at the Pokémon menu, so my only option was to press FIGHT.

After I did so, the text “KRIS used STRUGGLE!” appeared. The enemy shown on the battlefield then changed from Charizard to Lance himself, and then the game finally faded to white for real.

…Then I waited. For about 8-10 whole minutes there was nothing but a pure white display. I had considered turning the game off but decided to wait a while to see if anything else would happen first.

I was glad I waited though, as the screen eventually faded into a scene of KRIS laying in a bed within a pure white room. As the screen faded in, a continuous beeping noise started to play; I recognized the noise as a slower, lower-pitched version of the beeping that the game would play if one of your Pokémon were on low health.

None of the directional buttons did anything here, so I decided to open the menu and see if DOLL was still in the party. Before I entered the POKéMON menu, however, I noticed that KRIS no longer had her Pack or her Pokégear on her.

In the POKéMON menu, I found that DOLL was thankfully still in the party but was still left in the same torn-apart state that it was in after being attacked by Lance’s Charizard.

This time, I let out a real gasp after going into the STATS menu and noticing that the red pixels I barely had the chance to see earlier were in fact dried blood stains. Feeling much more unsettled than before, I closed the menu.

This action seemed to prompt more story, as the textbox read “Kris: Hello?! Anyone?! If anyone’s there, DOLL needs help! Please!”.  I instantly noticed that the trainer’s name had changed to a more proper capitalization; Was this trainer really supposed to represent her after all?

My thoughts were interrupted as more text began to appear onscreen, a conversation between two unnamed offscreen characters:

“???: It’s that old crazy lady, crying about that stupid doll of hers again. At this point, we should just take the thing away from her so she’ll stop yelling about it.”

“???: I don’t think we should really take it away from her, that might make her even more crazy and weird, you know? Hahaha.”

“???: …Well, what do you suppose we do about her? It’s getting annoying.”

“???: If we just ignore her, she’ll stop yelling soon enough, I think.”

“???: Right. Let’s just hope she stops soon.”

After that last comment, the voices stopped, and Kris was left in that bed alone with no one around willing to help her best friend. Here, I finally realized that it didn’t matter if DOLL was a real Pokémon or not. What really mattered was that it was real to her, that it was real to Kris…

My eyes shot open wide with one final realization, but they remained fixed on the screen as more text had started to appear:

“Crystal: …Oh, my sweet little Doll, I know you’re in such pain, but I promise it won’t last. I know I don’t have much time left in this world that you’ll feel so heartbroken when I’m gone, but I promise when that happens, you’ll be sent to someone who will love and cherish you just as I have all these years. I promise you’ll be happy in your next home, and that you can be happy without me. So for when that time comes: Goodbye, Doll, my sweet angel. Thank you for being my best friend, and always remember: I love you, DOLL!”

After I pressed the A button one final time, the screen and music both cut out, leaving nothing but a blank screen. I took this to mean that the game was over and resumed my earlier thoughts. It seemed like I was right about her name after all...

Feeling curious, I stood up and started to walk over to the shelf where I had placed that strange Clefairy plush, but stopped in my tracks as I noticed that the toy was now staring straight at me and not at the door where it had been facing earlier. I slowly approached the plush and now noticed that it looked extremely similar to DOLL’s sprite from the game.

Looking closely, I could now see the tears from the slashes it had taken, healed only slightly more than what was represented in the sprite. I even saw a few discolored patches of what I assumed to be remnants of the blood stains that had once been all over the doll in that dark event that started the end for Kris, my aunt…

I had barely known anything about her before, but now I felt closer to her than anyone else could hope to be. Doll was Kris’ most sentimental gift to me, and now after knowing both her and its story, I promised to always take care of the plush and even to attempt sewing its tears as I was sure that was all she had wanted.

As I picked Doll up from the shelf, I heard a small ring sound echo throughout my room: the noise I was now familiar with as being a noise that noted interaction with objects from the game. As the noise’s echo faded from my ears the lower third of my vision became obscured by a pure white, and in it I saw an all too familiar image: a textbox which read, 

[pokemoncreepypasta]

Bound To Cheat

[STORY SOURCE]

Author: @sammisafetypin​

Maybe it’s just me, but it’s hard to actually spend time on a regular Pokémon game.  No, no — hear me out here. I’ve been playing the games since, I dunno, Ruby and Sapphire version? I own pretty much every Pokémon game there is to own, or if I don’t have the console I’ve had it on emulator. 

They’re fun, I wouldn’t own so many if they weren’t fun. But the older I got, the more I just tended to get bored with them. It’s hard to complete a file when you know you can expect the same things in all the same places. I’d always reset my games before getting very far, and then reset again, and then just get bored. I dunno. I like the games, but sometimes it’s just hard to drum up that motivation. I mean, that’s why people do challenges and randomizers, right? It adds some spice to the whole situation. Sometimes I can’t even get through those, but I’d blame that on me having a flighty personality. 

Besides that, just glitching up the game to see how far out of bounds you can wander, or destroying half the game with a level 100 Mewtwo ... I mean, it’s a cheap laugh, but I never wanted Pokémon to get boring for me. It was upsetting to realize it was. I think that’s why it was like the holy grail when my aunt bought me a GameShark for Christmas. I had been bemoaning not having enough fun with my games, and I guess she went looking. 

Not really sure if I should thank her now, but that’s beside the point.

I was like a kid in a candy store with that thing, it was almost embarrassing. I went right to my White copy and gave myself all of the version exclusives and legendaries and shinies I so desired. You could argue that cheating just makes a game more boring, since you can just look up codes to strong-arm past any challenge, but it was still really fun. Come on, you give a Magikarp the ability to use Judgment and tell me that that’s not funny.

But, anyways. I screwed around with using my GameShark on my White copy for a while, before I ended up getting sidetracked in my usual fashion. I decided to dig around my room for other games to try out my new toy on, and it wasn’t long before I found a game I hadn’t touched in at least a year: Pokémon Pearl.

Honestly? I sorta forgot I had it at all. It had somehow gotten buried in my dresser drawer, stuck in the sleeve of an old cat sweater. I dug it out and decided, hey, what the hell — I’d see what I even had on this, because I quite frankly didn’t remember.

As it turned out, I had left off around Canalave City. My team consisted of Empoleon, Staraptor, Luxio, Graveler, Bibarel, and Glameow. 

Basic, apparently. Honestly, I didn’t even like most of these Pokemon anymore, and I guess I must have gotten stuck because their levels were all over the place. 

I couldn’t really say I had a lot of emotional attachment to this file -- looking back at my nickname choices like ‘Emo’ the Staraptor was funny, but I could have built a better team than this. 

I liked Torterra a lot better than Empoleon, too, but I didn’t feel like going through all of the early-game again with how slow Diamond and Pearl can be … and then, the genius idea hit me. 

If this save file was already over halfway done, I could fuck with it all I pleased, make some crazy ideal team, have fun blasting through things, and then reset or glitch my way to Darkrai or something like that. Harmless fun.

I grabbed my GameShark off my disaster of a desk, as well as my phone to look up codes. The first thing that I wanted to do was get a Turtwig, and then some Rare Candies. I had put in codes like these before, but never in Generation 4 games, and like hell did I remember any code note-for-note anyways. 

In my search for the Turtwig code, I was quick to find a massive list of codes that would spawn any Pokemon in the tall grass. Sick. Just what the doctor ordered. I was starting to regain my interest in this file. Something else caught my eye at the top of the list, though -- “code to make all wild encounters shiny”.

Well, hey. If there’s one piece of candy stuck to another, I’ll take it. Okay, that’s a weird way to word it, but I always liked Torterra’s shiny palette. If I could make the Turtwig shiny just as easily as I could encounter it, well, why not? 

I carefully put the codes in, and then had Staraptor fly me somewhere with lower levels. Within a few moments, I had my darling on the screen.

A girl, too! That was just the icing on the cake. 

Looking back at this picture, I can see now that the sprite looked off, but I was too enamored by the sight of shiny Turtwig to notice or care at the time. 

I caught her quickly, and nicknamed her.

Harriet the Turtwig, replacing Pingu the Empoleon on my team. Of course, not a Turtwig for very long. 

Some very tedious repetitive pressing later, I had given her more than enough Rare Candies to make her the best giant tree turtle the world had ever seen. I was giddy, what can I say?

With Harriet in tow, I decided it was high time I made some progress. I didn’t know what other Pokemon I wanted yet, so I figured I could just breeze through things with a Level 100 Torterra and figure it out as I went along. Call me a filthy casual, but it was great fun. 

I quickly tore through Iron Island, as well as Byron’s gym. Harriet was pretty slow even for a Torterra, getting regularly outsped by steel-types much lower-leveled than her even though her speed stat seemed to indicate she would be faster. That said, the level difference made it so that it was hardly a big deal. It was on to the lakes, as well as the seventh badge.

Unfortunately, Lake Acuity and Snowpoint City is when things got sorta … weird? I want to say weird. I really don’t know what word I’d use. 

But I trudged through the snow, I just want to know who ever thought that terrain in a Pokemon game was an acceptable idea, and worked on conquering the cold section of the region. It was during Candice’s gym that things got any more off than a low speed stat.

I had struggled through the puzzle after an embarrassing amount of time, and was facing off with Candice herself. Her Snover was first, and I decided I’d use Earthquake. But when I clicked it, instead of using Earthquake, I got a message I hadn’t seen before.

“Harriet took too long to attack!” 

What? Before I could figure out what that was even supposed to mean, Snover took an extra turn, chipping a small bit of HP off of Harriet. The damage hardly mattered to me, but I was caught up on Harriet just deciding to skip her turn. This hadn’t happened before, she had just been slow. And that Snover had outsped me, so what business did it have using another move in the same turn? Did it somehow think it was the next turn because Harriet didn’t do anything?

I realized I was thinking about it like the Snover could think, and tried to focus more on the message itself. ‘Harriet took too long to attack’. 

Was that some sort of status condition? I had healed before the last gym trainer or two, so that didn’t make a lot of sense, and I’d never heard of that message in response to a status condition before. I thought maybe it could be a disobedience message, though that hardly made sense either, since Harriet had listened just fine before, and nothing had changed.

Maybe she’s just cold, I thought to myself, and got a little chuckle out of it. 

Well, it wasn’t the end of the world, so I decided to stop hanging up on it. Harriet used Earthquake just fine the next turn, taking Snover out without a problem. Sneasel was the next Pokemon on the field. 

This time, I went for Crunch, and Harriet’s first attack went off without issue. The Sneasel managed to just barely survive, so I went for another Crunch that went just the same. Or, so I thought.

“Harriet is hit with recoil!” 

I stared blankly at the scree, wondering if I had somehow accidentally hit a recoil move instead. When the game asked me if I wanted to switch for Candice’s next Pokemon, I opened my moves to see if I could have somehow made that mistake, but there was no way. I didn’t even have any recoil moves on Harriet.

This was stupid. I mean, I couldn’t deny I was curious to figure out what was going on, but it was still pretty stupid. There was no reason for Harriet to be taking recoil and skipping turns. 

I sorta felt bad for her, too. She looked like she was sad about her moves acting strange. Confused, I decided to consult some of my friends about if they had ever had behavior like this in their games.

I mean, Harriet’s sprite looking a bit weird could be explained by that, but I didn’t really believe that fully coherent messages could be generated by my cheat codes screwing up. Maybe the recoil, but not Harriet ‘taking too long to attack’. 

I went back to the game and, luckily, with only a few more weird recoil and skipping incidents, I was able to muscle through Candice’s gym and get the badge.

Well, okay. No matter what was happening with Harriet, it was pretty obvious I couldn’t use just her. Her messed-up attacking would get in the way too much, and I didn’t wanna put all that strain on her. It was time that I replaced some more members on my team. 

My first idea was Rotom. It’s one of my favorites, but in Pearl, it’s locked off until you get the National Dex. Well, not anymore. I set up everything I had to, and made my way into the tall grass around Lake Acuity. 

This one was a bit harder to miss than Harriet’s expression. 

Rotom’s giant grin is probably one of my favorite parts of it, and it was a little depressing to see it look so sad. 

A Rotom was a Rotom, though, and maybe it would cheer up once I caught it and leveled it up.

...No such luck, apparently. 

Either way, I named it Alix, after a friend of mine who really loves Rotom. 

I also decided to get myself a Mismagius, who I wanted to test out impossible moves on, and a Crobat that I wanted to try and get past Level 100. 

It seemed I had screwed this file already, so why not have fun with seeing what I could pull off? Then I could have some fun beating what was left of the story. 

They both had similar, changed expressions on their faces compared to their original sprites. I didn’t really get the point of it — I’d have been willing to chalk them up to graphical errors if it weren’t for Harriet’s weird behavior. 

I decided to look at the rest of my team to see if they had changed either. The only ones remaining from my original team were Dopey the Bibarel, who I was keeping around for HMs, and Missy the Glameow, who I hadn’t really decided a replacement for yet. I did like Purugly — maybe I’d just level her up. But that's besides the point. 

Dopey just stared back at me as, well, dopily as ever. Missy’s sprite, however, I was almost certain had changed. Glameow didn’t usually look that angry, to my knowledge, but then again, Rotom never looked that exhausted either. I guess it was the fact that I had caught the rest of the Pokemon with those looks on their faces -- I was pretty sure Missy looked fine when I started up the game.

Well, I was going to try and not make a big deal out of it. I did the Lake Acuity cutscenes, and then made my way back to Veilstone to handle the next Team Galactic events. Of course, though, I wasn’t very far into their Warehouse and HQ when the game decided it was going to act up again. This time, though, it wasn’t Harriet.

“ALIX is too weak to attack!” was the very first message I got upon trying to fight a trainer with my Rotom. Great, so that meant that whatever was plaguing Harriet was affecting my other Pokemon as well. 

Was this some twisted variation of Pokerus, contagious and spreading through my team? Did somebody fuck with my game and somehow manage to slip it back into my room without a trace? 

That seemed like a really stupid theory, but I had never seen a game act like this. 

I tried again.

“ALIX is too tired for Uproar!” 

How could you be too tired with almost full HP? 

It wasn’t like I didn’t feel bad for my Rotom, but I couldn’t figure out what could be making it so exhausted. Looking things up on the internet wasn’t getting me any answers, so I tried quickly switching out for Missy and then switching back.

Then, I just kept clicking Discharge until eventually Alix used it, which was thankfully only within a turn or two. Maybe switching helped. I felt sorta bad, but I had the sneaking suspicion that my other team members were going to behave the same way. It was a blessing and a curse that I was level 100, I guessed.

It really shouldn’t have taken so long to get through a single Team Galactic grunt, but on the bright side, it was his only Pokemon. I figured that I would give Alix a break -- say what you want, but it sort of made me feel bad to make these Pokemon do successive battles when they didn’t feel well. My morbid curiosity pushed me onward, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t sympathetic towards my new friends. I may not have hand-trained them, but they were still the Pokemon I wanted on my team.

Jet was the next one I wanted to test out. I had managed to get him above level 100, and I was simultaneously curious and concerned about how he was going to act in battle. But, my mind was taken off of that when I opened the party screen. 

Alix was missing. Just, an empty slot in my party, even though I knew full well that I had a full team. Harriet now sat at the front rather than it, with no indication of where in the world it had gone. 

This was getting stupid. Pokemon didn’t just disappear, especially since Alix’s health was near-full when the battle ended. It made no sense that they would just warp out of existence like that. I mean, I suppose since I brought them in with cheat codes, there was the potential that there had been some sort of error, but that didn’t soothe my concerns. 

I marched right out of the warehouse and down to the Pokemon Center to check my PC Box.

No dice. I checked each and every box, but Alix was nowhere to be found. It was like they had never been a part of the game in the first place. Something about that made me feel very, very wrong -- I wanted my Rotom back. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something horrible had happened to them, or that they were trapped in some digital void. 

Confused, I continued to search for answers, but I was turning up nothing. My bag didn’t have any hints, nor did any of the NPCs I talked to. I made an attempt to interrogate the Galactic grunt that Alix had disappeared after fighting, but he didn’t have anything special to say. Helplessly, I scrolled through my team, wondering if maybe Alix had just gone invisible or if something else had changed.

Well, I didn’t make any progress with finding out where Alix was, but I did notice another change in my party composition.

Missy again. She was smiling at me now, eyes wide. Frankly, I think it looked more like Glameow’s standard sprite than before, but something still unnerved me. She also held a Grip Claw, which I was certain I hadn’t given to her. I stared at the Glameow, and she stared right back. It felt like I was being made fun of, but I supposed that was only in-character for the ‘Catty Pokemon’, according to Pokedex category.

I scrolled through my team a few more times, squinting for changes, but Missy’s new face and hold item were the only things that were different. Well, besides Alix going AWOL. 

Frustrated, I figured that I’d do my best to clear out the Galactic HQ, and then I’d figure out what to do with my team. Assuming nobody else would decide to flicker out of existence, I could wrangle my way to the next plot point and move on. At the least, most things fainted in one or two hits, when I actually managed to land those hits.

But that would just bring me to noticing the issues with the rest of my team.

Jet would actually attack pretty consistently, surprisingly enough. The main issue was the fact that he always, no matter what move I selected, took recoil damage. Air Slash, Cross Poison, it didn’t matter -- recoil. 

His high HP made it so that he could attack for a while before I had to heal him, though, so he was probably my best bet for a main battler. I tried to heal him whenever he went into the yellow, though. I didn’t want to risk things, somehow, getting worse.

As for Sabrina, she had just decided to not listen at all.

She didn’t move often, and when she did, it was almost always something like this. I knew of disobedient Pokemon using the wrong moves, but that was only for trades. 

And besides, there was a much more glaring issue: Sabrina didn’t know Growl. I had deleted it already. Future Sight, Nasty Plot, Shadow Ball, Cosmic Power -- that was her moveset. That was all. She had known Growl before, but there was no way she should’ve been using it. 

I wasn’t going to kid myself at this point. There was obviously something really wrong with my team, and I was determined to figure out exactly what that was. I decided to go test things out in wild battles, which I could easily run from if my Pokemon decided to completely freak out. The more I tested, though, the worse they seemed to get. Harriet had to be the worst example.

With each Pokemon I sent her out against, Harriet attacked less and less. It would take her more and more turns to finally use a move against anything, and when she did, she wasn’t even knocking them out. 

I felt my heart sink -- what had happened to my poor Torterra? Sure, I hadn’t had her with me long, but I still cared for her. It felt like she had some sort of sickness, and there was just nothing I could do about it. 

Regrettably, I decided that I wasn’t going to use Harriet anymore. It felt like no matter how many times I spammed Earthquake or Giga Drain, nothing was going to happen, and I felt bad trying to force her. 

Maybe if I got another Turtwig, that one would feel better? I didn’t want to replace Harriet or anything, but I really did want a Torterra. Though, more than anything, I just wanted to figure out what was wrong with my game. I know I said that I had a hard time sticking with Pokemon games, but this definitely had my attention in spades. 

Apologizing to my screen, I put Harriet in the PC, and turned back to my codes to get myself a new Turtwig. 

I figured I’d switch Missy up to the front of the party -- it had occurred to me that she knew Hypnosis, and with the relatively painful catch rates of starter Pokemon, I figured that would help me a lot. 

Codes in hand, I went back to the tall grass and encountered my Turtwig.

I really should’ve expected something to go wrong at that point.

The first thing I noticed were the eyes: Identical to Harriet’s back when she was a Turtwig. Then, the fact that I had managed to encounter another female one -- and then, the name clicked with me. The wild Turtwig was named Harriet.

That was the first point where I just wanted to put the game down. Turn it off, throw the cartridge back in my drawer, pretend nothing had happened. Something about the wild Turtwig having the same name as my Torterra made me feel … I don’t know, wrong. 

Even so, I felt like this was my chance to do something better for Harriet this time. What that was, I wasn’t sure, but … just, something, y’know? I know I’m not that good with words, but in the end, I decided to try and continue the battle.

I put “Harriet” to sleep with Hypnosis, and then selected Faint Attack.

The game didn’t even bother to alert me that Missy was disobeying -- it acted like I had told her to use Bind, and she had followed through. I was baffled. 

I was plenty used to my Pokemon not doing what they were told at this point, but it wasn’t like Sabrina -- as far as I knew, Missy had never known Bind. Her moves were Faint Attack, Fury Swipes, Slash, and Hypnosis. I wasn’t even sure that Glameow could learn Bind.

Anxious, I decided that I needed to catch this Turtwig before things got any more odd. Besides, I didn’t want Missy to knock it out on accident. Luckily, I had an absurd surplus of Poke Balls, so I could just throw as many balls as I wanted until I had the new addition to my team. Or, so I thought.

“Missy blocked the Poke Ball!” The game oh-so-helpfully reported to me, as if I had thrown a ball at a trainer’s Pokemon. 

This was wrong. Harriet, Alix, Jet, and Sabrina had all had their issues with attacking -- but for the most part, it seemed like they were trying to obey. If they didn’t attack, it was because they were ‘too tired’, or in Sabrina’s case, ‘misheard’ me. They looked miserable. 

Missy only stared wide-eyed at her opponent, continuing the turn without my permission. Was she doing this on purpose?

Missy used Bind again, not bothering to answer my questions of how she was using it, or why she was doing this. 

“Harriet”’s sprite flashed in response to the attack, and I noticed black lines spread across her shell. Were those cracks? Missy’s actions had been stressing me out, but it was only then that I realized she was potentially doing serious damage.

I had to get out of the battle. Forget the Turtwig, I could catch another one, or find another Pokemon to use entirely. I felt horrible for the little thing, and it was probably for the best if I separated her and Missy as quickly as I could. Clicking my Pokemon menu acted as if I hadn’t selected anything at all. 

Starting to feel absurdly sweaty for just sitting on my bed and playing Pokemon Pearl, I selected ‘Run’ and prayed.

I barely had time to register my emotions towards the ‘Can’t escape!’ message before the turn went on. I winced and hoped it wouldn’t be too ugly. 

Before Missy could attack, though, “Harriet” woke up and fought back. 

As the screen flashed, three red lines appeared across Missy’s tail -- apparently where “Harriet” bit her. I wondered if her tail was how Bind made sense in the first place. 

That said though, it was a feeble resistance: Missy’s health bar only barely dropped. I could only watch as she finished the fight without any input from me.

The cracks continued to spread across the Turtwig’s shell as its HP fell down to 0. It looked utterly miserable as its sprite dropped off the screen. 

Ugh. What had I just witnessed, and why did it feel more brutal than any Pokemon battle I’d done in the past?

As the game told me that Harriet had fainted, I noticed something flicker in the corner of the screen. 

Oh. Now she was staring at me. That was just what I needed after all of this. 

I hoped that the Harriet that was in the PC box didn’t know about what had just happened to her … whatever this other Harriet’s relation was to her.

The game faded back to the overworld as if any other normal battle had just ended. I felt like things had just gone from … well, not a zero to a one-hundred. More like a twenty to a one-hundred. But that didn’t make it any better. 

I opened my party to look at Missy -- her sprite had changed before. Maybe it had changed again. 

It had. And I was absolutely, positively, not a fan of what I was looking at. 

There was no way that I was just going to sit here and let this Glameow, whatever it was that she wanted, rip apart any more Pokemon. I wanted to know why she was doing it, but I wasn’t about to just let her go crazy on whatever she pleased. I was curious, but not that curious. Once a kids’ game starts bleeding at you, you shouldn’t keep screwing with it.

I went back to Veilstone, wondering how many times I’d have to struggle with the PC box in this city. I opened it up to move Pokemon around, and selected Missy. The original Harriet wasn’t in the box either, and that only steeled my courage to get rid of Missy before anything else went awry. As I hovered over the ‘release’ option, I mumbled to the screen, thankful that no one was around to see me talking to my game like this.

“I don’t know who you are -- what you are -- or what you want with me. I don’t know why you hurt that Turtwig. But I’m begging you to please either tell me what you want, or leave me alone. Please?”

Hoping that my prayer was heard, I selected release and confirmed that yes, I did want Missy gone. I think that Missy did, somehow, hear what I said to her.

But I don’t think she cared.

“Learn? Learn what? That I somehow put demon data in my game and screwed up my Glameow?” I snapped, shaking the DS slightly as if that would give me answers. 

I needed to calm down. It was a game. A screwed-up game, but a game. Missy couldn’t actually hurt me. I wasn't about to play with fire by keeping her on my team, but I was pretty confident in the fact that she couldn't cause me any physical harm. That was the sense of safety I held on to.

I decided that if Missy wasn’t going to leave on her own, I was just going to quarantine her. I stuck her in a random PC box, far away from all the other Pokemon.

Hopefully, she’d stay there. 

I was starting to wonder if beating the game was worth it at this rate, but I felt like I deserved a little bit of payoff for seeing my Glameow flip out in front of me. And who knew, maybe there’d be some answers at the end of the game. That was my hope, anyways.

For the rest of the Galactic HQ, I mainly used Jet. I was a little anxious to grab any more new Pokemon, and Jet was the best attacker that I had out of him and Sabrina. Alix was still gone, and I didn’t really expect Harriet to be doing any better than before, so I was just going to deal with a two-Pokemon team (well, and Dopey) until I figured out what my game plan was.

Thankfully, with Jet’s remarkably high level, I was making quick work of pretty much everything that stood in my way. None of the Galactic grunts were any match for Jet’s power, and I was starting to feel comfortable again. Cyrus hardly posed a challenge either, and after healing the building recoil damage off of Jet, I went to face Saturn.

I figured it would be fine at first -- Saturn was probably even less of a challenge than Cyrus. He sent out his Kadabra first, and I was quick to go for Air Slash. Unfortunately, it moved first, and I started to get flashbacks to Harriet’s decreasing speed stat.

Jet held on with a little under half of his health, and met Kadabra with a devastating Air Slash. 

I cheered for a moment, until I saw how much recoil damage I was taking.

On one hand, I wanted to be angry that there was no possible way I had done enough damage for recoil to take out Jet. On the other hand, I figured I shouldn’t have been surprised at that point. 

The recoil had seemed pretty serious in the battle against Cyrus -- it occurred to me that it was probably getting more severe, the same way that Harriet had attacked less and less. I mentally scolded myself for not noticing.

Using Sabrina against Saturn wasn’t any fun, but after many random instances of Growl and Magical Leaf, I got just enough proper uses of Shadow Ball and Future Sight to end the battle. Saturn admitted his defeat, and I went to heal before I made any more progress in the game.

I very much would do what I liked — and what I liked was the idea of getting to the end of the game. 

It was really only Mt. Coronet, the last badge, and the Elite 4 now, so I felt pretty confident that I could wrangle my way through. I was mumbling to myself about what other Pokemon I’d pick up — I always liked Giratina, and Drapion … maybe Gliscor, or Porygon-Z? 

I was caught up enough in my own thoughts that I hardly noticed Nurse Joy’s dialogue was different until it was almost too late to catch it.

I wasn’t given a chance to protest, as the text box promptly closed afterwards. I tried to talk to Nurse Joy again, but she just offered to heal my Pokemon like normal. 

I checked my party and, to my non-surprise, Jet wasn’t in the party. Only Sabrina and Dopey stared back at me. Something about that felt very anxiety-inducing.

Well, if Jet didn’t want to fight, I wasn’t going to make him. But I at least wanted to check on him, if he was bad enough that Nurse Joy felt the need to do something about it. I opened the PC, but Jet was absent from Box 1. I started to feel like this was going to be another Alix incident. 

I was getting sweaty at this point, rapidly clicking through the boxes in search of Jet. Right before my anxiety was going to boil over, I saw a flash of purple. I went to click on it instantly, but found that my game wasn’t responding to my inputs.

Oh no.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I mashed on the D-Pad, trying to get some response — any response. 

I might’ve only seen one incident from her, but I didn’t trust Missy for a second. Not near Jet. 

I was pressing every button I could think of, desperate, when a text box popped up. And then, without any further input from me, a battle started. 

My heart sank as I saw Jet on the other side of the screen, and Missy on my end, without any indication of my character sending her out. 

The game gave me the control to select an option, but the buttons refused to work. ‘Run’, ‘Bag’, and ‘Pokemon’ all acted as if I was pressing absolutely nothing. It wouldn’t let me move over them with the D-Pad, and they offered no reaction when I tried to click them with my stylus. 

I thought to just sit there and try to wait it out, but the longer I watched Missy stare into Jet, whose eyes were finally open with what I imagined was fear, the sicker I felt. Hands shaking, I pressed ‘Fight’. 

I winced as I saw a large chunk of Missy’s tail disappear after Jet used Air Slash, as well as a deep nick cement itself in Jet’s wing. Recoil damage began to tick down. 

The game didn’t prompt me anymore. Missy took her turn, using Hypnosis, and I prayed and prayed for Jet to wake up soon. He could take her down easily. He just had to wake up.

Turn one.  He didn’t wake up. Missy trapped him in Bind, and his sprite flashed and changed — now his wings were held to his sides, like he was being forced into that position. The extra Bind damage was luckily minuscule.

Turn two. He kept sleeping. Missy continued her attack, and Jet’s health reached the red. There were now deep indents across his body, and I was starting to understand what ‘Bind’ really meant. 

This was it. Jet had to wake up this turn. He didn’t have a choice -- he’d die if he didn’t. I began to murmur to my DS, giving soft prayers that he would wake up and take Missy down.

“Please Jet, please, please, just wake up … you can do this, you’re strong … you won’t even have to fight anymore after, please…” 

The battle stalled for a moment, as if it had paused to hear my plea. A bit of hope swelled in my chest. 

A hope that was immediately crushed. The text scrolled out slower than ever as Missy stared me in the face, knowingly. I began to helplessly mash at buttons, hoping that the game would somehow allow me to intervene again -- but it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t do a thing. I pressed every button combination my frantic brain could think of, but they all amounted to nothing. 

The next text began to scroll across the screen, and I already knew what it would say. I didn’t bother to read it. I just kept button-mashing, despite how useless it was. The game hadn’t a care in the world as it continued to show me the brutal display.

Jet just dropped off the screen, without a message announcing he had fainted.

The game stuttered for a moment, probably trying to handle his HP bar in relation to his level or … something. I didn’t know. I didn’t care.

Eventually, text scrolled across the screen again.

Missy’s victory was practically thrown in my face by the cheery sound effect of a level-up. 

I was pretty sure I had started to cry, if only the littlest bit -- I felt scared of this stupid Glameow. I didn’t know what she wanted with me, why she was brutalizing my Pokemon. It was obvious she wanted to teach me something, and maybe I was just stupid and oblivious, but I didn’t grasp what.

“It’s enough! It’s enough, Missy! Please, just stop and leave me alone…”

I knew in my heart I could just put the game down. Rip the cartridge out of the DS and never touch it again. But my body felt like it was frozen with fear, and my better judgment was not the part of me making the decisions. 

Say what you will, but the game was targeting me, and that was enough to make me more scared than I had felt in a long, long time. Missy’s cold glare and Jet’s empty HP bar blankly stared back at me until, eventually, the battle faded, and I was back in the PC Box.

Box 13 was empty now. I felt sick. I didn’t know where Missy had dragged Jet off to, but I figured he probably just ceased to exist after she brutalized him. It wasn’t fair -- what had he done besides exist? 

It seemed like Missy was more angry with me than the Pokemon, and that only felt worse. I was playing with something that was way past what I ever expected it to be. I only stared down at the DS for a moment, trying to gather my thoughts and fully grasp what had just happened. I really couldn’t. There was something deeply disturbing about seeing a Pokemon go on a bloody rampage just for a grudge against me. God, would I have a story to talk to my therapist about. 

It occurred to me that I wasn’t sure if anyone would actually believe this had happened, but at that point, I was too exhausted to care. 

I wanted to get to the end of all of this. I kept thinking that, every time something horrible happened, but now I was determined. I didn’t care about finishing the game at this point, though. I didn’t care about Palkia, or Team Galactic, or Volkner or Cynthia or any of that. There was just a part of my soul that felt like I owed it to what Pokemon I had left. 

Sabrina. Poor Sabrina. I hadn’t used her much, but I knew she was trying for me. I wanted to, somehow, defeat Missy, so that Sabrina could be safe, and so that I wouldn’t feel the creeping paranoia that Missy was going to somehow kill me in my sleep.

I opened my party to check on Sabrina, and mentally cursed myself for speaking of the Devil.

I don’t know when Dopey disappeared from my party, or when Missy hit level 39. I had the sneaking feeling those events were correlated. Dopey hadn’t even done anything. But I guess he blocked Missy’s way to her next victim.

Her next victim. I felt sick. No. She couldn’t hurt Sabrina. I had other Pokemon in the PC, sure, but something was sickening about imagining Missy destroying the last Pokemon in my party, the last one I had made for this adventure-- 

There was a vague realization then, but I was too panicked to think about it. Instead, I fumbled for my phone, typing as quickly as I could. 

Missy needed to go away. She needed to be stopped. I felt like I might break down sobbing if I had to watch another thing be killed. She was closing in on Sabrina, and if the battle started, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stop it. I doubted she would go back in the PC. This was my best chance. 

I had seen codes for implementing Pokemon directly into the team. Slot 2. This had to happen. It had to. I was certain just shutting the game off wouldn’t get rid of Missy, not that that would be the end of the world, so I switched around what I had to without worrying about it, fumbling to the code input screen with sweaty, shaking hands. My only fear was that this wouldn’t work, or that I would enter the code wrong and make everything worse.

The first one I found was for an Arceus. Fine. Sure. Whatever. I didn’t really care about a legendary or a mythical or whatever, it could’ve been a Feebas for all I cared, I just couldn’t stand having Missy in my game anymore. I must’ve caused this problem somehow, and I was going to solve it. 

I finished inputting the code, and booted the game back up. The intro scene was frozen, making some sort of horrible one-note noise that sounded like a dying animal, but that barely registered in my mind. 

I was still in the Pokemon Center. I opened up my party, holding my breath. I only hoped I hadn’t done anything wrong. 

… Well, obviously I had. Whatever I had just created in my party was absolutely not an Arceus -- but it wasn’t Missy, either. That was what mattered. It looked like some kind of horrible Bad Egg, but it wasn’t Missy. The game absolutely refused to let me hover over or select the Egg, but I hardly cared. 

As the adrenaline finally started to fade a little bit, I realized I wasn’t sure what my next goal was. Finish the game for Sabrina’s sake? Maybe. That was what I had sworn to do before I worked myself into another panic over Missy -- but I was also fairly sure that Missy was gone now. There was another Pokemon, or at least something resembling a Pokemon, in her spot in the party. I decided to at least step out of the Pokemon Center to get some virtual fresh air. 

Apparently, nothing was going to be easy. 

I opened and shut my party a few times, but Veilstone City’s graphics didn’t bother to come back. It remained a huge white slate, and none of the NPCs I tried to speak to registered my inputs. I had probably destroyed the game beyond repair at this point, huh? 

I’d catch Palkia, I decided. I’d catch Palkia, and that would mark the end of the adventure. That would make me feel confident that everything was fine, if not … glitchy. 

Maybe I was just a person who desired an end point, or maybe I wanted it for Sabrina. Who knew. 

My path up Mt. Coronet, though, had no intentions of being simplistic. Not that I expected it to be.

My wall collision was completely gone, and believe it or not, that really destroys your sense of direction. Random patches of tiles were completely gone, and NPCs refused to acknowledge I existed. 

It felt … isolated, I guess? I wish I knew how to describe it. It felt like something was going to jump out at me any moment, but it just never did. At the least, the lack of collision let me skip over any necessary HMs, even with Dopey gone.

At some points, the screen would just … blank out or corrupt completely, and I had to wander around helplessly until I eventually went through a doorway that reset it. Opening my Pokemon or Bag didn’t seem to do anything to remedy the situation, so that was all I could hope for. 

Team Galactic grunts rarely ever appeared, let alone fought me. I supposed it made things at least slightly easier. 

I still got wild encounters, though. Most of them looked … unsettling, to say the least.

Glitched, layered-over sprites and corrupted HP bars made up most of what I was running into. Sabrina was doing her best to fight them off, but she usually ended up using Growl or Lucky Chant a couple of times before actually getting a damaging move. 

It hurt, to imagine how tired she must be if she could never understand what I was telling her to use. I thought of the Harriets, Alix, and Jet. They all seemed so tired. I felt terrible.Could this really be my fault? 

If it was, I owed it to Sabrina to make it up to her. We’d finish this together.

It took her a while to complete fights, but I had a practically endless supply of healing items. I tried to not pay attention to the fact that I could see her attacks doing less and less damage, and her speed stat lowering. 

“You can do it, Sabrina. You can do it. Almost all done.” I whispered to the game.

I was saying it to convince myself just as much. I needed this in order to get myself to put this horrible game down. It was self-assurance, and I knew it. 

We continued our ascent, and I had to constantly be careful to not walk directly into the void. Not that it really did much if I did, but I was terrified of getting stuck or walking so far that I wouldn’t know how to get back. I was lost enough, considering I really, really didn’t have the map of Mt. Coronet memorized, and I still don’t. I’d hear some sort of pixelated howling noise from time to time, and it managed to startle me each time. Occasionally, the game would pop up with a message to alert me that I should heal Sabrina.

Her HP was usually full whenever it did that, but I had stopped being shocked by the game’s odd behavior at this point. I would give her a Hyper Potion, and the game would let me know that she felt a little better. Whatever helped, really. 

I had finally managed to access the last few rocky, corrupted corridors before Spear Pillar. The distorted, glitched yowling grew louder as I got closer and closer. The deep pit that was already in my stomach grew even deeper. 

Spear Pillar itself was a disaster.  Half of the map was completely replaced by some sort of gradient void that I imagined was usually meant to be the area’s backdrop, and the game was incredibly wishy-washy about if it wanted the sprites of the Team Galactic members to appear or not. They’d appear and disappear as I walked around, and none of them bothered to challenge me. 

No cutscenes were initiated, no battle side-by-side with my rival, no Professor Rowan and Lucas running up to let me know that Palkia wanted me to catch it, no Lake Trio destroying the Red Chain. I just walked right past everything. It felt wrong.

I walked up to where Palkia was meant to stand, waiting for my challenge. I should’ve guessed at that point, though, that I couldn’t fix my problems as easily as I thought I could. There was no ruler of space waiting to challenge me. 

Instead, perched in the center of all the corruption like some kind of twisted queen, she was there. She had been waiting for me.

The music started to pause and skip wildly, and I waited to see what was going to happen next. I felt sick. I didn’t want to see this stupid Glameow again. 

But she didn’t care. She began to speak, and miserably, I followed along.

I really, really wasn’t.

After a moment’s pause, the game offered me a YES/NO box. I selected ‘No’. I had my ideas, but I really, really wasn’t sure. And I didn’t want to infuriate Missy further.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! I told you before to just tell me what’s going on!” I begged to a screen that wasn’t going to respond to me. 

Before I had time to brace myself, the DS speakers emitted a distorted screech that caused me to reach up to clutch my ears. As if I wasn’t overwhelmed enough. It was probably some mesh of Pokemon cries, but I didn't have it in me to discern what. 

I could feel tears pricking the corners of my eyes, stress and fear and simply too much happening all culminating in a tight feeling in my chest. My head was swimming as I squinted at the text, trying to ignore the pain in my head.

The screeching startled all over again, and I felt the tears start to pour over. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry--” I blubbered, apologizing to a game for no coherent reason. Maybe I did want this all along. I wasn’t even sure anymore.

Through my tears, I could see a battle start. 

A horrible, glitched mess of a Pokemon scrolled onto the empty screen, emitting a horrible, warped yowling sound at earsplitting volumes. At the sight and sound of the awful thing in front of me, I only began to sob harder. This wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair! I felt like a tantruming child, the only thoughts racing through my mind being how much this shouldn’t have been happening to me. 

The yowl continued as the game stuttered out text boxes. I was in Hell. This was some sort of screwed-up punishment. 

As Missy screeched at me, the game prompted me to take my turn, and I selected Fight and then Shadow Ball. I thought I clicked Shadow Ball, anyways, I don’t remember anymore.

Psywave. Psywave did damage, that was fine. But it only scraped off the smallest bit of Missy’s HP. And the second her HP stopped ticking down, she started to mew and yowl again. I felt like I was going deaf, or I at least wanted to.

I was given a moment’s respite from the noise, and the game once again gave me brief control. Similar to the battle between Missy and Jet, I couldn’t choose to run, use my bag, or switch Pokemon -- not that any of those would’ve done anything. I could only pick ‘Fight’ -- or, as it had changed to, ‘Check’. I didn’t have any choice, so I selected it.

I felt my heart drop as it hit me.  I already had the suspicion, but it finally all came crashing on me. Harriet, Alix, Jet, Sabrina. It was my fault they were in pain. It was my fault that they were too tired to use their turns, or to use the right moves, my fault that they took recoil. I had done this to them, and enraged Missy. Guilt gripped me, and I could barely read the words on the screen anymore.

“But what … what about Dopey? They didn’t … they didn’t-- didn’t do anything wrong… they weren’t … in pain … they … you didn’t need to kill anyone to punish me!” I wailed. “Please! Please, I’ll stop playing, just … stop hurting them! Why them? Why the overworld? Why…”

The game began to make sounds again, and I realized that Missy had more to say to me.

No. 

No, no, no. Her HP was draining at a brutally fast pace as the game repeated over and over and over that Sabrina was being hurt by Bind.

I couldn’t take it anymore. Without even thinking, I shut my entire DS off, threw the GameShark as far away from me as I possibly could and, after taking a few minutes to hyperventilate and think about my own crushing guilt and the sight of Sabrina, turned the DS back on. 

The game would still be overwritten with all the codes, of course. And that meant Missy would still be there to hurt all my Pokemon. It was my fault. But I couldn’t take it anymore. I had learned my stupid, awful lesson, I just needed her gone.

I wasted no time in pressing ‘Yes’, but I wasn’t quite fast enough for someone’s liking.

My chest tightened up.

“Yes you will! I got it! I learned! I’m done!” I insistently selected ‘Yes’ over and over until the game accepted it. I was upset, and guilty, and crushed, but I was also determined. I think it was the adrenaline.

Obviously!

As I pressed down on ‘Yes’, a telltale screech assaulted my ears as the game forced itself down to the ‘No’ option.

I resisted right back. It was practically a wrestling match between me and what I could only assume was Missy still trying to grip onto punishing me. It almost felt silly, if I wasn’t so terrified of what might happen if I couldn’t delete the file.

After maybe 10 or 15 seconds that felt like hours, I managed to press the corrupted ‘Yes’ before Missy could move it again. The game howled one more time, pixelated rage and pain and fury that caused me to drop my DS -- before it cut off into dull silence.

I stared at the DS, wide-eyed, too scared to touch it. The little clock icon ticked away in a rhythmic circle, alerting me that it was deleting data. I half-expected another interruption.

But no interruption came. The game returned to the title screen, and when I nervously reached out and tapped the A button, I was brought to Rowan’s introduction.

It was over. The file was gone. Everyone was gone. They probably would’ve been killed anyways, but I didn’t want to imagine myself as a mercy killer. That made me think too much of Missy. 

I left the DS on the floor, and crawled into my bed, allowing myself to just break down. I was already crying heavily, but for a while I just let myself wheeze and sob and whimper into one of my pillows, getting all of my feelings about. I felt so horribly guilty and so, so scared. I had hurt those Pokemon, but I couldn’t help but feel like Missy was evil too. I didn’t know. It was too much to process all at once. I was tired, and I needed to sleep.

I didn’t remember falling asleep, and I didn’t remember dreaming either. But at some point I woke up, face still sticky from tears drying all over it. My DS was still on the floor. I was a bit anxious to touch it, but I felt like I had to. I just wanted to ensure things were safe.

I dug around my room until I found where I had pitched the GameShark to, bringing it back to my DS. I didn’t feel good about putting it back in there, but I wanted to delete all of the codes. I knew I couldn’t permanently undo the changes I had made to the game, but I figured I’d do the best I could. I didn’t feel like I was going to faint at any moment now, at least. I had turned off the lights and closed the blinds in my room so the light didn’t hurt my eyes so much. 

Carefully and methodically, I deleted each code. Thinking about the game made me start to feel panicky again, but there was something calming to lists, taking out the codes one at a time. I tried to take deep breaths, ensuring that everything was gone before I properly started up the game again.

Pearl. Just normal, regular Pearl. I didn’t have many intentions of playing very far in, but my brain was foggy and I was just sort of pressing buttons. Making sure I didn’t completely destroy my cartridge, y’know?

I went through the beginning game motions, vaguely annoyed by how slow the whole thing was. Diamond and Pearl were always slow, I guessed. It wasn’t exactly the primary thing in my mind, you get me? 

I picked Turtwig when I got to the starter selection screen. I was still a Turtwig person. I was going to try and not let that change. Or maybe I’d just have to become a Chimchar person.

When I saw the sparkles spin off of the Turtwig, I audibly gasped. I knew for a fact that I had gotten rid of all the shiny codes, which meant that this was a honest-to-god, full-odds, completely legit shiny Turtwig. 

I nearly broke down again right there, though this time it was with laughter. Was this a gift? Or was it making fun of me? I liked to think the former. All that pain, and I finally got a dumb shiny Turtwig. I didn’t even know if I’d play this file all the way through, and I got a shiny Turtwig on my first try. There weren’t even words. 

I liked to think that this was something in the universe making things up to me, even if I wasn’t sure I deserved that. I decided to roll with it. I wasn’t going to say no to a lucky shiny. I fought off the beginning Starly with ease, dropped off by my in-game home to talk to my mom, and then set off on my way with Turtwig. I wondered what I’d name her. I didn’t really wanna name her Harriet again. That seemed like it would be asking for things to go sour. Shelly, maybe? Or was that too simple? I’d have to get something figured out by the time I got my character to Sandgem Town. Not that it was an especially long walk, but I had to go through a few encounters in the tall grass.

As if on cue with my thoughts, my character stopped, and the battle music started to play. Guess I would have more time to figure out my Turtwig’s nickname. I didn’t think about it, though, because my mind completely blanked out. Like somebody had just wiped all of my current thoughts away in an instant. 

A cry came through the speakers.

[pokemoncreepypasta]

Bittersweet

[STORY SOURCE]

Author: @spikyearr​

As a lifelong Pokemon fan, my life has never really been the same since I first heard of shiny Pokemon.

There’s something about the rarity of them, the satisfaction of obtaining one after hours upon hours of hunting, that made their very existence so alluring. It’s a thing not many people outside of this community seem to get - I know my dad doesn’t see the point in pouring days of effort into getting something just because it’s a different color, for example - but there was always something so magical about them to me.

Now, I wouldn’t call myself a dedicated shiny hunter. When the going gets tough, I tend to just give up. All of my intentionally obtained shinies were either from very fast hunts or done with the fastest method possible; I don’t understand where these full-odds hunters get their patience from. 15,000+ soft resets for a Bulbasaur? Christ.

Some time after I got the rerelease of Crystal for my 2DS, drawn in by the potential of getting a shiny Celebi, I heard of a neat little exploit while I was lurking in a Discord server. 

Apparently, in Generation 2, shiny Pokemon could “pass down” their shiny IVs to their offspring of the opposite gender. Basically, if you breed enough Pokemon through that shiny Gyarados you get at the Lake of Rage, you can get access to over half of the Pokedex’s shinies at up to 1/64 odds.

It’s a little more complicated than how I explained it, but as someone who wanted shinies but had no motivation to put any real effort into obtaining them, this exploit sounded like a godsend.

When I first heard of this, I already knew what my first target was going to be. 

I’ve always had a soft spot for Teddiursa, even more so for its shiny. I wanted my own little green gummy bear for as long as I could remember, but never really had legitimate means to hunt it, considering the fastest way would be through the XY friend safari, and I didn’t have those games.

But with this method, I could have one in a flash. All I needed was a male shiny-family Ekans bred off my Gyarados, my female Ursaring, and maybe a few hours to kill. It would be so easy. Maybe too easy.

In no time at all, I was all set up.

The thing was, this method actually took way longer than I expected it to. I guess egg cycles were way longer in Gen 2, because I could go ten minutes without finding an egg. By the time I’d collected my tenth, it had already been a little over an hour, and my patience was quickly wearing thin. There had to be an easier way to do this. 

Before I could think much more about that, bright green caught my eye. I audibly gasped as the sprite stared back at me, and I scrambled to grab my phone.

I mashed the A button in my excitement, before realizing I hadn’t even thought of a nickname for this thing. I opted to leave it without one for the moment so I could come up with a really good one later. I was so excited to battle with it, maybe take it down to get it groomed, and most of all show off my brand new shiny to all my friends. 

My excitement was cut short, however, by someone knocking on my door. Since it was probably my mom coming in to tell me dinner was ready, I turned my game off as a force of habit. While I immediately realized my mistake, it took awhile for it to fully sink in. For a moment, I almost entered a state of complete denial - I had to have saved, right? I wasn’t so stupid that I’d neglect to do that after finding a shiny Pokemon. I spent the whole dinner with an anxious pit growing in my stomach. I couldn’t pry my thoughts away.

As I turned on my 3DS, the denial snuck back in, a part of my brain saying that green teddy bear would still be there. It had to be.

But it wasn’t. It was gone.

I wanted to scream. How did I manage to fail a shiny that I already had a hold of? Now my only evidence that it had ever existed in the first place was that one blurry image, and that was bittersweet in and of itself. I couldn’t believe myself.

But for as defeated as I felt, I had one shred of hope. I had saved right before receiving the first egg. Maybe I’d get lucky. Extremely lucky. Shooting up a quick - and probably pretty selfish - prayer, I took the egg.

As I cycled back and forth in Goldenrod, I chanted under my breath, “please be shiny, please be shiny”; I didn’t know how long this would take if I tried it again. I wasn’t willing to spend another two hours on this method, and if the sample size was anything to go by, it could take much, much longer. This egg held my last scrap of patience, and I couldn’t even stand to watch as it started to hatch.

Maybe I would get lucky. Get the world’s only first-try egg.

Of course not.

I swore at the cub, storming to the nearest PC. In my frustration, I pinned this entirely on the bear. It had no reason not to be shiny, it was a girl, after all - those were the ones with the heightened odds. I thumbed down to the “release” option with as much malice as I could muster. I never wanted to see a Teddiursa again. 

Good riddance.

My anger not yet fully burned off, I went back to the daycare. Unsurprisingly, there was still no new egg, so I took my Ursaring out and put her in a PC box by herself. Maybe it wasn’t really her fault that her kid wasn’t shiny, but I was feeling pretty fed up with this entire line at the moment.

Sighing, I finally convinced myself to cool down. I would need a replacement for my Ursaring, since I wasn’t going to use her now, and the rest of my team needed some training anyway. I begrudgingly got on my bike, wanting to take the long way to the Ice Cave. Of course, I accidentally rode into the tall grass and happened to get an encounter, as if I wasn’t being inconvenienced enough.

But the Pokemon I encountered was not at all what I expected.

A shiny Teddiursa. I was absolutely dumbfounded.

While I wasn’t thinking too hard about it in the moment, I’m noticing quite a few things that are really off about this picture now. First of all, Teddiursa don’t spawn near Goldenrod, much less at level 5. Secondly, I was fairly certain that this was the first time I’ve ever seen a game specify that a Pokemon was shiny, and considering I’d caught the Red Gyarados, I don’t think this was some new feature that was added. 

Still, at the time, I couldn’t believe my luck. I quickly flipped through to my Pokeballs, biting my lip at the realization that I didn’t have many. Not wanting to risk hurting it, I started off with an Ultra Ball; should be easy enough to catch a level five Pokemon, right?

… guess not.

And then I remembered the terrible thing about some Pokemon in Generation 2…

… they can run away.

My morale was already pretty shattered at this point, so I was more disappointed than angry. That did offer me one good thing, though - the ability to realize that the fact that I’d encountered a Teddiursa at all was… kinda weird. Curious, I rode around in the grass to see if another one would spawn.

Sure enough, the very next encounter offered me the same dialogue.

I was starting to get a little freaked out at this point. Back-to-back shinies were cool, but I wasn’t entirely sure I hadn’t messed up my save file at this point. Still, a shiny is a shiny, so I tried to catch it once more.

And again.

Over and over, it fled and respawned. Everything about it exactly the same, over and over, until eventually, I had nothing left to catch it with.

I knew I would knock the thing out if I even tried to hit it, and unable to will myself into knocking out or running from a shiny, I went ahead and let it flee.

Understandably, I was done with the game at this point. I shut off my 3DS and haven’t touched Crystal since. The file was probably bugged anyway, and I couldn’t be bothered to mess with it. That was future me’s problem.

As for now, I had another shiny target to worry about.

A couple of weeks later, I finally got my hands on what I’d been looking for on-and-off for just under a year. I had set aside a file for the sole purpose of hunting it, and after two phases and a few thousand soft resets, it shined - and was a girl on top of it!

I toured my sparkling new prize around Johto and Kanto, treasuring her more than any Pokemon I’d ever had before. It was the first time I’d actually played through the post-game of SoulSilver, and though I was losing interest, the vague superiority of having a shiny starter made it easy enough to tough out.

Considering everything I’d heard about how tough Red was, I decided to grind for a bit in Mount Silver before even trying to take him on. The trek there was fairly uneventful, and I quickly went into autopilot as I headed into the caves, turning around for a second to find a decent video to listen to while I played.

When I looked back at the screen, I felt three emotions within the span of a couple seconds; confusion, excitement, and then dread. What should’ve been the highlight of my evening made me tense up when I read the familiar text.

This had to be a joke. Where did this thing even come from? How on Earth did it get here? And why did it look… Off? I thought shiny Teddiursa’s eyes were highlighted with green, not brown.

Considering I’d already failed this shiny at least five times, I decided there was no way I was messing around or asking any more questions. 

I was immediately conflicted. Had I really just wasted my Master Ball on a level five Teddiursa? How could I even be sure this was the same one? Despite having the evidence, I couldn’t fully convince myself I didn’t just hallucinate that weird dialogue. 

Either way, I finally caught her, so maybe it was better to put the past behind us. I typed in the nickname I’d decided on way back when I hatched my first shiny Teddiursa. Once everything was set in stone, I rushed to her summary just to make absolutely sure I wasn’t losing my mind.

Evidence of her existence secured, I finally relaxed into the idea that this was all over with. No more weirdness, and I’d be able to play Pokemon in peace.

Famous last words.

Exiting out of that, I realized the weight something that I managed to overlook in my panic - not only was Sourpatch in my party, which would’ve already had six members, but she was at the front of it. Standing behind me.

I stared at her overworld sprite, feeling pretty awkward. There were so many things wrong here. Not even her colors felt totally right. I had to just be overthinking this, though. What was I so paranoid about? This was a Pokemon game, what was the worst she could do?

I talked to her.

I don’t think I’d ever gotten asked that before, but it seemed innocent enough. I tapped “yes”. I didn’t get a picture of what happened next, since it happened a lot faster than I could process.

As soon as I gave her the okay, Sourpatch ran out of the cave and vanished from my party. I was once again out a shiny Teddiursa. Or so I thought.

Following her outside revealed her to be standing not too far away. If you walked too close, she’d react with an exclamation point and run further in the other direction.

If she just wanted to play tag, maybe she should’ve been more specific.

Regardless of my avoidable panic attack, I played along, following her through what seemed to be a fairly direct path to the peak of the mountain. 

For a moment, I was almost impressed. Maybe this was a scripted event meant to show the player where Red was? I thought it was pretty clever, and finally caught up to the little troublemaker, who seemed to have enjoyed herself. For once in this experience, so had I.

I walked a few steps forward to assure that she was following me again, and though she obediently moved behind me the first time, she stayed there for the second. No matter how far I walked, she waited at the exit, and if I tried pushing past her, the game would react like I was walking into a wall. 

A sinking feeling in my chest telling my that the truce wasn’t mutual, I talked to her again.

I was really beginning to hate this bear.

Now my main concern was the fact that she was blocking the only exit. Unless I wanted to fight Red with five underleveled ‘mons and a gummy bear, I had to fly my way out, and after a few moments trying to pry any other dialogue out of Sourpatch, I finally gave in to what I knew the only option was. 

A quick check of my party confirmed what a part of me dreaded.

I couldn’t even be mad at this point. I was just tired. I’d lost this shiny six separate times, and I had a feeling I had the opportunity for a seventh. Maybe I was becoming a masochist. Maybe it came with the territory of ruining the same opportunity so many times, you aren’t afraid to do it a few more.

I soft reset my game.

She was going to be there when I went back into the cave. It was all routine at this point. Predictable.

But nothing could have prepared me for that.

While the fact that she’d retained her nickname was uncomfortable enough, the thing about this that still messes with me is the “for you”. It felt like she was presenting herself to me on a silver platter. Like she’d known I’d been looking for something like her.

I caught her again, and was extra careful to get her secured safely within a PC box, along with all my other prized Pokemon. In the moment I’d seen that dialogue, I’d decided that beating this game wasn’t worth it. I wanted to make sure all my shinies, Sourpatch included, were some place they could never run away from. The Pokemon Bank.

Luckily, my old save file on Pokemon White was still intact, if not extremely empty, so this process would be fairly plain and simple. 

I didn’t keep my phone camera on for most of the process, which I guess was kinda stupid of me, considering Sourpatch didn’t seem like a big fan of acting normal. Either way, most of it was just trading my other shinies, which were spread out around my other fourth gen games, to SoulSilver, making them ready for transfer, and starting up the minigame.

The game was excruciating compared to all the other times I’d played it. Sourpatch darted around the screen, blocking Pokeballs before I could catch other Pokemon with them. I had to wait until she was on the other side of the board to reclaim one of my other shinies, and when she was the last one left…

She just kind of stood there, waiting to be caught. 

It was at that point I was really beginning to wonder what Sourpatch wanted from me. Why was she making everything so difficult? What was there to gain? It wasn’t my fault I stumbled across her.

After the successful transfer, I went through and organized all my shinies into the first box. I stared at my Teddiursa’s sprite in the PC, wondering what tricks she had up her sleeve this time. I hesitantly clicked into her summary. Seeing as she’d looked a little off in her last appearance, maybe it would be more noticeable with the newer sprite?

Well, that just wasn’t right at all. Shiny Teddiursa are known for looking like gummy bears, not for being puke green. I was quickly running out of any way to justify the behavior of this Pokemon, and was just beginning to accept that I was cursed or something, when I clicked out of her profile and immediately noticed something else that was wrong.

Where the Hell was my Chikorita?

I’d gotten it after 242 soft resets while looking for Blu. I couldn’t take the thought of him just vanishing like that, but after scrolling through every box three times, my fears were confirmed. He was gone.

This had to be a mistake. A glitch. Something. Maybe if I left the lab and came back, he’d reappear? It was worth a shot. I stepped outside.

That wasn’t supposed to be there.

I nervously approached the overworld sprite, not really knowing what to expect, but not wanting to save over my missing shiny - or save the game at all when it was acting like this, really. I guess I’d already known what I was about to encounter, but that didn’t make it any less disconcerting.

Once again, Sourpatch had somehow wormed her way into the front of my party, and not only that, she did something that made me seriously worry for Narcissus’ safety. I was only able to get a picture of it the second time it happened.

There was something foreboding about that animation. I’d heard a few of those old internet myths of Pokemon killing each other, but for once, I was genuinely scared I was about to witness it. Control over the game was taken from me as soon as the battle started, and I mentally prepared for the worst.

… but the worst never came. The battle ended there, with my shiny Chikorita set free. I watched in bewilderment as a text box appeared on my screen.

The game played a sound effect like it had saved as I thought about that statement. What was it even supposed to mean? Of course I cared about my Pokemon, what made her think I didn’t?

Knowing what I was dealing with, I went back into the building and left once more, hoping to find Narcissus again, only to be greeted with another familiar face.

I’d caught Anubis a single encounter after the catching tutorial in Pokemon HeartGold, but unfortunately, Pidgeot didn’t suit my playstyle well. I’d kept him in a PC box on my copy of Diamond for just under a year now, and had almost completely forgot about him.

Apparently he’d held quite the grudge. I didn’t even remember teaching him Frustration in the first place. Soon after, he fled, just like Narcissus did, with the game now referring to him as “wild”.

After that dramatic display, Sourpatch pitched in with more of her thoughts on the matter.

This, once again, served as a notification that my game had been saved. 

Honestly, I couldn’t care less what Sourpatch thought about me and my relationship with my Pokemon. I’d only just caught her, so it wasn’t any of her business in the first place, or, she certainly didn’t have a right to be releasing my Pokemon like this, at least.

Considering the game was apparently already saved, I decided to go in and check the damages. Hopefully she hadn’t managed to set all my Pokemon free while my back was turned. Luckily, I found that this wasn’t the case.

But I was missing one crucial shiny.

Blu.

I rushed back outside. I had no reason to expect that this would turn out any different than how it did for Narcissus and Anubis, but the idea of losing Blu was a massive pill to swallow. I’d spent so long looking for her, and I never mistreated her. She was my ace, my pride and joy. Sourpatch had no right to even think I didn’t care about Blu, and that Blu didn’t know that.

The battle started, and the bright red sparkles marking Sourpatch’s entrance made my stomach churn. I wanted to turn my game off so bad, but I couldn’t risk losing Blu. I had to at least try saving her.

I watched with bated breath as Sourpatch destroyed her opponent’s Pokeball, praying for some kind of miracle.

Options. I was given options. 

I looked through my Pokeballs, quietly swearing at myself for not saving my Master Ball. I didn’t know what to use. I didn’t know what the catch rate of wild Feraligatrs were. I didn’t even know if that mattered.

In the end, I decided on a Luxury Ball, as some sort of peace offering. It was the closest I could get to a Friend Ball, so it had to send the message across to her, right? I was doubtful of my choice the second I made it.

I watched as it shook once.

Twice.

Three times.

No, no, no-

It’s embarrassing to admit, but I was shaking at this point. I wanted to cry. Hours of effort, hours of patience, and it all amounted to nothing. Apparently I hadn’t done enough for Blu to stick around, and I had no idea what I was supposed to have done differently.

I expected the battle to end there and to be put out of my misery, but apparently Sourpatch had one turn left.

She was mocking me.

I stared at that message for a good few seconds, struggling to calm down. When sheer willpower didn’t work, I snapped my DS shut and slammed it against my bed.

I don’t know what about this was so funny to that stupid Teddiursa. Why did she care so much about the feelings of these stupid pixels? They aren’t real. They don’t feel things. At least, they didn’t before now. Now three of my treasured shinies were gone, and I’d never see them again. All because of some sick joke.

After taking a few minutes to collect myself, I decided to make do with the survivors. I saw no point in making sure Sourpatch was in the box with them as I transferred them up; she had a habit of turning up where she needed to be.

Opening the transporter showed me that Sourpatch was the sole survivor, anyway. Again, I wasn’t really surprised. I guess, as a shiny hunter, I was just emotionally exhausted at this point. Already mourning three other creatures, no room for any more. I let Sourpatch into my Pokemon Bank.

And for how out of it I was, I wasn’t expecting to have my interest piqued once more.

Why did she have the virtual console symbol? Why was her shiny star all glitchy like that? Did I even want to know?

… of course I did. And since there was only one way to see her sprite, there was only one way to find out.

I carefully placed her into my copy of Ultra Sun. There was next to nothing on that save file anyway, since I never got around to playing it much, so I dared her to find something evil to do on there.

With that all situated, I booted up the game to check the damages. 

She was sitting by her lonesome in a box I’d made in preparation in case of me finding any shinies. A quick tap on her revealed her true colors.

Literally.

Underneath those bugged textures, I saw the truth. She was never even shiny in the first place, and if that little Gameboy symbol was anything to go by, she was the same non-shiny Teddiursa that had disappointed me way back in Pokemon Crystal. She chased and tormented me for throwing her and the others out like trash.

And she couldn’t stop me from doing it again. I hit release.

After all the Hell she’d put me through? Yes.

With that, she was gone. For once, it was for good. No amount of wandering around in the grass brought her back. Not even backtracking to Crystal brought about that familiar “shiny Teddiursa appeared!”, though I found it hard to face my Ursaring again for entirely different reasons.

A while ago, Pokemon Sword and Shield came out. I didn’t get them. Haven’t been too excited about it.

But through the grapevine, I heard about that new shiny-hunting method; the one where you knock out five hundred of the same species to increase your odds. I’ve heard people calling it “The Murder Method”, likening the experience to a Pokemon massacre.

If there’s one good thing about the dex cut, it’s that Teddiursa didn’t get in.

[pokemoncreepypasta]

Fallen Leaf (Part 2)

[STORY SOURCE] 

[Note: Due to the sheer size of this story and its image count, this story has been cut into two parts. The first part is here.]

So, I plopped the HeartGold cart into my DS and quickly skipped the opening cinematic just to see if this game was hacked, too.

And it was. There were no other options besides Continue and New Game, but I wanted to see what the save file had to offer before erasing it.

Somehow, this save file had even less to it than the first one.

It was Mt. Silver’s peak, with no one standing there, and no way I could move or open any menus.

Nothing.

It was clear there was nothing to this save file, so I reset and went to choose “New Game”.

I was about to begin my adventure, but then I read the warning text.

“WARNING! There’s already a saved game file. If you start an adventure now, it will be murder.”

“It will be murder”? Who was I murdering? There was no one here, and there was nothing to here. It still freaked me out enough to get me to back off, but I decided that maybe outright deleting the save file would let me start a new game without any of the weird guilt-trippy text.

So I went back to the title screen and pressed Up, Select, and B.

“Delete all saved data?”

“Once data has been deleted, there is no way to recover it.”

It started off pretty normal. I thought I was in the clear.

“Furthermore, you will be committing murder.”

But it seemed this game had some foresight. There was no way out of it.

”Delete the saved data anyway?”

Even though I didn’t want to commit any sort of murder, I didn’t pay for a useless cartridge, so I reluctantly chose yes. After the save file was totally gone, the game started back up with the opening cutscene.

Oak was there to greet me as normal, introducing me to the world of Pokémon.

Curiously, he sent out a Nidorina instead of a Marill, which immediately tipped me off that this game was going to be more Kanto-centric.

The moment came where Oak asked the infamous question about my gender. I was surprised I even had a choice, but I was even more surprised by what those choices were.

On the bottom screen appeared Red, fully sprited. To his right was a familiar silhouette, who was blacked out for some reason.

I wanted to go right back to playing as her, even though everything was trying to gravitate me towards Red.

But as I chose her, the enthusiastic music stopped and the screen cut to black. Another text box appeared.

“…” “…”

“No. You are a boy.”

I was thrown aback. Somehow, this managed to be even crueler than not giving me the choice at all.

Without choosing his name, Red appeared onscreen and began to shrink down.

The young boy stood in his room, leaving me to explore it.

But before that, I made note of the bottom screen. Like before, Red owned a Pokédex but no Pokémon. Checking it showed all 150 Kanto Pokémon owned, again. But more interestingly than all that was the 6 PokéBalls at the bottom of my menu. I had a sneaking idea on what those would be for.

I checked to see if Red was carrying any other items, only finding a few Full Restores for Pokémon that Red didn’t have on him.

While I was looking, I noticed that the PokéBalls Red had didn’t actually appear in his bag. Other than the Full Restores, Red didn’t seem to have anything else on him.                 I checked Red’s trainer card next.

On the top screen, it showed only the Kanto gym badges. Janine and Blue were replaced with Koga and Giovanni.

On the bottom screen, I could see Red and his shining silver trainer card in all its glory. I checked the date at the bottom, January 29th, 2004, which is apparently the release date of FireRed and LeafGreen. I was a bit impressed by the attention to detail. This hack was really trying to replicate the “Red” experience. But where did his Pokémon go?

Before going to find out, I decided to poke around Red’s room for a bit.

“I haven’t used this in a long time…” Interestingly, the text was not only in first person, but in red. It made me think that this text was from Red’s point of view.

“Mom threw out my NES while I was gone.”

I also took note of the fact that Red was a lot saltier than I initially expected. After that, I went downstairs to speak to Red’s mom.

“Mom: Oh, you’re heading out again? Stay safe out there, Red.”

“You’re the only kid I’ve got, you know?”

It hurt my heart just a little bit, seeing his mom worry about him so much. But there was no time to dwell on that. It was time to find Red’s Pokémon.

I stepped outside, originally intending to walk toward the tall grass to possibly trigger a cutscene with Professor Oak, but instead found a familiar face, looking out upon the grass.

“…….” “It won’t look you in the eye.”

Talking to Pikachu from the back triggered no response from it.

However, trying to walk out into the tall grass caused Pikachu’s cry to play, stopping Red and making him turn towards it. Then, the battle started up.

“PIKACHU is drawing close!”

Pikachu appeared, with a very neutral expression that was neither happy or sad. It just seemed to stare right through Red.

The heads up display appeared, showing the same PokéBalls I saw before.

Not having many options, I just went straight for the ball.

“PIKACHU, come back!”

Judging from the text, I realized this functioned like Pal Park.

“PIKACHU was caught.”

Pikachu was caught with no incident. The text seemed less enthusiastic than usual about the capture, though.

“It seems the caught PIKACHU has a different OT.”

Instead of giving me any sort of nicknaming screen, it told me that Pikachu couldn’t be nicknamed because of a different original trainer. It confused me, since it was supposed to function like Pal Park and normally wouldn’t give me this information. I went to Pikachu’s summary screen to see what was up.

It said it had arrived from the Kanto region, that checked out just fine.

However, the OT’s name had totally bugged out, saying this Pikachu didn’t belong to Red, but some unknown trainer.

Otherwise, it was identical to Red’s Pikachu, now sporting its moveset from HGSS.

Closing out of the menu, I tried speaking to the little guy.

“PIKACHU is staring wistfully at the fallen leaves…”

Pikachu seemed more interested in leaves than interacting with Red.

“……”

I tried talking to it again, but it said nothing and retreated into its PokéBall. I guess it had no interest in following Red around.

At least Red had a Pokémon to protect him, though, so I took the road to Viridian City. All the wild Pokémon encounters went as normal, save for being unable to select the PokéBalls.

I was hoping for some kind of pattern with Red’s other Pokémon, so I retraced the steps I took in LeafGreen back to the Viridian Gym.

Lo and behold, standing next to Blue was Red’s Blastoise.

“Blue: Red! There you are, buddy! Where have you been?”

“They made me the Gym Leader! Is that cool or what?”

“Of course, you’d know that if you just visited once in a while.”

“I bet you only came back for your old friend BLASTOISE, huh? Go on, then!”

Blue exchanged some pleasantries with Red before giving him the OK to catch Blastoise.

Blastoise simply let out its cry and the battle started.

“BLASTOISE is drawing close!”

It also seemed to have a more neutral, and possibly tense expression.

“BLASTOISE, come back!”

“BLASTOISE was caught.”

Still, just like Pikachu, it was recaptured with no problem.

And same as Pikachu, it also told me Blastoise had a different OT. After the fight, Blastoise remained in its ball, unlike Pikachu, so I just talked to Blue again.

“Blue: Hey, once you get your team together, let’s battle again!”

“Just like old times, right?”

Something gave me the feeling that Red had other plans after this.

Wanting to check up on Red’s newly caught Blastoise, I went to the party screen to investigate.

It was much like Pikachu. Quiet nature, strongly defiant, HGSS moveset. It was identical to Red’s Blastoise in every way, except…

It was holding a Snow Mail.

“EVERY TRAINER SHOULD GET TO BE A HERO”

It carried a strange message from an anonymous sender. I didn’t really understand it, but I presumed the others would be holding messages that might provide more context.

While I was in the neighborhood, I headed west from Viridian and over to the gate that lead to Victory Road, Mt. Silver, and Johto.

“Sorry, the road to Johto’s closed.”

Sadly, Red wasn’t allowed to explore Johto, but that probably meant there was nothing for him there.

However, he was allowed to go to Mt. Silver, where I saw another familiar Pokémon.

“SNORLAX blocks the way. It will wake up on its own later.”

It seemed like Red wouldn’t be able to enter Mt. Silver, probably at least not without his other Pokémon, first.

But there was still the Pokémon League left, so I decided to check over there while I was still nearby.

I noticed that all the rocks in Victory Road had been pushed away, as if it had already been walked through before.

While I was in no state to battle the Elite Four and Lance, I figured I might as well try to see if there was something waiting for me.

As Red walked into Will’s room, the door didn’t close behind him like it normally would. I could walk out if I wanted to.

“Go on through, Champion.”

Will didn’t battle Red, and the door ahead of him opened up. It went like this for all of the Elite Four.

I approached Lance, who had Red’s Charizard standing beside him.

“Lance: I’ve been waiting for you. Your CHARIZARD is restless.”

“CHARIZARD let out a roar!”

Unlike Pikachu and Blastoise, Charizard seemed actively aggressive.

“CHARIZARD is drawing close!”

The battle began, and I started feeling tense. Charizard’s mouth was agape, making me think it was going to start spitting fire at Red at any second. still, I had no other option than to throw the ball at it.

“CHARIZARD, come back!”

Red threw the PokéBall, but the counter didn’t decrease.

“CHARIZARD blocked the Ball!”

“Don’t be a thief!”

Charizard somehow managed to knock the ball away, which caused Red to reprimand me.

But on the bottom screen, the “Ball” option had changed to “Fight.” I nervously selected it, still worried that Red was going to get scorched by the angry Charizard.

But Red threw the ball again, with the counter going down for real.

“Red used Thief!”

Contradicting his previous narration, he specially went out of his way to steal this Charizard.

It went into the ball with no further resistance, and no musical fanfare to congratulate me on a capture well done.

It reminded me, again, that Charizard belonged to someone that was clearly not Red.

But if not Red, then who?

“Lance: CHARIZARD came here for a reason. Why did it run away from you?”

Lance spoke to Red with concern, asking the same question that I was. It seemed like Red had owned these Pokémon in the past, but they all ran away. Is that why they had a new Trainer? What did Red do to make them hate him so much that they would want a new trainer? My brain still rattling with ideas, I tried walking into the Hall of Fame, maybe to get some more answers.

“My name no longer rests behind this door.”

The door refused to open, and Red refused to enter. I looked over this line in even more confusion, but I realized that since Lance was the champion now, Red’s name must have been removed from the Hall of Fame.

Charizard was also carrying mail, which I looked at next.

“BUT… MY WORLD YOUR RPG WON’T ALLOW IT”

Again, the text seemed to be leaning pretty heavily on the fourth wall, which reminded me of my next location.

Where else would I go for fourth wall breaking other than the Game Freak building in Celadon City?

“I’m the Game Director!”

“Filling up your Pokédex is tough, but don’t give up!”

The director kept up his normal, friendly dialogue for a moment.

“Oh. You’re not here about that, are you?”

“Right. Your VENUSAUR is up on the roof.”

But then he broke his friendly act and told Red exactly what I needed to know.

I ran out immediately to catch it, deciding I’d talk to the other Game Freak employees afterwards.

“VENUSAUR is drawing close!”

Venusaur looked sadder than the other Pokémon. It knew something I didn’t, something about why it ran away, and that made it look miserable.

“VENUSAUR, come back!”

“VENUSAUR was caught.”

Red took no pity on the poor thing and caught it anyway. Still, the victorious “Pokémon caught” music didn’t play. It gave me the same text about its different OT, and then I ran back inside to speak to the Game Director again.

“You’re wondering what VENUSAUR was doing up there?”

Just as I thought, he had new dialogue.

“We were going to give your team to you personally, but…”

“Something went wrong. Ask the Programmer about it.”

I did as he told me and spoke to the Programmer.

“Something showed up that we didn’t program in…”

“We think that’s why your Pokémon all ran away.”

The Programmer gave me an incredibly vague answer that didn’t tell me much. What showed up? A glitch? I tried speaking to the other employees, but their text was all seemingly normal.

“I am the President here.”

“We are remaking an old game, but this is quite a challenge.”

“Old fans would not want us to mess with their good memories…”

“So that’s why we removed her.”

I was quickly mashing through the President’s text so fast that I almost missed this. The nostalgic tone of the dialogue was totally thrown off.

“She wasn’t necessary, we decided.”

“Haha, what am I saying? It’s always just been you, Red.”

I was starting to understand the story, but I was so caught up in talking with Game Freak that I forgot about Venusaur’s letter.

“THIS IS REVENGE FOR EVERY GIRL THEY FORGET ABOUT”

Between the letter and the president’s words, I was completely certain of my anonymous sender’s identity. So she was the one who made Red’s Pokémon run away, but why? What did she have against Red specifically? Did she steal Red’s Pokémon from him, or is Red stealing them from her? And if her revenge was just scattering his Pokémon, he was doing an easy job getting them back. There had to be more to her plan.

Unfortunately, I had no hints on where Lapras was, so I kept wandering around aimlessly for a while. None of Red’s Pokémon knew Surf, and I figured the hacker knew that. Wherever Lapras was, it was on land.

Eventually, I made my way to Saffron City and started talking to NPCs out of boredom and desperation.

“It wasn’t that long ago. This group of thugs called Team Rocket was involved in wrongdoing. They were abusing Pokémon.”

“But! Bad things never last!”

“A boy did a wonderful job and Team Rocket was disbanded!”

Everyone around town kept singing Red’s praises.

“It was so scary when Team Rocket took over the city…”

“Thank you so much for scaring them away, Red! You’re so cool!”

Really, really singing them.

“This is Silph Co., famous for Pokémon merchandise.”

“In the past, Team Rocket wanted the company because of that.”

“But then, a boy came in and drove them out all by himself!”

I almost brushed off these NPCs, but the woman actually reminded me that Lapras can be obtained from Silph Co., so I went inside to investigate.

Lapras was waiting, sitting alone in a corner and staying as far away from Red as it could. When I approached it, it refused to turn around.

“LAPRAS is drawing close!”

Even in battle, it refused to face Red, as if it was disgusted with his presence.

“LAPRAS, come back!”

“LAPRAS caught.”

That didn’t stop him from easily recapturing it, though. It seemed like he was getting tired of this, too, as the text was even flatter than it was before. I took a quick look at Lapras’s letter.

“EVERY STORY THEY TAKE AND GIVE TO RED INSTEAD”

The reason this was happening finally came to light. She wanted to be the hero of the story, but Red took it away from her. And now, she was out for revenge. But what was she going to do?

I wasted no time in trying to find out, making my way out of Silph Co. and to Mt. Silver where Snorlax awaited me. But as I stepped out of the door, the screen stayed black for a little longer than normal, and a text box appeared.

“A boy named Red saved Kanto from Team Rocket.”

“A boy named Red.”

“A boy named Red. A boy named Red. A boy named Red. A boy named Red. A boy named Red. A boy named Red. A boy named Red. A boy named Red. A boy named Red.”

I pressed A to progress the text as normal, and suddenly, the text starting scrolling faster and faster, overlaying over itself and even bleeding out of the text box. I kept holding the B button, wanting it to be over as soon as possible, but it seemed to go on for half a minute.

I finally managed to close out of the text, and Red was right back outside of Silph as if nothing had happened. Still feeling a bit shaken by the sheer intensity of it, I took my sweet time walking back to Mt. Silver.

“SNORLAX is awakening with its teammates’ presence!”

I had a hunch that I needed Red’s remaining team members to wake up Snorlax, and I was right.

“SNORLAX is close.” The narration got more tense. I felt like I was doing something wrong, and it was all culminating in this final Pokémon fight.

“Come back.”

“Caught it.”

Red called it back as if commanding it to return, and then didn’t even call Snorlax by its name. It was like he didn’t feel anything towards his Pokémon at all.

Now that I had the full set of mail from each Pokémon, I read through each one again one more time, then went to read Snorlax’s.

“I WILL TAKE IT ALL BACK FOR YOU NOW”

It was in all red text, like I had seen in the narration before. I finally put two and two together and realized I had it all wrong.

The red text wasn’t Red’s thoughts, but HERS.

And her thoughts scared me.

Mt. Silver spelled out danger for Red, and I knew it. I decided that after I closed the mail, I would get as far away from it as possible. Maybe continue to explore the region as Red, right?

However, the moment I pressed down to leave, all six PokéBalls appeared and released his team all at once. It seemed like his Pokémon all had enough with him, and were about to give him what he deserved. Nervously, I talked to Venusaur first, hoping whatever battle that followed would allow an easy path for my escape.

“VENUSAUR pushed you forward.”

But no battle followed, just Venusaur pushing Red towards the entrance. I had a very bad feeling that there was no way out of this, so I spoke to the other Pokémon while I still could.

“SNORLAX is standing guard…”

Snorlax stood guard, as if Red was a prisoner about to be put on trial. I spoke to Pikachu next.

“Do you accept your fate?”

Instead of any sort of description of Pikachu’s action, it gave me a yes or no prompt.

I didn’t want this fate, not really. I vainly said no, hoping that there was some chance Red would be allowed to fulfill any unfinished business before being shoved into his final resting place.

“……”

Unfortunately, no such request was fulfilled, with Pikachu silently stepping out of the way, and Venusaur pushing Red forward again.

I desperately tried talking to each of them, only giving me that same “……” for each of them.

I had no choice. This was the point of no return, and I was forced to take the final step inside Mt. Silver myself.

The screen transitioned to black, and in the darkness, another text box appeared.

“NEITHER DO I”

It was clear that she wasn’t willing to negotiate this.

I expected to be inside of the Mt. Silver cave, but instead found myself staring at a cliff that led to nowhere. There was no apparent way forward.

I tried to leave, but was stopped and pushed a tile forward.

“ANSWER FOR WHAT YOU HAVE DONE”

I soon realized there was no collision off the cliff’s edge, allowing me to walk in a straight line forward into the abyss.

Not that far ahead, I found a shadow sitting by itself in the void. I tried pressing A to interact with it, but with no results.

I then realized this spot was meant for me to stand.

“……………… ………………”

A text box appeared, and then right after closing it, a battle started.

What I believe was Red’s battle music started to play, but something was horribly off about it. It was slowed to about .25x, only starting off with low rumbles as the battle transition appeared.

And there she was.

She stood there for longer than any trainer normally would, as if she was heavily contemplating her own actions.

She looked like she had seen better days. Was it her being removed that caused her corruption, or was it from her forcing herself into the game?

“You are challenged by ?????????????????????????????????”

She finally assumed her battle stance after about half a minute, right as the slowed, distorted theme started to pick up in intensity.

Red sent out Pikachu, who also looked back at him for slightly longer than normal with a sad look in its eyes.

I waited for a moment, expecting an opposing Pokémon to be sent out, but she just stood there, waiting for Red to make a move.

Though the large FIGHT option tried to push me to attack her directly, I still didn’t really want to hurt her, even after everything. Instead, I tried to run away, still hoping for a peaceful solution to all this.

“NO THERE’S NO RUNNING FROM ME”

But as I expected, there was no way out. I still kept trying repeatedly, but with the same result every time.

I unwillingly chose to fight, but it wasn’t Pikachu who used an attack. She was attacking without a Pokémon.

“????????????????????????????????? used Memento!”

“PIKACHU remembered its trainer.”

Rather than knocking herself out and lowering Pikachu’s stats, Pikachu instead gained a memory. It gained a memory of its trainer. Its true trainer, standing right before it.

“PIKACHU is wracked with grief!”

Pikachu became so overwhelmed with emotion that it fled back into its PokéBall.

I assumed Pikachu wouldn’t be fighting for me anymore, as it automatically switched in Blastoise without my choice.

“????????????????????????????????? used Memento!” She used Memento again.

“BLASTOISE remembered her friends.”

Blastoise gained a memory of the friends she had.

Like Blue, who it ran away to.

“BLASTOISE is wracked with grief!”

Blastoise, too, switched out on its own.

Charizard was next.

“????L???????????????????????????? used Memento!”

As she used Memento again, the letter L appeared in her name.

"CHARIZARD remembered her ambitions.”

“CHARIZARD is wracked with grief!”

Charizard got a memory of the dreams she had. Like conquering the Pokémon League, where it fled to.

Venusaur was forced out next. The whole fight was entirely automated, but I still felt an overwhelming sense of dread as each of her Pokémon gave up the will to fight her.

“????????????E???????????????????? used Memento!”

Another letter, E, appeared.

“VENUSAUR remembered her death.”

“VENUSAUR is wracked with grief!”

Venusaur gained a memory, too. When they chose not to include her in this game, she was left to die and fade away. Venusaur fled to the Game Freak building, the place where she and it both learned that painful truth.

With only two Pokémon left, Red hopelessly sent out Lapras.

“????????????????????A???????????? used Memento!”

The letter A appeared in her name next.

“LAPRAS remembered her life.”

“LAPRAS is wracked with grief!”

Lapras got a memory of her life, and what she did with it. She defeated Team Rocket and saved Silph Co., where Lapras fled.

“????????????????????????????F???? used Memento!” The final letter, F, was shown, finally allowing me to piece together her true name.

“SNORLAX remembered her name.”

“SNORLAX is wracked with grief!”

Snorlax remembered that same name, the name that had been erased and replaced by Red’s for so long.

“Red is out of usable Pokémon!”

Snorlax retreated back into its PokéBall, leaving Red at her mercy.

“…”

He slid back onscreen to face her, with nothing to say for himself.

“Red paid out his life to the winner.”

He seemed to accept his defeat entirely.

“????L???????E???????A???????F???? used Imprison!”

Leaf finally used a different attack: Imprison.

After the attack, the screen faded to black, and another text box appeared. I tried pressing A, but all Leaf would say was “… … … …”, over, and over. The only thing that tipped me off that this wasn’t a game crash was the arrow still bobbing up and down.

Several A mashes later, I realized that nothing was going to end this fight, so I resigned and turned the game off and on again.

It must have auto-saved at some point, because I don’t remember saving during my playtime at all. The option to play a new game was totally gone.

Loading the game up showed Red, now standing in his famous spot, looking out over the mountain.

I tried pressing down to walk away, but Red only looked south. I heard a thud sound, like he was walking into a wall, but his walking animation didn’t play.

Something was wrong. He was stuck.                

I went to my menus to investigate, starting with the Pokémon.

They were no longer carrying the mail. Their message had been delivered.

All of the Pokémon now had their proper trainer. The trainer they had all along.

Other menus like Pokédex and trainer card didn’t give any interesting changes, but then I finally found something interesting in his bag that wasn’t there before.

Its item description was blank, but I knew exactly what it was for.

That was it, then. I left the game running for an hour after that, just to see if anything would change. But there was nothing. Red had no Leaf to taunt him, no Johto hero to battle him. Just the quiet roaring winds of Mt. Silver to keep him company.

I tried everything I could think of to get something to happen.

I tried deleting the save file, but the button combination stopped working.

I’ve tried going back to January 29th, 2004.

I’ve tried skipping ahead three years.

Ten years. Twenty years.

Nothing happens.

So, in the end, I haven’t attempted getting another FireRed or HeartGold yet. This whole thing has left a bitter feeling in me, knowing that this is the bleak fate of Leaf and Red. No matter what I do in Kanto, Leaf dies and Red forcibly takes her place.

Leaf had a life. She had beloved friends, family, Pokémon. She saved the region, and she became the champion. Everyone who ever played as her, everyone who gave her that life, they’ve all had to watch as Red came into the picture, erasing everything she had ever done.

And nobody talks about it.                

Nobody talks about how Red replaced her, because he “came first.” Nobody talks about how she never got the chance to stand alongside him in Gen 1, and nobody talks about how he took her life away immediately after she finally received it.

I don’t think Leaf wanted to completely overwrite Red. She didn’t even want him dead. No… I think if she just had the chance to stand in his spot on Mt. Silver from the start, the chance to truly be his equal, none of this would have happened.

But she never got it, and if Red won’t give up his pedestal of being the ultimate master trainer,

then she’s going to make sure he never does. 

[pokemoncreepypasta]

Fallen Leaf (Part 1)

[STORY SOURCE]

[Note: Due to the sheer size of this story and its image count, this story has been cut into two parts.]

I'm an old Pokémon fan who's been into the games since around Gen 3, particularly LeafGreen and FireRed.

I've played the other iterations of Kanto, though. I got Yellow version as a hand-me-down first, but soon after, my heart replaced it with the shiny new GBA remake.

Between the two, I really feel like the Kanto experience peaked at LeafGreen and FireRed. Updated graphics, countless bug fixes, an entire postgame... But most importantly, I think, was the inclusion of a girl character option.

I remember feeling a little frustrated as a kid that Yellow didn't let me play as a girl. That's why I was so happy when I could finally play as someone who looked like me, it made me feel like I could really throw myself into the world of Pokémon.

Recently, I'd grown bored with my 3DS Pokémon games and wanted to relive the magical experience of Kanto and Johto all over again. I didn't want to reset my old childhood games, though, so I turned to the wonders of eBay. Conveniently, someone was selling FireRed and HeartGold in a lot together for really, really cheap.

Of course I was suspicious; the seller seemed to have made an eBay account JUST to sell these carts, and authentic carts were obviously worth way more.

But since I just wanted to briefly play through for nostalgia, I decided getting a couple bootlegs was no skin off my nose.

And boy did I ever get an interesting pair of bootlegs.

Starting with the FireRed. Or should I say, LeafGreen.

At the time, I thought it was a shoddy bootlegging mix-up, but the contents of the game inside proved it was very intentional.

Judging from the lack of a player name, the unreal amount of playtime, and perfect 150 Pokédex, this game was clearly hacked. Intrigued, though, I booted up the game to see what kind of Pokémon the seller left behind for me to play around with.

The game started up in my humble home standing in the same tile as the beginning of the game. But I noticed my character was staring straight at me rather than facing the TV as she would normally.

My name was totally absent from the menu too, showing as a blank space. Pressing the A button did nothing to open it.

Not to mention the strangeness of having a Pokédex, but no Pokémon. Despite this, the Kanto Pokédex was totally full.

If I wasn't sure about this being a fake, hacked game, this sealed the deal for me right away. But I thought, whatever, I'll just go to Oak's lab and get a starter anyways.

First I wanted to pick up the Potion from my PC if it was still there, but the PC wouldn't turn on.

"It looks like it hasn't been used in a long time..." 

Instead it displayed this text, which told me the seller didn't just hack my Pokédex, but the entire game's ROM.

Curious, I checked some other objects to see what else had been changed.

"Whose clothes are these?"

It was clear that this hacker was trying to tell a story, and it had officially caught my interest.

I went downstairs to check the TV, since I knew it was the one place where the narration was in first person.

"It's the end of the movie. The girl with pigtails is tapping her heels together to go home."

"... Why can't I do that, too?"

It left me with a really sad feeling, like I was in a place that wasn't my home. Wasn't this my house?

"MOM: ... ... ... ... ..."

I talked to my mom, but no matter which direction I spoke to her from, she wouldn't face me. It was like she was totally ignoring me.

"Someone's house" I stepped outside to see that even my mailbox didn't want to acknowledge me.

"OAK: ... ... ... ... ..."

Oak wasn't any better than my mom was.

It looked like two Pokémon were already taken, or maybe the hacker intentionally only left one behind.

"You received NOTHING."

Ouch. Oak really was giving me the cold shoulder, wasn't he?

But whatever I took off of his desk must have been some kind of Pokémon, since it unlocked that part of my menu.

Or maybe it really was nothing. However, pressing the A button opened the menu as if a Pokémon was there.

Selecting the summary took me to my trainer card instead, startling me.  Her face was scribbled out, and her name was replaced with "WHO?"

I hastily mashed B and decided to read the mail instead, though it was just as unpleasant to look at.

"IS THIS WHAT IT'S LIKE TO DISAPPEAR?"

Even without a Pokémon, I was free to explore outside Pallet Town, since Professor Oak didn't care to stop me.  

Though, even the wild Pokémon's behavior was off. Their sprites were flipped, as if even THEY refused to look at me.

"Wild RATTATA failed to see you."

"Wild RATTATA fled!" Every time the wild Pokémon would fail to see me, then run away and end the battle automatically. Thankfully, the encounter rate seemed incredibly low, so it only happened once in a while.

I figured that was still going to get annoying eventually, though, so I stopped by the PokéMart for some Repels.

Unfortunately, it wasn't just the folks back home who refused to speak to me, but every NPC. This made things like the PokéMart and Pokémon Center unusable.

Of course, I wasn't going to give up hope yet. If this hacker was going through the work of changing every NPC's text to silence, it wouldn't make for an interesting hack.

It had to have some purpose, I just needed to look for it. If people wouldn't talk, maybe the flavor text for the objects would give some insight.

"WHO DID THIS TO ME"

The questionnaire in the PokéMart had a message filled out. Someone supposedly caused this, leaving me to be ignored by everyone and everything, but who?

I decided to take a peek inside the local Gym to see if anything had changed. Despite being in a post-Giovanni state, the game acted as if I hadn't won the Gym at all.

"... Where is your name?"

It even acknowledged this.

"BLUE: ... ... ... ... ..."

I kept snooping around the Gym to see if Giovanni was present, but was surprised to see my rival, Blue, standing there.

I started to wonder if maybe this hack took place sometime between FRLG and HGSS.

I ended up discovering by accident that I could walk through roadblocks like the trees, as if I was some sort of ghost/ It made for a leisurely stroll through Kanto, I guess.

Unfortunately, my efforts to look for unique text was mostly in vain, since a lot of the TVs and shelves had the same text as before...

However, I did still manage to find one more instance that stood out from the rest.

"It's the script. Peeked at the ending..."

"... ... ... ... ..."

"You're not in it." 

 In Game Freak's development room, the plot took a turn for the meta.

The computer mentions an ending without me in it. But why? What horrible fate awaited me?

Well, with no other leads or notable differences, I spent a ridiculous amount of time wandering and brainstorming, until I realized I could use my ghostly walking to cross water as well.                          

If normal NPCs wouldn't talk to me, what would this game do if I was forced to fight against the Elite Four? But it seems the hacker thought of this too, because somebody stood in my way.

None other than the Champion Red himself.

"... ... ... ... ..."

I spoke to him, and I thought he was just going to give me the same silent treatment everyone else had.

But suddenly, the screen flickered to black for a couple frames, and when it was over, Red was standing in my spot.

Confused, I walked around for a moment, realizing I was now playing as him. I opened up the menu to see what had changed.

There he was, confidently posing as if he was blissfully unaware of what he just witnessed.

Red had his whole team with him, whose moves were all about the same as they were in GSC.

Despite saying they belonged to Red, it also said I had only "apparently" met them. They all had the same nature, Quiet. I thought Red's Pokémon were just giving me the same silent treatment as everyone else, but that proved not to be the case.

In fact, every NPC was suddenly talking to me.

Not just that, but all the unique flavor text was back to normal, too. Everything I just witnessed was no longer there. It was like the hacking had gone away, and I just had a totally normal cartridge.

Well... Except for one thing.

Hoping I could still bring the hacked text back, I tried resetting, only to see my save file overwritten with Red's. So I decided to start a new game, hoping that choosing the girl option would retrigger the hack.

However, to my dismay, I wasn't given a choice. It led me straight to naming Red, and that was it. It was just like the good old days of Generation 1.

I figured that was all there was to the hack, which left me empty and disappointed. It must have been a prelude for what was to come, though.

This was only half of the story.

[pokemoncreepypasta]

Nasty Plot

[STORY SOURCE]

Does anyone remember that old Celebi event from 2011, released around the end of February?

There wasn't really anything notable about the Celebi itself, it wasn't shiny or anything, and its moveset really wasn't all that notable or special... Well, except for that ONE move.

When you put it on your HeartGold/SoulSilver game, it triggered some sort of in-game event that I had no idea how to access. Nobody ever told me what I was supposed to do, but I had no idea that it'd be anything like THIS.

It all started after I eagerly rushed in and out of GameStop to receive my adorable Celebi. It was one of my favorite Pokémon, and I was ready to play with it as soon as I got home.

When I started up my game, I gasped when I didn't see it in my party. I panicked for a moment, until I remembered I just had to go to the Pokémart to get it, and was relieved. I happily hummed to myself as I ran to the Goldenrod City's huge Pokémart place.

I talked to the delivery man. I didn't even pay attention to what he said and just skipped through all of his text.

Once all was said and done, I opened up my party. I went into a squealing fit when I saw Celebi sitting at the bottom.

I switched my new Celebi to the front of my party and then exited out of the menu. I ran out of the store and immediately turned around and talked to it.

”CELEBI seems to be feeling great about walking with you!”

I talked to it again.

”Woah! CELEBI suddenly hugged you!”

I squealed as I read that text. My Celebi already loved me!

I raced out of the town and went into the tall grass. I ran into a wild Drowzee.

"Psh, that's easy to beat..." I whispered to myself.

I selected fight and looked at Celebi's moveset. Leaf Storm, Recover, Nasty Plot, and Healing Wish.

I clicked on Leaf Storm. Leaves started swirling onto the screen, and knocked out the Drowzee in one hit. Celebi's Special Attack lowered afterwards. The battle ended.

I opened the menu and looked at Celebi's summary. I clicked on its moves. I then realized that Leaf Storm was the only move that did any damage, and it only had 5 PP. I decided that I wouldn't use Celebi for battle much, but I still wanted to play with it.

I took a moment to think about what I could do with it that didn't involve battling.

Then an idea hit me, "Pokéathlon!" I shouted out loud to myself. I ran to the Pokéathlon Dome and entered the Speed contest.

Celebi, Yam Yams the Yanma, and Dune the Dunsparce practically owned the entire competition.

I entered the contest again. When I next checked the clock I realized I had been playing the game for an hour already. I decided that maybe I should take a break.

Just as I was about to turn off the game though, I received a call from the Daycare Man. He had an egg for me.

I remembered that I had a Ditto and Eevee in the Daycare that I had forgotten about, so I raced back to Goldenrod City and went to the Pokémon Center.

I put all of my party Pokémon in the PC except for Celebi, just in case I wanted to hatch more than one egg.

Once I was done, I went to the Daycare Man. After hurriedly skipping through his lines of text, he handed me my egg.

"Alright, now we just gotta hatch it!" I told my Celebi, despite the fact that I was speaking to an inanimate object. I ran in circles for several minutes, then into Goldenrod, then back out.

I clicked on the egg's summary and sighed. This was going to take a lot longer than I originally thought.

I decided I would randomly battle a Pokémon for the heck of it. I ran into the tall grass and another wild Drowzee appeared.

I clicked on fight. I was about to select Leaf Storm, but I decided I would try out Nasty Plot just for the heck of it. I selected the move.

Puffs of smoke and questions marks appeared around Celebi. Then a hand pointing upwards popped above its head. Its Special Attack rose.

Drowzee tried to use Hypnosis, but it missed.

I selected Nasty Plot again for no reason. The smoke and question marks appeared once more, then the hand. Drowzee used Hypnosis again, but missed.

I used Nasty Plot one more time, just because I could. Same animation as before. Drowzee still attacked and missed.

I used Leaf Storm this time around. The Drowzee fell with no problem. Celebi gained its boosted experience, and the battle ended.

Not thinking anything of the battle, I went straight back to walking around to hatch my egg.

I walked over to the Daycare Man and noticed that he had another egg for me. I talked to him and skipped through his text like usual and received my egg.

As soon as I got my egg, an exclamation point appeared above Celebi's head. It nudged my trainer. She turned around.

My trainer turned south and stared down the route. Celebi slowly inched towards my character, then quickly retreated. Nothing happened for a minute. Then I realized I was in control now.

"Well, that was weird..." I muttered to myself.

I talked to Celebi again.

”CELEBI is a picture of innocence!”

I didn't really understand what that meant.

I opened the menu and clicked on my party. Instead of two eggs like I was expecting, there was only one.

"Where's my other egg..?" I thought.

I exited the menu and talked to the Daycare Man to see if there was some mistake of some kind. He informed me that my Pokémon were doing just fine, and that they didn't seem to like each other. I pouted.

I turned around and talked to Celebi again, to see if maybe it could help me.

”CELEBI is a picture of innocence!” 

That information didn't help me much.

I sighed and gave up. I couldn't think of anything else that could help me get my egg back. I decided I would just run around and try to hatch the one egg I did have.

After a couple of minutes of running in circles I got another call from the Daycare Man. He said he had another egg for me. I was already standing by him, so I walked a few steps and spoke to him. He said the usual, then gave me my egg.

As soon as I received it though, an exclamation point appeared above Celebi's head. It nudged me the same way it did last time. My trainer turned to it, saying that Celebi pointed to something in the distance.

My trainer turned down the path again, and Celebi slowly inched towards her, and then I was in control again.

I immediately went to my party. Again there was only Celebi and one egg.

"What keeps happening to my other egg..?" I asked to myself, which lead to nothing. I exited out of the menu and talked to Celebi.

The same text appeared as before. I scowled, and talked to it again. "CELEBI is a picture of innocence!" Again, "CELEBI is a picture of innocence!" No matter how many times I talked it kept saying the same thing over and over again.

I really didn't know how to react. I was a little creeped out, but not much. I decided it would be best to just shrug it off and keep playing. I started running around a bit more, not really knowing what else to do.

After a single minute I got very bored, and talked to my Celebi again.

”CELEBI is thinking.”

”CELEBI got an idea!”

I waited to see what it would do, but nothing happened.

I checked on my egg to see how close it was to hatching. It was turning out to hatch a lot sooner than I had expected. I exited out of the menu and took a step.

"Oh?" The textbox appeared.

It took me to the scene where my egg hatches. I squealed as I waited for my new baby Eevee to hatch. It cracked, cracked, popped open...

“Nothing hatched from the Egg!”

Nothing was in the egg.

"Hey, what gives?!" I yelled at my DS as the screen started to fade away.

Once it was back at the overworld, I looked at my party. There was only Celebi. I exited and talked to Celebi.

”CELEBI is a picture of innocence!”

I glared at it, wishing that it would fess up and admit it had done something. I kept talking to it over and over, but this time it kept saying the same thing over and over.

I eventually gave up. I ran into Goldenrod and went into the Pokémon Center. I went inside and talked to it one last time.

”Huh? CELEBI is holding something...”

“Would you like to take it?”

I was a bit shocked, and clicked yes.

”Oh! It seems just too important to let go!”

I scowled and went to the PC.

I put Celebi in and replaced it with my female Umbreon, Angel.

I left the Pokémon Center and went to the Pokéathlon Dome. I thought that maybe if I played there for a while and left Celebi alone for a bit, then it might go back to normal. I entered a couple of contests, but failed at most of them. I couldn't focus straight.

After playing for only about thirty minutes, which isn't long for me, I decided I wanted to pick up the rest of my team and proceed with the game's story.

When I went into the PC, I gasped. None of my Pokémon were in there.

Except for Celebi.

I selected Celebi and put it in the first of my party.

I was on the verge of just releasing Celebi, but before I could consider it, I realized that Celebi was holding an item, which it was suspiciously hiding behind its back, no doubt.

"Stake..? What the heck?!"

”Stake can’t be taken away.”

I tried taking it away to investigate, but it didn't work.

I was now completely confused at everything that was going on. I scowled and exited the menu. I talked to Celebi one last time.

”CELEBI is a picture of innocence!” 

I highly doubted that.

I walked out of the Pokéathlon Dome. Not long after I had taken a couple of steps I got a call. It was from Joey. He talked about his top percentage Rattata, as usual.

”CELEBI wants to meet Joey!”

When he was done talking, Celebi nudged my trainer and prompted this text, along with a Yes/No option. I selected no and continued walking. I was still pretty fed up at Celebi having gotten rid of all my Pokémon, and I wasn't about to cater to its requests.

But after a few more steps Celebi nudged my trainer again. I selected no once more, then walked a few more steps.

But I was stopped again. I sighed and selected yes. I didn't really have much left to lose anyways.

My trainer started to spin like when you use an escape rope. She teleported in front of Joey. He started talking to my trainer without me pressing anything. I wasn't given a yes or no option.

Instead Celebi snuck up behind Joey, then quickly flew back to my trainer.

I was then given a yes or no option. I selected yes, thinking it was the best answer.

The battle started. Joey threw out a Pokéball.

“Youngster Joey sent out nothing!”

But instead of his prized Rattata coming out, nothing appeared on the screen.

My trainer threw Celebi out.

Before I could select anything, Joey's sprite moved back onscreen.

“My RATTATA! Where is it?!”

The battle then slowly faded to black.

Once it got back to the overworld, Joey spoke.

“My RATTATA... It’s gone...!!”

Joey's sprite started moving around, as if he was searching for his lost Pokémon. I immediately turned to Celebi.

”CELEBI is a picture of innocence!”

I was getting really annoyed at this Celebi, even more than I already was.

Celebi suddenly flew away from my trainer. I was wondering what it ran away for.

That was when I noticed the POKÉDEX, trainer card, BAG, and POKÉGEAR options in the menu were missing.

I growled out loud and started to chase after Celebi. It was waiting for me just off screen. As soon as it saw me though, it started to fly away. I chased it in circles for several minutes, but it was always much faster than my trainer.

I eventually just stopped.

After a few moments, Celebi floated back over to my trainer. I talked to it again, but the only thing I got out of it was the urge to strangle that legendary so badly right then.

I opened the menu and looked at my party. Angel was missing.

"Alright, that's the last straw..!!" I gripped my DS so tight I nearly broke it in two. I exited out of the menu and thought about what to do for a moment. That was when one of the biggest light bulbs ever went off in my head.

I turned my DS off.

I hadn't saved the game since I had received Celebi from the delivery man, which I was very thankful for now. I sighed in relief, thankful for it all to be over.

I turned my DS back on. When I got to the menu, I selected "Continue".

When it had finished loading though, my trainer was standing in the middle of virtually nothing. Everything was black.

Before I could react properly, Celebi floated up to my trainer.

I talked to it, prompting its now signature catchphrase. A heart icon appeared above its head.

Then it quickly floated away, and my game froze. I tried moving, pressing every button, but nothing would work. I turned my DS off, hoping that my save file would work this time around. When the title screen loaded back up, I pressed start.

”The save file will be erased due to corruption or damage.”

I threw my DS to the side and screamed into my pillow. I wildly thrashed my arms and legs about like a possessed child.

Once I had finished letting my anger out, and my throat had become sore from too much screaming, I sat up. Tears began streaming down my face. I sat there and cried my heart out.

After several minutes, I had stopped crying. Although still sniffling, I grabbed my DS. I went back to the menu and selected, "New Game".

When it loaded, I was shocked to see that I was in Goldenrod City, with Angel right behind me.

As soon as I took one step, I got a call from the Daycare Man. He said he had an egg for me.

I ran to the Daycare. I talked to the Daycare Man, slowly going through his text this time, and I received my egg. Afterwards, I opened my party to look at my egg, just to make sure it was still there.

When I opened my party, I breathed a sigh of relief. My game was back to normal, and I could finally hatch my long-awaited Eevee.

Maybe it's just because I had gone through so much emotional torture just to obtain it, but I had a really good feeling about this egg.

Whatever this Eevee was when it hatched, I vowed to cherish it.

After running around for several minutes, my eyes sparkled with hope as it prepared to hatch.

But I was met with a horrifying wake up call...

“CELEBI hatched from the Egg!”

"No... Nooo!!!"

I scowled to see that familiar face next to me in the overworld. I checked my party, and Angel was gone yet again.

I spoke to the little devil just to see what it had to say for itself, and it replied with one simple thing...

“CELEBI is a picture of innocence!”

[pokemoncreepypasta]

Tommy Boy

[STORY SOURCE]

It was one of those sleepovers, just me and my bestie, when we got bored and had a dumb idea. Well, she got the brilliant idea anyways.

Apparently, she thought it would be “fun” to try and perform one of those summoning rituals, even though she knew anything and everything paranormal gave me nightmares for weeks. Which is why I think she wanted to do it so bad.

Of course, I wouldn’t willingly go along with the ritual, so my friend had to persuade me by offering her Darkrai plushie which I had coveted for a few weeks now. I remember wondering if the risk of eternal damnation was worth it for just a toy...

Apparently the answer was yes, since I eventually went along with this freaking idea.

The requirement for the ritual was paper, pencil, a candle, 6 random dolls, and 60 minutes of your time.

It had to be in a dark house, or in the middle of the night. We did it around midnight, after everyone else was asleep.

The first step was to put the 6 dolls in a circle.

Then draw a summoning circle on the middle of the paper and put it in the center of the circle of dolls.

After placing it on the floor, recite, “Any entity, you may enter.”

Wait for a while, around a minute, then prick your finger and put your bloody fingerprint in the middle of the summoning circle.

Recite, “By blood we are bound.”

You then turn off all the lights, if any are still left on, then light your candle and recite, “Whomever loses may never leave.”

Afterwards, you stumble around in the dark and play hide-and-seek with whatever you just summoned, if you even successfully summoned anything.

You must switch the room you’re hiding in every 10 minutes or else you will automatically be found by default. If you candle doesn’t blow out within and hour, then you win, and allegedly whatever spirit you summoned will be bound to your eternal service.

If it does blow out, then you’ve been found and you lose. Whatever happens afterwards depends on whatever spirit, peaceful or malevolent, that you summoned.

While me and my friend were huddled in the laundry room whispering and giggling about stupid things, the candle flickered out. I promptly flipped and hid in the corner with my hands over my head waiting for the worst to happen, while my friend laughed at pathetic little me.

After about five minutes of trying to convince me I wasn’t going to die, she told me she had blown out the candle herself. That made me feel a little better, even thought I still didn’t believe it.

Though, the Darkrai plushie I received the next day helped wash my worries away.

Though it wasn’t enough to wash away everything else that was about to happen.

Later on that day after my friend left, my little sister had begged me to let her play my Pokémon Emerald. I let her, since all she did was pretty much give free training to my Pokémon.

I was watching TV, and was a bit peeved when she ran into the room and started nagging me about a green Trapinch, so I waved her off. It took me a few seconds before I realized my grave mistake, so I quickly snatched my GameBoy back.

I was pleasantly surprised to see my sis had somehow managed to find a shiny Trapinch.

I told her to back off and let me handle this, since I wasn’t about to let her try to catch it. Although, things looked bad as my Pokémon were all too strong to weaken it.

But I was feeling confident with over 40 Ultra Balls in stock along with a few backups, so I kept throwing and throwing until one of them worked.

The trouble was, this stubborn Trapinch didn’t want me as its trainer. 

I might not have been able to weaken it, but it still chewed through nearly every one of my PokéBalls.

I was awash with horror at the thought of failing my first ever shiny. That’s when my sister offered to catch it for me.

I didn’t want to hand it over to her, but then my mind rationalized it by thinking that if she failed it, losing the Trapinch would be her fault, not mine.

I was shocked again as she handed me back the GameBoy less than a minute later with a brand new shiny Trapinch in my party named Tommy Boy.

The only response I could think of at first was, “Tommy Boy? Why name it that?”

“Because, it’s a boy and I wanted to name it Tommy, so Tommy Boy!”

I didn’t even want to know what went on in my sister’s head, but I quickly stopped caring and all I could do was just stare at my newfound shiny.

I went to immediately test him out and see what he could do against a wild Sandshrew.

“Tommy Boy refuses to attack!” 

I tried to fight, but I got this refusal instead. I tried to attack the Sandshrew again, but I just kept getting the same message.

“This is a load of crap.”

“Oh, I can make him attack!” My sister stole the GameBoy back and then proceeded to defeat the Sandshrew with no further issue.

“What the... How did you do that?!” My sister gave me a stupid grin, “He listened to me because I’m his mommy!” Sure, whatever, I thought privately to myself.

I was happy to let her train this Trapinch into a Flygon for me, anyway. I was puzzled by its behavior, to say the very least, and decided not asking anything would be better for my health and just kept watching TV.

I thought she would grow bored of training the Pokémon, but no. For the rest of the day and deep into the night, she worked tirelessly to gain experience for Tommy Boy. I wondered how someone could stand training the same Pokémon for so many hours without getting bored at all.

Finally, around 11 PM, she had to go to bed. Unwillingly, she saved the game and turned it off, but not before saying good night to Tommy Boy and kissing the GameBoy goodnight.

I was still allowed to stay up longer, so as soon as she was in bed, I quietly grabbed my GameBoy out from under her bed sheets. Emerald was already in, so I simply switched the game on.

Once the game was loaded, I saw that Tommy Boy was the only one in the party, for some reason.

But he was already evolved into a Flygon, and at level 66. Too bad she only had interest in training Tommy Boy, so much that she decided to stuff all my other team members in the PC.

I started to leave the desert where my sister had last saved when I ran into a wild Baltoy. I lovingly sighed as Tommy Boy came out sparkling. Then, my expression became a bit more serious.

That freaking pixel better listen to me this time.

I clicked on “Fight”. He had new moves: Crunch, DragonBreath, Sandstorm, and Hyper Beam.

I selected Hyper Beam, and desperately hoped that he would obey. I held my breath.

“Tommy Boy refuses to attack!”

“Dang it!!” I yelled at the screen.

Tommy Boy got hit with and attack, which didn’t do too much damage. I kept cursing at the Pokémon. I couldn’t believe I had a shiny in the palm of my hands and it wouldn’t even listen to me!

I selected DragonBreath, despite knowing he wouldn’t obey anyways.

“Tommy Boy wants his mommy!”

I gawked at this line of text. I surely hadn’t seen any Pokémon do that before. I almost wanted to laugh, the way that line was written almost sounded funny, but I was off-put and confused. Tommy Boy got hit with another attack.

“Come on, can’t you at least show some pity for your aunt?!” I spoke aloud to the game, like my sister had started doing. Tommy Boy offered me no pity and kept refusing. I didn’t want to deal with him getting knocked out, so I just turned the game off and begrudgingly went to bed.

The next morning, I found my little sister leaning back in a chair contentedly playing the GameBoy. I realized she snatched it from my room while I was asleep, which I guess was an equal exchange. I asked her if anything weird was happening with the GameBoy, but she said all was fine.

Then she asked me why I was playing on the GameBoy last night.

“Uhh... because it’s my game? I should still be able to play it too.”

She eyed me. “Just don’t mess with Tommy Boy again. Just because you’re his aunt doesn’t mean he likes you.”

She immediately changed her threatening disposition by cheerily calling out, “Oh, good boy, Tommy! You showed that Sandshrew! You make mommy so proud!”

I decided to shrug it off. I wasn’t about to get into an argument with my sister about a video game.

A few days into this, I was over her shoulder watching her play.

She was in the desert, and kept battling the Pokémon there over and over again. Tommy Boy acted like a normal Pokémon, and did nothing unusal.

“Why do you only battle Pokémon in the desert?” “Because, Tommy Boy only likes to battle Pokémon here.” She kept playing, as if everything was normal. After a moment, I thought of another question, “Why will he only obey you and not me?” “I told you, he’ll only listen to his mommy.” “It’s my game he’s on, so I should be his mommy, shouldn’t I? How does he know YOU’RE his mommy?” My sister paused for a moment. After a minute she responded, “Tommy Boy says screw you.” She giggled, while I gave up and left, fuming.

However, days turned into weeks, and my sister had been spending our entire vacation so far just sitting in her room. Apparently, she had started neglecting to eat or drink anything, and would only ever fall asleep when she passed out, GameBoy still in her hands.

It started getting so bad that my mom told me at one point she threw up blood. We’d tried taking the game way from her, but she’d screech at us like she was possessed and tear the whole house apart trying to find it.

Mom said they were arranging for her to see a therapist and get an opinion on what the heck we should do, but for the meantime she was allowed to keep the game, to make things easier for everyone until getting an appointment.

But I wasn’t satisfied with that. I needed to intervene.

One night, I decided to work up the nerve to confront her about her addiction. I found her in her room, as always. She was on the bed with the covers over her head. One would think she was sleeping, but the quiet sounds of the GameBoy gave her away.

I pulled the sheets away from her and she hissed briefly at me before continuing with her eyes glued to the screen. I hardly recognized my happy-go-lucky sister. She looked half dead. I tried holding a conversation with her, but all I got were distant “Mm-hm”s and “It’s fine.” The only way I could get her to talk to me was to attempt to take the game away, to which she immediately responded.

“NO! He’s my baby!!! He NEEDS me!” My sister screeched at me. 

“IT is an inanimate object! It doesn’t NEED anything!” I yelled back at her, clutching her arm that was holding the GameBoy. I managed to rip the Emerald cartridge out of the game while it was still running, causing it to let out horrible screeching sounds. I then pretended to throw it out an open window into the darkness outside of our house, to which my sister immediately pushed me onto the floor and jumped out into the yard after it. 

Picking myself up, I noticed she had dropped my GameBoy, too, so I discreetly plopped the game back into the system and stuffed it into my pocket.

I spitefully closed the window behind my sister. She could come back inside once she realized what this game was doing to her.

What... WAS this game doing to her, I wondered?

Once my sister had collapsed from exhaustion and been carried back to bed by my confused dad (to whom I lyingly explained I had no involvement in this), I decided I would find out for myself.

When I booted up the game, I was in the middle of my secret base in Route 120.

I checked my party to find only Tommy Boy, at a whopping level 100. Since it hand only taken her a day to get him to level 66, she must’ve reached 100 long ago, but she’d still been playing this all month.

Was she seriously doing the same battles over and over, despite him not being able to go any higher...?

When I exited the party screen and was back in the base though, a circle of six Pokédolls were around me that I hadn’t noticed before, which quite frankly creeped me out.

When I tried to move, a text box popped up saying, “Any entity may enter.”

“By blood we are bound.”

A strange red circle appeared in the middle of the circle of dolls, and I quickly realized I didn’t want anything to do with whatever was about to go down.

I tried to step away again, but another text box appeared. 

“Whomever loses may never leave.”

I tried running for dear life out the exit, but I was stopped.

“You may never leave.”

A shiny Flygon appeared in the middle of the circle and let out what I assumed was its cry, albeit I was too horrified for my life at that moment to care much for details, and the game froze.

I shut the game off, stared at it for a second, then suddenly every memory of what I had done earlier in the summer came flooding back at once. I knew exactly what Tommy Boy was now, and I was absolutely terrified.

I wanted to hold myself, cry my eyes out and throw this game into the woods where no one would ever find it, but then I thought about my sister. I thought about how if I didn’t get rid of Tommy Boy now, things would probably get worse and soon I’d wake up to find my little sister stabbing herself to death, or me.

Through my tears, I turned the game back on.

“It’s just you and me now, Tommy. Rematch. Double or nothing.”

If he won, he could take us both. But if I won, he would take his sorry demon hide back to wherever it was he came from. He seemed keen on my offer, as the game started up with no problems.

Once the game was up and running, I found my character in the middle of a dark cave. 

I instinctively went to my party to make someone use Flash, but then I remembered more than likely Tommy Boy was going to be there.

I braced myself...

But I was pleasantly surprised to find there were just some random Pokémon instead.

Of course, I didn't have the HM for Flash. Or the TM for Dig. Or any Escape Rope.

...

Wonderful.

So I stumbled around in the dark, trying to find my way out of this mess.

I kept bumping into walls and rocks, climbing up and down countless ladders, but there was no exit in sight. Or any trainers in sight, for that matter.

In fact, I hadn't run into any wild encounters either, until I came to the conclusion that there was only one Pokémon I would be running into here, and that I should avoid it like the plague.

Was spamming Super Repel going to protect me from a level 100 demonic Flygon? Probably not, but I couldn't be too careful.

After some time nowhere near an hour, I found myself in a small room that had nothing in it. I tried to go back the way I came, but I was stopped. My character wouldn't move. I started to tense up again.

The light surrounding me in-game was snuffed out, and all that could be seen was darkness. I was about to turn the game off before something happened, but before I could, something happened.

“Found you.”

The text in red popped up with a Flygon cry to accompany it, and the game froze again.

"No!" I yelled desperately, flickering the game off and on again. "One chance, give me one more chance!"

Instead, when I loaded the file, I was met with a glitchy, pixelated mess of a screen flashing multicolored lights while blaring the loudest beeping noise I'd ever heard in my life that sent my ears and eyes ringing. I quickly shut off the game and stared at the empty screen in disbelief for I don't know how long.

Had I lost the game?

I couldn't accept that. I was going to play this game all night if I had to. One of us would be leaving tonight, and it wasn't going to be me. Bracing myself, I tightly closed my eyes and powered the game on again. I expected another cacophony of buggy sounds and flashing lights, but surprisingly, I was able to boot up my save file just fine.

But, unfortunately, I didn't get the Round 3 of hide-and-seek that I had vainly asked for.

Instead, I was at the bottom of Mt. Pyre.

I still had the same team as before, unable to Fly or Surf away from this nightmarish set of circumstances that I'd been put in.

I don't know what Tommy Boy was getting at, or what he wanted from me now, but I knew the only way to understand exactly what I was dealing with would be to play along, just for now.

My only option left was to climb Mt. Pyre.

I felt a mounting suspense that kept rising each floor I went to, although I didn't know why. Maybe it was because every floor, even indoors, were all unusually foggy.

However, the wild Shuppet started to make quick work of my low leveled Pokémon.

I then got the sudden idea that maybe this wasn't such a bad thing after all. If my entire party fainted, I could get sent back to a Pokémon Center and escape the boundaries of Tommy Boy's "game."

When they all fainted though, I didn't get sent back. Instead, I was still trapped on Mt. Pyre.

All of the Pokémon that were protecting me were gone now.

I still ran into Shuppet, except I kept sending out a large "?" where a Pokémon should've been.

I kept whiting out, only to return to the position I'd started the battle in.

After a nerve-wracking climb though the graveyard, I reached the top.

Surrounding the pedestal at the top were six PokéBalls.

As I checked each one, a picture of a Pokémon would pop up.  They seemed really familiar, and soon I realized all the Pokémon here were part of the team I was just using.

After I checked the sixth Pokémon, I found my character to be trapped in the center of the pedestal with no way out.

I frantically mashed the D-Pad in hopes of finding some way to escape.

In the midst of my panic, a glowing red circle materialized on the ground, connecting all the PokéBalls surrounding the pedestal, with me still in the center.

I remember at that moment thinking, I'm going to die I'm going to die I'm going to die, and I wholeheartedly believed I was going to.

Then, a large text box in all red with a Flygon cry popped up...

“YOU MAY NEVER LEAVE.”

That right there sealed the deal.

I wasted no shred of time pulling out that Emerald cartridge and cutting it into an unrecognizable pile of green plastic with my scissors.

In my desperation, I brushed the remains of the cartridge into my trash can, wrapped up the trash bag, and went to the extent of escaping through my window and throwing it into the woods. Screw littering, screw the police, I didn't want that thing in my house.

And especially screw Tommy Boy. Screw his little game, screw the thought of him having any sort of control over me.

The only way to win is not to play, and I made sure no one would ever play this game again.

The next morning, my much more well-rested little sister asked where my GameBoy was, and I was about to tell her she was never allowed to touch that thing for as long as she lives, but then she asked to play Mario Party Advance on it.

I was baffled, to say the least, but found no problem in it and let her play it. She showed no signs of becoming obsessed and got bored of playing it after an hour, so I was relieved and assumed that the worst was over.

You can be sure I am not, and will never, plan on performing any more summoning rituals any time soon.

Thankfully, my little sister's gone back to being completely normal. If anything, her only sign of change is that she's getting into that "girly stage". She'll get Pokémon plushies and sit them all in a circle and play tea party with them in her room. At least, that's what I think she's doing with them.

Doesn't matter to me though, I'm busy with my own things. I'm happily content with my dear Darkrai plush that took entirely too much effort out of my life to obtain. I feel really bad for neglecting him these past few weeks, but it's okay.

I won't be giving any more of my time or attention to anyone else except my little baby.

[pokemoncreepypasta]

HM Slave

[STORY SOURCE]

The Generation I games. Definitely not perfect games by any means, but they were fun to play.

It's a shame my old cartridge’s battery has been long since dead. Makes sense, it was a hand-me-down from an older sibling of mine. Between both of our times playing it, it was bound to die sometime.

I was feeling nostalgic and wanted to play it again after so many years...

The trouble was, I had no intention of learning how to replace the battery, or buying a new cartridge. None of that appealed to me.

So, I just took it upon myself to play it without saving. Any time I wanted to stop, I’d just plug it into my charger, and leave it be.

Everything about this run was just for nostalgia. It was nothing personal to me, so I didn't name Red after myself or something.

I wanted to play through this game without getting attached to anything.

The best way to go through without caring? A starter-only run. I chose Charmander, since it was the cover ‘mon, and also my favorite of the three. Not necessarily because it would make the game easier in the long run.

Of course, there’s no way I’d be able to get through with just Charmander.

My plan was to catch a Pokémon specifically to use as an HM slave, so my Charizard wouldn’t be clogged up by useless moves in the long run.

And what better HM slave than the one who can learn them all, right?

In Generation I, you can’t delete moves in any way, so an HM slave was absolutely necessary.

Not like I hated Mew or anything... I just never performed the Mew glitch as a kid and thought that this would be a fun opportunity to try it.

The darned thing did everything within its power to not get caught, blowing through every single one of my PokéBalls that I’d prepared to catch it with. Hey, it wasn’t like I was going to need them later, so I didn’t complain.

I decided to nickname the little thing. I’d heard the term “HM mule” thrown around in place of HM slave, so I thought it would be funny.

Of course, picking the Fire type had its rocky start, with its disadvantage against the first two gym leaders.

I managed to scrape by with scummy tactics, though.

I’d switched to my Abra that I’d caught to perform the Mew glitch, and let Misty knock it out.

After that, I switched to Mewl for the free turn, and then healed my Charmeleon. Then, after Mewl fainted, I got a free switch into Charmeleon.

When the battle was over, I could proudly claim the Cascade Badge.

This was Mewl’s secondary purpose, to be switch fodder for me to heal my starter.

Things were going fine until Mewl learned Cut.

The first instance where Mewl’s “skills” would come into play.

This was a game where you couldn’t use HMs from the overworld, so I went to the menu to manually select it.

“MEWL ignored orders...”

Now, imagine my surprise when my slave wouldn’t listen to orders. I tried a few more times, with the same result.

I attempted to rationalize it, picking my brain for a reason. I assumed that you could not use HM moves while a Pokémon was fainted, but something about that didn’t seem right.

I healed at the Pokémon Center to be safe though.

That seemed to work, so I assumed that I was right and continued to Surge.

Nothing really unusual happened during the fight, but Mewl was knocked out again for a free heal.

On my way out, I had to cut down the tree blocking Surge’s gym again. I was worried for a moment that I had gotten myself stuck, but Mewl cut it down just fine.

I figured the game would let me use HM moves if I would be trapped otherwise.

I went back to the center to heal up my starter, and my stubborn little mule.

(And Abra too, I guess.)

I caught and released a few throwaway Pokémon to obtain Flash, which I immediately taught to Mewl.

I made my way to Rock Tunnel.

”MEWL won’t obey!”

I was frustratingly met with this. It was fully healed, I couldn't understand why it was disobeying. I wondered if it was some sort of consequence from having an illegitimate Mew...

I kept trying and trying, but no matter what, it wouldn’t light the cave.

I was sure this little bugger didn’t want to wander around in the dark just as much as me, so I really couldn’t figure out what was wrong.

I tried checking its summary, to which its blank, neutral expression had changed to something more... defiant?

I didn't know what kind of sick joke Morimoto was pulling on me by programming Mew to be this way, but I wasn’t having any of it.

It dawned on me that Abra could also learn Flash, so I just let Mewl be prissy and lit up the cave with Abra.

I somewhat regretted my choice to teach Mewl Flash. If I had known it was going to act like this, I would have just taught it Fly instead…

I decided to go ahead and skip getting Fly, since Charizard couldn't learn it anyway.

Thankfully, I made it out of Rock Tunnel just fine.

Charizard made Erika’s gym a total joke, so I didn’t even need Mewl as fodder for this fight.

The whole game was going fine so far up to Fuchsia City, and I had completely forgotten about Mewl’s disobedience by now.

I had obtained its final two moves, so I booted the HMs up and slapped them onto it.

Of course, to use Surf and progress, I had to face off against Koga.

Things were going well up until Charizard couldn’t deal with Koga’s last Pokémon.

I sent in Mewl to heal my Charizard.

”Enemy WEEZING used SLUDGE!”

“MEWL ENDURED the hit!”

Strangely, when Weezing attacked Mewl, it didn’t get knocked out in one hit like it was meant to. Instead, it stayed in the field.

While I wanted to question it at the time, I just used a Hyper Potion on my Charizard to get it back to full.

”Enemy WEEZING used SMOG!” 

“MEWL ENDURED the hit!”

 Sure enough, I wasn’t dreaming. Mewl was somehow surviving all of Koga’s attacks. Normally that would be pretty cool, except for the fact that Mewl was level 7 and therefore effectively worthless in this fight.

I had to wait for it to faint to switch to Charizard, but Mewl kept surviving every hit that was thrown at it.

”Enemy WEEZING used TOXIC!”

“MEWL”s hurt by poison!”

“MEWL fainted!”

Thankfully, it eventually became poisoned and went down, so I could send in Charizard to finish the job.

I made quick work of Koga and his Weezing after that and made my way out of the Gym.

But weirdly, as I was leaving, I couldn’t help but notice the screen flashing as if a Pokémon in my party was still poisoned.

I checked my party again to see what was up.

It seemed like Mew had a custom sprite for being knocked out that I never noticed before. I didn't even know if that was a thing.

But it was definitely knocked out, for sure, so I brushed it off as some sort of bug.

I figured if anything would fix the poison glitch, it’d be healing at the Pokémon Center.

”If you drive your POKéMON too hard, they’ll dislike you.”  

”Please take better care of your POKéMON.” 

 I was confused at this text. Was this dialogue hidden for players like me who let their Pokémon faint over and over? Whatever it is, I have never seen it before.

”We hope to see you again!” 

The nurse went back to her chipper disposition afterwards though, so I figured I should just be on my merry way as well.

I checked up on Mewl to see how it was doing now.

It seemed like the nurse just haphazardly patched it up. Mewl’s expression still looked tense, but I hoped that didn’t mean it wouldn’t use its new HM moves.

I made a quick note to take down Giovanni at Silph Co. and Sabrina. My Charizard was actually getting a bit over-leveled, so I swept through without needing to use Mewl to heal during battles at all.

I decided that on my way to Blaine, I would fall back on my training a bit.

I back-tracked over to Fuchsia City since it was faster than going all the way back to Pallet Town.

I made my way down by the Fuchsia coast and hoped quietly that Mewl would let me Surf to Cinnabar.

Thankfully it seemed like the 1’4 cat was perfectly fine with me riding on its back, with no defiance at all. I felt confident, like I was finally getting enough gym badges to make it obey.

I'd even gotten it to listen when I needed it to use Strength in the Seafoam Islands. Things were really looking up.

I’d finally hit land and was ready to storm the Cinnabar Mansion and claim Blaine’s badge.

I was feeling pretty confident with my Charizard’s HP and level that I wanted to take on the Gym without healing at the Pokémon Center.

I had plenty of Potions and Revives in case of emergency, anyway.

All of the quiz questions were normal, except... This bizarre one. 

“You treat all your POKéMON fairly?”

Though it had been several years since I played this game, something felt off about it, like it wasn’t supposed to be there.

I half-heartedly answered yes, despite knowing it was untrue. My logic was, at the very least, that even though I as a player didn’t care about these Pokémon, maybe Red did.

”Sorry! Bad call!”

The buzzer went off and I was harassed by a trainer. I was appalled... Was the game really criticizing me as a player?

Had I hit some sort of secret flag after making Mewl faint so much? I couldn't understand what was happening.

I didn’t give myself much time to think about it though, so I healed up my Charizard with some Potions and took on Blaine.

Charizard had fainted again, so I left it up to Mewl.

I healed up my Charizard and expected Mewl to hang on like before, but it just went down with no resistance.

With my seventh gym badge in hand, I was pretty happy with my run so far. A couple more hours in and I’d be done, I thought.

I was ready to Surf north towards Pallet Town and claim my eighth and final badge.

“MEWL ignored orders!”

But I received a friendly reminder.

I had forgotten that Mewl didn’t like using HMs without being healed. I really didn’t feel like taking it to the Pokémon Center though, so I just carelessly threw a Revive at it.

Hoping that the Revive would be good enough to satisfy it and let me ride on it again, I mashed through text a few times to see if I could brute-force it to listen.

”MEWL won’t obey!”

”MEWL turned away!”

It kept bombarding me with the same defiant messages over and over, until...

“MEWL hates you.”

I was caught off-guard. This text didn’t have the same energy as the others, lacking an exclamation point. It sounded like flat, cold, genuine hatred.

I pressed A again, and attempted to order another Surf. Not necessarily because I wanted it to Surf now, but more out of a morbid fascination with such intense text.

“MEWL used instead, FLASH!”

Suddenly, like in a battle, the screen lit up totally white.

I was booted out of the party screen afterwards, and immediately noticed a distinct lack of an items menu. Had Mewl taken it from me?

Closing out of the menu, I spoke to the Pokémon now standing next to me, knowing exactly who it was supposed to be.

”Mew!”

Mew’s cry played. I already knew it.

“MEWL hacked away with CUT!”

I flinched, horrified at the thought of Mewl directly attacking my trainer.

”HM01 was destroyed!”

But then I realized, it wasn't that...

”HM03 was destroyed!” 

 Instead, Mewl had stolen my items...

”HM04 was destroyed!” 

 … And was proceeding to destroy each of my HMs, one by one.

”HM05 was destroyed!” 

 After destroying HM05, Mewl’s sprite disappeared; presumably back into its PokéBall.

I was exasperated, but quick on my wits.

I still had Fuchsia City's Pokémon Center as my last saved location, meaning I could use Abra to Teleport back to the mainland.

I was smug, thinking I'd found a loophole around Mewl's attempts to sabotage me.

”ABRA used TELEPORT!”

“ABRA ran away!”

I panicked, to say the least. I frantically scrolled around my party page. How could Abra have disappeared like that? I wasn't going to accept Mewl being my only ride back to Pallet, it was impossible.

I desperately went to the PC inside the Pokémon Center, in some vain hope that maybe Abra had just been sent there somehow.

”MEWL used STRENGTH.”

“The PC was destroyed!”

I couldn't believe it.

Mewl had gone full rogue.

I suddenly had to come to grips with the horrifying realization...

I was trapped in Cinnabar with no way off.

I went through what I can only describe as the five stages of grief.

Stage 1 - Denial

I scoured the internet for any other Pokémon in Cinnabar Mansion that I could use to escape the island.

I quickly remembered that Mewl had already destroyed my HMs and stolen my items, and realized I couldn’t catch anything.

But I did have one more plan.

If I could knock out Charizard and Mewl, I could be sent back to Fuchsia. It would take a bit of work for Charizard to eventually faint, but I was prepared to try anything.

”CHARIZARD ran away!”

But I couldn’t be prepared for my Charizard running away.

I was so shocked that I didn’t even want to send in Mewl, I just said no and fled the battle.

I fell into absolute despair. Mewl had not only ruined my chance of getting off the island, but now, even if I did, what would I do without the only Pokémon I’d been raising?

Stage 2 - Anger

I’d never thought malicious thoughts about this Mew before, just casual indifference and sometimes mild frustration. But I can’t say that I didn’t want some payback towards this Mew for wasting several perfectly good hours of my life.

I sadistically thought about how I would make it faint, and then how I would torture it over, and over, making it repeatedly faint until maybe it would measure up to Charizard’s strength.

“MEWL ENDURED the hit!” 

I couldn't stop myself from shouting "NO."

Despite Mewl’s apparent injuries, it hung on with one HP.

Again, and again, no matter what I did. No matter what Pokémon I faced.

It seemed like nothing could poison it, burn it, kill it.

Then, it dawned on me…

Maybe this was what Mewl wanted all along?

Stage 3 - Bargaining

Mewl’s stubbornness and special ability that made it unable to faint...

It took Mewl a long time to faint its first real opponent, due to its low level, but in the end, it grew.

I checked Mewl’s summary for some sort of sign, anything at all, that this was what I was supposed to be doing. It stared at me with its vacant, unreadable expression...

Perhaps it was shocked I had battled with it? Whatever the case, it wasn’t staring at me with hostility anymore...

So it was silently agreed between us, then. Mewl and I, we did our first ever grinding session.

It took a few hours, but Mewl’s level was growing steadily. Things seemed to be going well, until...

We ran into our first wild Ditto.

I thought it was strange, having not found a Ditto for all this time I'd spent in Cinnabar Mansion, but I didn’t see any trouble with fighting it, so I just let the battle progress.

Stage 4 - Depression

The Ditto transformed into Mewl, who appeared to have a sad expression on its face.

I quickly pulled out of the battle screen and into my party to see if something had changed with Mewl.

I checked to see Mewl, who had that same sad expression as the Ditto. Its status had changed from "OK" to a worrying "...".

I knew something was wrong, so I fled from that battle and every battle afterwards.

Though I had avoided it before on hopes of somehow escaping to Fuchsia City, I gave it all up to heal Mewl, who had risked life and limb to impress me.

After it was healed, I checked its summary again.

Though it had fully healed, it still had that depressed look in its eyes. I couldn’t understand want it wanted. I didn’t know what it needed.

But I realized that it was getting pretty late, and I wanted to get to sleep soon. I would have to leave the game on, and leave Mewl behind.

That was when it hit me.

Could it be possible that Mewl knew I hadn’t saved? Did Mewl somehow understand that no matter if I saved or didn’t save, it would disappear when I turned the game off?

I hadn’t really thought about it until now, but Mewl was more special than any other Pokémon I’d ever played with.

And if I turned the game off, it would disappear forever.

I didn’t know how to feel about that.

I went out of the Pokémon Center to reflect about this with Mewl.

I still wanted to finish the adventure with it, if it would let me.

Stage 5 - Acceptance

“MEWL doesn’t want to go.”

That was okay, I thought.

I realized that even if I went with Mewl to the Pokémon League, and won, then the game would return to the title screen and not save my progress.

Maybe Mewl understood that, too.

So then we were at an impasse, together on Cinnabar Island.

I didn’t know what to do. Even if this Mew was special, even if I genuinely believed it was real, I couldn’t just keep my GameBoy on forever. What would anyone else think?

I decided that for the first time in this entire run, I wanted to save my game. I didn't want to turn it off just yet, but at least save, as some sort of precautionary measure.

I hoped, that in the event the GameBoy turned off for whatever reason, a miracle would occur.

”Would you like to SAVE your MEW?”

It seemed that the game knew exactly what my heart wanted, and I selected yes.

Then, all of a sudden, my game turned off. Not due to low battery or anything, but it just turned off.

I panicked for a moment, and quickly switched the game back on.

It was gone. The save file was gone.

Or, rather, it was never there to begin with.

[pokemoncreepypasta]

Bad Egg Manaphy

Everyone loves Manaphy. It's adorable, bubbly, and had a unique way of obtaining it back in the days of Diamond and Pearl. But despite this, I've had a hard experience with Manaphy that's made it difficult to like it years later.

This story dates back a very long time, back to that nostalgic era. I pushed it to the back of my mind, but I recently found the old pictures I took regarding this awful experience.

So let's look over these pictures together as I give what context I remember.

But before I get into what happened, I should start with how it happened.

Back as a kid, before the days of Pokémon Platinum, all I had was my Diamond version. It was one of my first Pokémon games I beat. But rather than testing my own skills and playing through honest challenge, I instead relied on the unholy powers of the infamous "Action Replay."

Rare candy codes. Pokémon modifier codes. Wild shiny Pokémon codes. Walk through walls. This thing had it all.

It was too much power for my frail, naive 10-year-old mind to possess. Blissfully unaware of what consequences could become of me and my game, I caught shiny level 100 Pokémon until playing the game lost its true meaning.

Now, there were event items that would let you fight the in-game Darkrai, Shaymin, and Arceus. Arceus seemed like the most epic Pokémon for me to challenge (by which I mean Master Ball), because at the time I could just walk through walls to get to both Shaymin and Darkrai. But not Arceus. I would have to type in a code to get that Azure Flute.

Whatever code I found though, it must have been a lengthy one. I don't know how code execution works, but if there's one thing I learned from all this, it's that one mistake in writing it could cause the whole code to blow apart.

I learned the hard way that I had entered the Azure Flute code incorrectly.

I walked into the PokéMart and talked to the man in green.

"I've received a gift for you. Here you go!"

This “gift” was my game freezing before I could obtain the Azure Flute. Thanks, guy.

Consequently, there was no way to make this man go away until I received the gift. But if the game froze every time I spoke to him, it meant I could no longer receive any Mystery Gifts. From what I recall, turning off the game didn't fix the problem. This game- freezing gift was already injected into my save file, and there was no way to undo it without starting over from the beginning.

But at the time, I didn't understand that. I guess I hoped my game would push the older Mystery Gifts back and give me the newer ones first. I still cringe at this logic years later.

Enter Pokémon Ranger. A well known spin-off game that people bought for one purpose: To complete the Manaphy egg side quest, and distribute it to their copy of either Diamond or Pearl.

Recalling what I did next, I desperately wish that I had a copy of Pearl at the time so it could have been avoided.

I sent the Manaphy egg over to the copy of Diamond with the broken Mystery Gift man.

One might call it karma when my game inevitably froze again when speaking to the man, but I just call it tragic.

Refusing to come to terms with my loss, I still kept the save file for some time, until I eventually cheated so much that I made the game virtually unplayable.

Reaching a stage of acceptance, I nuked the save file.

Along with my legit, unborn Manaphy.

Having to live with the loss of my hacked shinies, and most importantly, my Manaphy, I decided I wouldn't use any more Action Replay codes. I'd be clean.

Just kidding.

Not even halfway through the game's story, I relapsed on my cheating habits.

I felt entitled to reclaim my lost Manaphy. I couldn't just transfer another one from my Ranger copy, as it only distributes one egg per cartridge. And I didn't want to just buy another copy and play through its story again. I had an option that wouldn't cost me a penny.

I scoured the internet for a Manaphy egg code, and with very little effort, I found it and carefully put it in.

"Dawn received the MANAPHY Egg!"

I was surprised and ecstatic to see that it had seemingly worked successfully, as the man gave me a Manaphy egg. I saved the game without thinking, since I planned on turning off my system to remove the Action Replay.

When I turned the game back on and went to look at my newly obtained egg, I realized my mistake.

It was a bad Manaphy egg.

Now, most sensible people would do these three things in this situation.

1) Try a different Manaphy egg code. 2) Quarantine the Bad Egg in an empty box to make sure it doesn't contaminate anything. 3) Cut my losses with the save file and start over again.

But I was not most sensible people. I was ten years old and I didn't understand "common sense".

"Maybe this is part of the code," I thought. "Maybe I can still hatch it."

It made sense at the time, since it said that the egg was close to hatching, right?

But about an hour of biking around later, nothing happened. The game was downright lying to me.

Feeling impatient, I decided to look for an instant egg hatching code. I found one that seemed promising, so I entered it and started biking again.

A few steps later, it hatched.

At first, I gasped in shock as I saw the poor thing. I messed up something BAD.

Now, again, most sensible people would have turned the game off at the sight of this thing. But my ten year old self saw this as a researching opportunity. Like a child who encountered a MissingNo. by accident, I was enamored by the glitchy Manaphy instead of concerned about my save file. I threw this red flag out the window and went to nickname it.

At least past me had a sense of humor about the situation?

I foolishly saved my game after this, under the assumption that it might cause my game to freeze, so I wouldn't have to hatch it again.

But if I'm honest with you, I probably should have kept it as an egg.

I went to investigate the deformed baby.

But to my confusion, the game wouldn't even let me hover over to it. The game treated the Manaphy like it wasn't even there, skipping straight over to the cancel button.

But I wasn't out of ideas on how to investigate my baby glitch. Maybe the PC would give me better results.

It wouldn't actually let me interact with the Manaphy. I couldn't pick it up, I couldn't check its summary, nothing.

Instead, upon pressing A, a message appeared.

"Mama? . . . . . . . . . . ."

Oh sweet mother of Arceus, this thing thought I was its mama. I pressed the A button again, and it advanced the text.

"Hungry!. Hungry! . . . . . . ."

It was... hungry? I was taken aback by the unusual text. What sort of glitch Pokémon was this? How was I supposed to feed it, anyway? It wouldn't even let me interact with it.

But then I had an idea. Maybe switching the Manaphy with another Pokémon would let me interact with it.

But it didn't make Manaphy switch with the Bidoof. Instead, I ended up placing the Bidoof in Manaphy's spot, and the Bidoof changed colors. I panicked for a moment, thinking I'd made the Manaphy disappear.

When I picked it up again, the Manaphy was still gone, leaving an imprint of the glitchy Bidoof's sprite.

But, when I went to check my Bidoof again, I noticed a glitchy text box that had Manafetus's name.

I could view its summary, so I checked it out.

And I was VERY surprised to see the Manaphy's summary, and not the Bidoof's.

The first thing I noticed was a very distinct shiny star. I hadn't used any codes to make my Pokemon shiny since my last playthrough, so my first conclusion was that this was a full odds, 1/8192 glitchy shiny Manaphy. I found myself giddy with excitement which only reinforced my curiosity towards this thing.

It still had that strange date met, just like when it was an egg. Its nature was Hardy, and its characteristic was Loves to eat. Guess that explains why it's so hungry.

Its level was zero, instead of one. In fact, all of its stats were zero and it had no Ability. The thing seemed utterly helpless.

It didn't have any moves either, which I thought was really weird. It made me curious how this thing would behave in battle, if the game would even let me do that.

It was at this point where I noticed the Manaphy became tangible, but the Bidoof I'd swapped Manaphy with was nowhere in sight. I came to the conclusion that the Manaphy had absorbed the poor creature into its horrible, glitchy body. I'd grieve for it later though; there was science to be done.

I'd switched Manaphy to the front of my party, and attempted to remove my Monferno from my team. It wouldn't let me, though.

I must have thought, "Oh, duh, of course. It's because the Manaphy is fainted."

So I went to heal it, and decided that it might be good to keep the rest of my team in my party to cover for this defenseless baby anyway.

I went into the tall grass and was pleasantly surprised to see the Manaphy get sent out. I took a moment to appreciate the shiny sparkles, feeling an excited childish whimsy when I saw them.

The text was glitchy, which I thought was really weird. I pressed fight, because I wanted to know what happened when the Manaphy attacked with no moves.

"?? has no? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? moves left!"

A startling amount of question marks appeared before telling me the Manaphy had no moves left.

"The wild STARLY used Quick Attack!"

"But there was no target..."

What I didn't expect though, was that the Starly failed to land a hit on my Manaphy.

"Dawn is out of usable Pokémon!"

"Dawn blacked out!"

My Manaphy didn't get a turn to attack, and the battle ended.

To my surprise, all but one of my Pokéballs disappeared when the nurse healed my Pokémon.

I tried to open my party menu after she was finished, but the game just froze on a black screen. I was forced to reset.

In the name of curiosity, I did the same thing again and decided I would check the PC instead of my party.

"?? is too hungry ? ? ? ? ? ? to move!"

The battle went the same, except that this line replaced the "?? has no moves left” line from the last battle. I was stunned and confused the whole battle, and quickly mashed through text to make it to the PC, the only place I could view this bizarre glitchy Manaphy.

My entire team had turned into Bad Eggs at this point. I panicked, realizing that this glitchy Manaphy wasn't as cool or harmless as MissingNo., like I had made it out to be. If I put any other Pokémon into the team and head into a battle, the Manaphy would probably turn them into Bad Eggs too. The game would be unplayable at that point.

"Hungry! Hungry! . . . . . . ."

I hovered over the Manaphy, and got this familiar text again.

Still trying to save grace (and my save file), I got the morbid idea to sacrifice another Pokémon to the Manaphy to let me interact with it again, and let me release it.

But it didn't work. The Bidoof's palette glitched and was forced to the back of the party, and it wouldn't let me pick up the Manaphy like before.

Hovering over the Bidoof showed that it was just the Bad Egg, and the Bidoof was gone.

As I went to pick up another Pokémon to try again, the glitchy sacrificed Bidoof lingered in the box like a ghost, following me no matter what box I went to.

As desperation kicked in, I kept feeding it every single Pokémon in box. After my Bibarel was devoured, I had run out of Pokémon to feed to the Manaphy.

"Hungry! Hungry! ! ! ! ! ! ! !"

But the beast wasn't satisfied.

I decided to turn the game off, to at least get the Pokémon I lost back. I booted up the PC again to check where my progress was.

"Hungry!. . . . . . . . . ."

To my RELIEF, the Manaphy was once again at the back of the party. Alas, the needy little creature was still unsatisfied.

As I prepared the sacrificial Bidoof, I thought to myself about how RELIEVED I would be to have it gone.

"Mama! ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤"

As I selected the Manaphy, it displayed affection dialogue with glitchy hearts filling the whole text box. I will admit, even looking back at these pictures now, it puts a pit in my stomach. But, I swallowed my nerves and chose to release it.

"Mama?. . . . . . . . . . ."

No, I'm not your mama.

"Mama hates me? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?"

Instead of releasing the Manaphy, it displayed this text, and promptly booted me off the PC. Reacting with obvious frustration, I went to boot up the PC again so I could release this abomination for good.

It wasn't pretty. All of my Pokémon, party and PC, were replaced by Bad Eggs.

"MAMA" "HATES" "ME" "??????????"

My party members, while Bad Eggs, had these lovely names.

But the worst of it had to be Manaphy itself.

Manafetus was now an unrecognizable mess of pixels. Whatever this thing was, it wasn't a Manaphy anymore.

I finally did the sensible thing and turned the game off. I'd had enough of the terror.

I decided a couple days later to delete the save file. I'd only made it to Solaceon Town anyways, so deleting this file was no skin off my nose.

I decided to stop playing Diamond altogether. Platinum would be coming out soon, and I wanted to spend my energy on that game instead.

I played through the whole thing completely Action Replay-free. I was done with cheating for good, I promised myself to be completely clean for the rest of my Pokémon career.

So, recently, I wanted to pick up the Sinnoh games again, for nostalgia's sake. I didn't want to erase my Platinum save, however, so I turned to my erased Diamond cartridge.

I half-expected Manafetus to be in my party, staring me down. But the game was completely normal.

Until I went into the PokéMart in Sandgem Town, that is.

The delivery man was there. Cautiously, I spoke to the man.

"I've received a gift for you. Here you go!"

And do you want to guess what that gift was?

It was a bad Manaphy egg.

[pokemoncreepypasta]

Pokémon Black

[STORY SOURCE]

I’m what you could call a collector of bootleg Pokémon games. Pokémon Diamond & Jade, Chaos Black, etc. It’s amazing the frequency with which you can find them at pawnshops, Goodwill, flea markets, and such.

They’re generally fun; even if they are unplayable (which they often are), the mistranslations and poor quality make them unintentionally humorous.

I’ve been able to find most of the ones that I’ve played online, but there’s one that I haven’t seen any mention of. I bought it at a flea market over fifteen years ago, now.

Here’s a picture of the cartridge, in case anyone recognizes it.

The game started with the familiar Nidorino and Gengar intro of Red and Blue version.

However, the “press start” screen had been altered. Red was there, but the Pokémon did not cycle through. It also said “Black Version” under the Pokémon logo.

Upon selecting “New Game”, the game started the Professor Oak speech, and it quickly became evident that the game was essentially Pokémon Red Version.

After selecting your starter, if you looked at your Pokémon, you had in addition to Bulbasaur, Charmander, or Squirtle another Pokémon — “GHOST”.

The Pokémon was level 1. It had the sprite of the Ghosts that are encountered in Lavender Tower before obtaining the Sliph Scope.

It had one attack — “Curse”. I know that there is a real move named Curse, but the attack did not exist in Generation 1, so it appears it was hacked in.

Defending Pokémon were unable to attack Ghost — it would only say they were too scared to move.

When the move “Curse” was used in battle, the screen would cut to black. The cry of the defending Pokémon would be heard, but it was distorted, played at a much lower pitch than normal.

The battle screen would then reappear, and the defending Pokémon would be gone.

If used in a battle against a trainer, when the Pokéballs representing their Pokémon would appear in the corner, they would have one fewer Pokéball.

The implication was that the Pokémon died.

What’s even stranger is that after defeating a trainer and seeing “Red received $60 for winning!”, the battle commands would appear again.

If you selected “Run”, the battle would end as it normally does.

You could also select Curse.

If you did, upon returning to the overworld, the trainer’s sprite would be gone.

After leaving and reentering the area, the spot where the trainer had been would be replaced with a tombstone like the ones at Lavender Tower.

The move “Curse” was not usable in all instances.

It would fail against other Ghosts.

It would also fail if it was used against trainers that you would have to face again, such as your Rival or Giovanni.

It was usable in your final battle against them, however.

I figured this was the gimmick of the game, allowing you to use the previously uncatchable Ghosts. And because Curse made the game so easy, I essentially used it throughout the whole adventure.

The game changed quite a bit after defeating the Elite Four. After viewing the Hall of Fame, which consisted of Ghost and a couple of Pokemon I used for HM`s, the screen cut to black.

A box appeared with the words “Many years later…”

It then cut to Lavender Tower. An old man was standing, looking at tombstones. You then realized this man was your character.

The man moved at only half of your normal walking speed. You no longer had any Pokémon with you, not even Ghost, who up to this point had been impossible to remove from your party through depositing in the PC.

The overworld was entirely empty — there were no people at all.

There were still the tombstones of the trainers that you used Curse on, however.

You could go pretty much anywhere in the overworld at this point, though your movement was limited by the fact that you had no Pokémon to use HMs. And regardless of where you went, the music of Lavender Town continued on an infinite loop.

After wandering for a while, I found that if you go through Diglett’s Cave, one of the cuttable bushes that normally blocks the path on the other side is no longer there, allowing you to advance and return to Pallet Town.

Upon entering your house and going to the exact tile where you start the game, the screen would cut to black.

Then a sprite of a Caterpie appeared.

It was the replaced by a Weedle,

and then a Pidgey.

I soon realized, as the Pokémon progressed from Rattata to Blastoise,

that these were all of the Pokémon that I had used Curse on.

After the end of my Rival’s team, a Youngster appeared, and then a Bug Catcher. These were the trainers I had Cursed.

Throughout the sequence, the Lavender Town music was playing, but it was slowly decreasing in pitch. By the time your Rival appeared on screen, it was little more than a demonic rumble.

Another cut to black.

A few moments later, the battle screen suddenly appeared — your trainer sprite was now that of an old man, the same one as the one who teaches you how to catch Pokémon in Viridian City.

Ghost appeared on the other side, along with the words “GHOST wants to fight!”.

You couldn’t use items, and you had no Pokémon. If you tried to run, you couldn’t escape. The only option was “FIGHT”.

Using fight would immediately cause you to use Struggle, which didn’t affect Ghost but did chip off a bit of your own HP.

When it was Ghost’s turn to attack, it would simply say “…”

Eventually, when your HP reached a critical point, Ghost would finally use Curse.

The screen cut to black a final time.

Regardless of the buttons you pressed, you were permanently stuck in this black screen. At this point, the only thing you could do was turn the Game Boy off.

When you played again, “NEW GAME” was the only option — the game had erased the file.

I played through this hacked game many, many times, and every time the game ended with this sequence. Several times I didn’t use Ghost at all, though it was impossible to remove from the party. In these cases, it did not show any Pokémon or trainers and simply cut to the climactic battle with Ghost.

I’m not sure what the motives were behind the creator of this hack. It wasn’t widely distributed, so it was presumably not for monetary gain. It was very well done for a bootleg.

It seems they were trying to convey a message; though it seems I was the first receiver of this message. I’m still not entirely sure what it was — the inevitability of death? The pointlessness of it? Perhaps they were simply trying to morbidly inject death and darkness into a children’s game.

Regardless, this children’s game has made me think, and it has made me cry.

[pokemoncreepypasta]

Forever Mine

[STORY SOURCE]

I live in one of those small towns with a big community. It feels like everyone knows each other, and parents would visit their friends and leave their kids to mess around with each other. Classes in school weren’t very large.

So when there’s news about a kid dying, it travels at god-speed. 

Everyone at school kept talking about the death of this girl who was probably a year behind me.

I didn’t know her personally. I wouldn’t have even been able to tell you her name if everyone wasn’t talking about her.

I didn’t want to pick up gossip about how she died. I decided to attend her funeral myself. Not because we were friends or anything, but I did want to show my respect for this girl and her family.

The local funeral home was within biking range of my house, so I set off.

I sat awkwardly as I noticed her parents. I’m not usually very good at picking up feelings from people, but I could tell that beyond their grief was disappointment and maybe even hostility.

They made me wonder what she was thinking about before she died.

After she was buried, I hung around the cemetery. I’d wished I brought flowers with me, but decided I’d give her some the next time I stopped by.

Around this time, I had been aiming to get a Sky Forme Shaymin, since it was one of my favorite Pokémon back then.

I had caught a wild Shaymin using the "Pokémon Modifier" cheat code. I was terrible at coming up with creative names. But then, I remembered the name of the girl and thought it would suit a Shaymin rather well.

“Skye.”

Little did I know that this would invite strange things to start happening to my game.

I wanted to keep this Shaymin in its Sky Forme whenever possible, so I planned on keeping it in my team 24/7, only playing during daytime, etc. I was a dirty cheater who liked putting illegal moves on my Pokémon, so I taught Skye to use Fly.

At the time, I didn’t know you needed to catch the Shaymin in Flower Paradise to receive the Gracidea Flower, so when I talked to the blonde girl NPC in Floaroma Town, I had no idea why she wouldn’t give it to me.

So I was stuck with a Shaymin that knew Fly. It was weird, and I never really grew all that attached to it. Eventually I boxed it, forgot I had it, and released it without thinking.

The next time I booted up the game, I got this message.

“The save file is corrupted. The previous save file will be loaded.”

My first instinct was panic. I didn’t have any time to think or process the initial message, because all my hours were gone. With nervous anticipation, I started up the save file to see what the damage was.

To my surprise, I found myself on an incomplete Seabreak Path. The south path to Route 224 was cut off, with a featureless Shaymin staring vacantly over the edge.

I checked my party, and found none of my team members.

Only a level 100 Dusknoir with the move Follow Me.

Very useful, I thought. I’d have to boot up my Action Replay to teach this thing Fly in order to get off the island later.

Checking my items, I noticed everything was gone, save for a single PokéBall and an Escape Rope. Neither of which seemed particularly helpful for getting me off this island.

Out of curiosity though, I decided to see if Shaymin would be at Flower Paradise. I started my trek north, lamenting the loss of my bike.

To my surprise, Shaymin was there, despite never having Oak’s Letter or triggering the cutscene with it. Its face was obstructed by flowers, but it seemed like its pink flowers were missing just like the one I saw before.

I spoke to the Shaymin, and a message appeared.

“I remember you.”

“But… You don’t remember me, do you?”

The wild Shaymin attacked, and my heart stopped at its name.

“Skye appeared!”

Featureless, like before.

I felt a knot in my stomach, not even caring about the game. Something was very clearly wrong with it, and I wanted to stop playing. But I decided I was already taking pictures of the weird stuff that was happening, and I wanted to document it in full.

Steeling my resolve, I went about my options.

Dusknoir only knew Follow Me, so it was useless to weaken the Shaymin.

Remembering the PokéBall I had, I tossed it at the Shaymin.

Most people would be ecstatic to catch a Shaymin with full HP in a PokéBall on their first try, but I got the feeling that the game was rigged. There wasn’t any triumphant music playing either, which didn’t help my feelings about it.

I tried checking my newly caught Shaymin, but my game froze upon checking my party.

Upon restarting the system and starting the game up, this message appeared.

“My heart is corrupted. Please save me.”

My save file was gone for real this time. The trainer’s name was “SINNER”.

I live in a pretty religious community, so reading this made me ill at ease.

Starting up the game again, I found myself in the Lost Tower, playing as a featureless Shaymin.

My only Pokémon was the same Shaymin, named SINNER, knowing Fly, Scary Face, Fake Tears, and Spite.

A text box appeared when I tried to leave the tower.

“Today’s the day.”

It pushed me back, preventing my exit. The only option I had was to ascend.

No random encounters happened, and all the trainers wouldn’t interact with me.

It went this way until I went to the top floor. I’m pretty sure there isn’t supposed to be a man and woman NPC standing in this spot.

"There’s nothing left to say.”

Interacting with them just prompted this text.

It was here that I noticed a staircase that wasn’t supposed to be there.

I found myself on the top of the tower. I stepped into a scripted event, and the Shaymin faced the edge without my prompt.

"It's a long way down... Are you ready?"

Hoping for some way out of this, I wanted to say “no”, so I could cheat my way out of the tower and get my game back to normal. However, upon selecting it, this text appeared.

"You've held back for long enough. It's time to go."

“SINNER used the Escape Rope.”

A battle started against the same Dusknoir as before. I was intimidated to go against a level 100 Dusknoir, but then I remembered its only move was Follow Me, so it was harmless.

I realized that if I let SINNER faint, I could go to the last Pokémon Center and escape the tower.

I used Spite, thinking that if I reduced Follow Me’s PP, the Dusknoir would use Struggle and OHKO my Shaymin.

“The wild DUSKNOIR used Follow Me!”

“SINNER used Spite!”

“But there was no target...”

Dang it.

Deciding to experiment, I came to the conclusion that there was no harm in screwing around with SINNER’s attacks until DUSKNOIR ran out of PP. I chose Fly.

“The wild DUSKNOIR used Follow Me!”

“SINNER used Fly!”

“The wild DUSKNOIR used Follow Me!”

“SINNER kept going and crashed!”

Not the KO I was expecting, but I took it nonetheless.

The game, of course, crashed as soon as my Shaymin’s cry played, leaving nothing but pleasantly ear-grating screeching sounds.

I decided to take a break from playing for a moment to process what I just witnessed. I had a lot to digest.

The only conclusion I came to was that ghosts are real and this was the same Skye as the girl who died. Which would sound insane if I didn’t have the pictures to prove it.

I choked back tears. I was afraid. Why did Skye want me to see this?

I wanted to put the game down and be done with it. But if she had a message to give me, then I felt like I had to see it through to the end.

I guess I vainly hoped she’d pass on and find peace if I listened to what she was trying to say.

Another message when I started the game up again.

“I can’t fly. I tried to.”

I found myself at Spear Pillar. The staircase to the Hall of Origin was in front of me.

My exit was gone, so I just went straight to Arceus.

A level 100 Arceus stood before me.  

Instead of sending out my Shaymin, it stayed in the field. It was now bleeding. Its status said it was fainted, but it was still able to battle somehow.

I felt cornered. There was no way a level 14 Shaymin could take on something like this. I tried to use Fly, hoping it would give me the same result as before.

“Can’t use that here.”

It wouldn’t let me use the move. Instead, I just outright try to flee.

“Can’t escape!”

“ARCEUS used Judgment!”

I braced for impact...

“The wild ARCEUS’s attack missed!”

...But was pleasantly surprised to see it miss.

“I’m not ready yet.”

The game made me flee automatically.

The screen faded to black.

“I’m not ready. I’m not ready.”

“I’m scared.”

When the screen faded back to the overworld, I found myself in the Distortion World. The portal that takes you back to the main world was gone, so the only thing I could do was explore.

I found another Escape Rope while looking around.

It was the only thing noteworthy I could find, so I started trying to think of ways to get out of here.

I tried using Fly, since SINNER still knew it.

“There’s nowhere to fly to.”

Figures.

Trying to test my other options, I went to my bag and tried using the Escape Rope.

Of course, the “There’s a time and place for everything” message still appeared.

Deciding to mess around until I got results, I went to give the Escape Rope to SINNER.

“Don’t suppose you know what to do with this?” I muttered.

The game crashed again, and it assaulted my eardrums once more. I sharply inhaled, wondering if I touched a nerve.

I took a deep breath and started the game again.

My character’s name was now Skye.

I started in Floaroma Town. The first thing I did was rush to the Pokémon Center to check on my Pokémon in the PC. Of course, they were all gone.

I’d grieve for them later, though. Maybe Skye would be nice to me and give them back.

While I was in the center, I figured it might’ve been good to heal the faint status off of the Shaymin.

Sure it is. Glad you can tell when something is suffering, nurse.

Heading outside, I talked to the blonde NPC.

“You should always give flowers to someone who has passed away.”

“It’s rude not to.”

“You got the Gracidea!”

I was suddenly feeling very guilty for not leaving flowers before.

Wondering if I could fix the poor Shaymin in my party if I used the flower on her, I went to try it.

“It won’t have any effect.” 

Of course not.

The blonde NPC turned into my Shaymin. I spoke to her.

“That won’t help me.” 

Yeah, I thought not.

At a loss of ideas on what to do next, I absentmindedly made my way to Valley Windworks and walked around in the grass.

A wild Sky Forme Shaymin appeared.

I sent out Skye, of course.

I chose the fight option, and the battle continued without me selecting a move.

“The wild SHAYMIN used Reflect!”

“Skye’s rage is building!”

“Skye used Cut!”

“She hurt herself in her confusion!”

The Sky Form Shaymin was knocked out in one hit, despite the game telling me Skye had hurt herself.

Back on the overworld, I found the mangled parts of the Sky Forme Shaymin lying in the grass. I inspected them.

“Please put me back together.”

It gave me another prompt, and I chose yes.

The screen faded to black.

And then Skye appeared again in a black abyss, with Skymin ears and flower. My trainer was nowhere to be seen.

I checked my party to see that Skye had changed again. Her cry sounded like a distorted mix of Shaymin’s two forms.

I went back to the overworld and was unable to move. Instead, a dialogue box appeared.

“Can you hear me?”

"Thank you for caring about me.”

"I can fly now.”

“Because...”

“I love you.”

My heart skipped a beat. My hands began to shake.

“You must care about me too, right?”

“So... I’m going to stay with you.”

“I won’t leave, not without someone who loves me.”

“Will you fly away with me?”

My shaky hands went to say no. I didn’t want to be like her.

"...”

“I’ll wait for you.”

“I’ll change your mind.”

“You’re mine now.”

“You’re mine forever.”

With that last line, the game froze.

The first thing I did was take the game out of the system. I decided to drop off all my Pokémon games at the nearest GameStop. I didn’t want her talking to me anymore.

So why do I feel like she’s still here?

[pokemoncreepypasta]

My Shining Star

[STORY SOURCE]

Up until some recent events, I used to be an aspiring shiny hunter. Technically I was pretty good at it, too, at least by encounter standards. But even though I was great at finding my fair share of shiny Pokémon , I’ve never been able to keep any of them.

The first one of these shiny Pokémon I found was by a random encounter. I’d gotten lost in Rock Tunnel after forgetting to bring Flash, and spent so long in there that I ran out of Repels. Just as I was giving up hope that I’d be able to escape on my first run, she appeared.

I knew about shiny Pokémon, but hadn't ever thought I'd encounter one of my own in the wild. I was unprepared, and after a moment of staring in surreal wonder, I concentrated on figuring out how to catch her with my limited supplies. Thankfully it wasn't very hard, and soon I had my first legit shiny.

I normally wasn't creative with naming my Pokémon, but I wanted her to have a special name. I asked my mom for help, and she suggested "Star." I liked it, but the name itself seemed short and boring, so I added a couple stars to the ends to give her name a little flair.

I was beyond excited to put my first shiny into my team, and plowed through the rest of the cave. She was the light at the end of the tunnel, and I had to get out to the nearest PC, because I knew a shiny baby Cubone was waiting for me to adopt her.

I quickly fell in love with the little green dinosaur, and soon she was the shining star of my team. I used her more than my starter, and neglected the rest of my party a bit in the process, but still made it through the game alright. Setbacks didn't matter when I had a shiny.

Lots of time and multiple trips through the Elite Four later, I proudly turned ★Star★ into a level 100 Marowak. She was the first Pokémon I ever raised to level 100, and I couldn't have been prouder of her.

It had been a couple years, and I was starting to feel unsatisfied with just ★Star★. I was itching for more, and felt like I probably should have found some other random encounters by now, with all the time I'd spent playing.

Feeling inspired by all the shiny hunter videos I'd been binging on YouTube, I decided to start taking up shiny hunting. I was feeling ambitious, and decided to go straight to hunting for a shiny legendary Pokémon. I was a weird player who didn't really bother going after the birds or Mewtwo in my HeartGold, since I planned on transferring up my legends from my LeafGreen. I decided to rework ★Star★'s moveset for capturing legendary Pokémon.

The moveset I settled on was Bonemerang, False Swipe, Stone Edge, and Swords Dance. I decided to keep her moveset mostly offensive because she was still a member of my team, and not just a shiny-catcher. I planned on replacing False Swipe with Aerial Ace at some point, but I never got the chance to.

I decided to pick Mewtwo as my target. Lots of people find green shiny Pokémon overbearing and unattractive, but ★Star★ made me fond of them. Plush, Mewtwo was awesome, and I thought the two of them would look great together.

I spoke to ★Star★ aloud, saying, "Are you ready to do some shiny hunting, ★Star★?"

"★Star★ let out a roar!"

I thought she was just as enthusiastic as me.

I made it to Mewtwo, saved my game, and started the tedious process of soft resetting.

I’ll spare the details of how long it took, but eventually I came across the sparkling green Mewtwo.

I led with my team's Ampharos to paralyze it, and switched to ★Star★.

I remember being very lucky with this fight at first, with Mewtwo being fully paralyzed every turn.

I used Swords Dance to fully buff ★Star★'s attack stat so False Swipe would do as much damage as possible.

But even though I swore that I had chosen to use False Swipe, ★Star★ proceeded to use Bonemerang.

Shocked, confused and distressed, I watched as ★Star★ mercilessly beat the shiny Mewtwo down, knocking it out in one hit with her increased stats.

I felt crushed and dejected as I went back to the overworld. I blamed myself, thinking I had misclicked the wrong move and killed the Mewtwo myself. In my wave of disbelief, I absentmindedly talked to ★Star★.

"★Star★ is green with envy!"

I decided to go back to square one and start over.

A dozen thousand resets later, I saw it sparkle again and I was shaking with anticipation. Part of me felt twitchy and paranoid, like I should have used my Master Ball right away.

I decided against it because I wanted to hunt the birds later, but decided that if the Mewtwo seemed like it would run low on moves, then I'd use it as a last resort.

I probably should have listened to my guts though, because the same thing happened all over again. I knew for certain this time that I had chosen False Swipe, but the game purposefully made ★Star★ use Bonemerang. I saw it completely clear.

After seeing the Mewtwo go down a second time, I just cursed and slammed my desk a bit. I glared accusingly at my Marowak.

I decided to put my shiny hunting on hold. I used an Escape Rope to leave, and decided to place ★Star★ in the PC, quarantining her in an empty box for a time-out.

As I dejectedly hunted for a third time, I thought to myself what was wrong with my game. I wondered if it was just glitchy, or if I was misinterpreting the situation. I decided to convince myself that it was a mistake on the game's part; otherwise I wouldn't have been able to handle killing the Mewtwo twice in a row.

Finally, it sparkled one last time. I decided not to screw around while reclaiming this shiny. I had hunted it twice before, and decided to just use the Master Ball on it.

I had earned this.

After the initial rush of finally obtaining the shiny, I decided not to nickname it until I thought of something good, and watched as it got sent to the PC. I excitedly saved my game, and made my way out of the cave and to the nearest Pokémon Center.

But when I got there, the Mewtwo wasn't anywhere to be seen.

I shouted curses in confusion as I scrolled through every box in a state of denial. Where did it go, what could I have possibly done? I thought of all the ways I couldn't possibly messed up, did I have an evil hacked Pokémon from the GTS that deleted it, was this actually a bootleg game and Nintendo's anti-piracy revenge was to delete my legendary?

After a few minutes of searching, I gave up. My Mewtwo was gone.

I scrolled back to ★Star★'s isolated box and looked at my only green shiny in mourning. Obviously it wasn't something wrong with just her, but the game itself. In a game as glitchy as this, I was seriously worried that I might lose her, too.

After looking at her for a bit, it seemed like she might've been looking at me? I wasn't sure if she was supposed to do that, but in a game that was acting up like this, I didn't doubt it.

I took her out of the PC and put her at the front of my party to talk to her, to see if anything else was up.

"★Star★ nodded slowly."

She only did more random friendly things after that. Quite chipper for someone whose life might be threatened, I thought.

I decided to trade her over to Platinum for safe keeping. I wasn't sure what to do about the rest of my Pokémon on HeartGold, but ★Star★ was the most important one to me right now.

As I traded her over, I noticed that her eyes were red now, instead of the green I was just looking at. I was off-put by this inconsistency, especially with the recent events surrounding her. I forced myself to brush it off, however, notice I could do about it.

Even though I had an unfortunate experience with my HeartGold, my thirst for more shinies still persisted. Maybe it was the fact I had lost my shiny three times that I really had to fill the void, now.  A couple weeks later, I found out about a method of shiny hunting called chaining, and wanted to try it out. I felt a little more at ease, since if you accidentally killed a shiny with this method, the chain wouldn't break, and you could keep going. Plus, Platinum should've been fine.

I chose Route 208, as it had a good selection of Pokémon for me to choose from. I wasn't picky, so I just started chaining whatever Pokémon I liked until I got a decent chain. I heard that the shiny odds max out at a chain of 40, so after that you can just keep resetting the radar until the grass sparkles.

I landed on Roselia, and sent out my shining star Marowak.

I started with False Swipe, since I wouldn't need to buff up ★Star★ for a LV. 19 Pokémon.

"★Star★ used Swords Dance!"

Oh no.

I panicked as memories of the last incident came flooding back, and how it had started out with her disobeying. Not giving her a chance to kill it, I frantically switched to the items menu to start throwing PokéBalls instead.

(Name omitted for personal reasons.)

I had plenty of them, so I stared throwing Ultra Balls, since they had the highest odds. At least one of these would probably work.

" blocked the Ball!"

"Don't     !"

I tried throwing one, but it failed, as if I tried using it on a trainer's Pokémon.

I had no idea what in the world was going on, what could be stopping me from catching a wild Pokémon? Was my Platinum glitched out too? Was I cursed??

I tried using different balls, but nothing would work.

Eventually, I ran out of PokéBalls to throw. I'd failed the shiny.

Frustrated, but not enough to kill the Roselia, I fled the battle.

I had no idea what to do after that, and was exasperated. I wanted to berate myself, and that I should've tried test catching a normal Pokémon in Platinum first to make sure it was going to work okay. But really, how was I supposed to know that was going to happen? And always, conveniently when I was in the middle of hunting a shiny. I thought of berated my parents instead, if they had bought all my Pokémon games for me on eBay.

Was it really my games, thought? I don't even know if you can trade Pokémon from fake games. Was it my DS could it have been hacked? Can you even bootleg a DS? I tried going to the Internet for answers, and read some Reddit and random Pokémon forum posts about glitches and bootlegs for an hour, but gave up without finding a real conclusion.

So, I'd given up hunting for some time. But, I hadn't gotten tired of Pokémon. I bought Black for myself, and played through the story just fine.

I found out you could get a Shiny Charm if you completed the Pokédex. That made me excited, until I remembered my past luck. Was it worth trying again?

Shortly after transferring up all my Pokémon, I decided, yes. It was. I went for the hatching method this time, since the Pokémon ends up right in your party afterwards- no catching, no PC transfer. It would be my final test, and if THIS didn't work, I would officially give up on ever getting nice things.

Foreign Ditto in hand, I went to work. I went for a shiny Flygon, since they were one of the best looking, and it'd be a nice addition to my competitive team.

One long hunt and a really late night later, eyelids barely able to stay open, I saw it.

I'd never seen anything more beautiful.

Skipping the nickname, I rushed to immediately save my game, wasting no time. I checked my party to see my Trapinch was still there, and chalked it up as a success. I was an official shiny hunter now.

Since ★Star★ was level 100, I figured she could battle for my baby Trapinch until she could hold her own in battle. I only wanted to take her up a few levels, so I could personally train her afterwards. Just raising her immediately into a Flygon would be too soon.

I attached an Exp. Share to her, and started running around in the tall grass. After a little bit of grinding, my Trapinch made it up to level 8 before I accidentally stepped into the thick grass and triggered a wild double battle.

Knowing the wild Pokémon were too strong for the underleveled baby Trapinch, I wanted to flee, but I first noticed ★Star★'s sprite as it asked me what to do.

The end of her bone facing the wild Pokémon was no longer symmetrical, being sharpened at the end of it. I'd seen her sprite enough times to know it wasn't supposed to look like this.

I tried to flee, but it failed.

"★Star★ used Swords Dance!"

"The wild Pidove is watching carefully!" 

"The wild Patrat is watching carefully!" 

"Trapinch is watching carefully!" 

★Star★ had started using moves on her own. Stunned, I tried to switch out.

"★Star★ can't be switched out!"

Giving up, I told ★Star★ to use Stone Edge on the Pidove, and told the Trapinch to use Bite on Patrat.

"★Star★ ignored orders!" 

"★Star★ used Bonemerang!"

I gasped as she struck my Trapinch instead.

"★Star★ is green with envy!"

As soon as I read that text, it hit me. This wasn't any ordinary friendly fire.

"Trapinch fainted!"

It finally allowed me to run, so I immediately tapped the button and rushed to my party to see the damage.

My Trapinch was gone.

I tried resetting to bring her back, but it was hopeless. My shiny new baby had been murdered.

Connecting all the dots in my head, I realized the reason I'd failed every encounter was because of ★Star★.

My grief and fear quickly turned into outrage. I couldn't believe she'd done this to me. She'd made me suffer hunt after hunt, just to take every shiny away from me.

This was the source of my games acting strange, and I knew there was only one way to correct it.

Feeling rash, I rushed over to the PC and hovered over the "Release" option for a few minutes.

"★Star★ was released."

It hurt to let her go, but I didn't want my game behaving strangely with her around.

"★Star★ came back!"

"★Star★ will never leave you."

But she refused.

Resorting to desperate measures, I did the only other thing I could think of.

I traded the stubborn Marowak over to my nearly empty White version that I never got around to playing, and deleted the save file.

"Deleting all saved data... Don’t turn off the power."

"★Star★ will n"

Sayonara, ★Star★.

After deleting the save file, I thought things would start working like they should. Sometimes, I'd replay other Pokémon games just for the fun of it, hoping I'd find other shiny Pokémon with ★Star★ gone.

Almost comically, I somehow thought it would be a good idea to go full circle and try hunting on HeartGold for a shiny starter. I had heard from other shiny hunters that it was an easy hunt, and it was, only taking a few days.

I affectionately named him "Chico."

My first step into the tall grass, and...

"★Star★ is green with envy!"

I had never been so unhappy to see a shiny.

I guess she's been out in the wild all these months. And looking at her sprite, I can only wonder what she's been up to. I wonder how she feels to see me again?

Oh, no.

“Can’t escape!”

"★Star★ used Bonemerang!"

"Chico fainted!"

Of course, Chico was no match.

The game froze after I blacked out.

I figure it was because ★Star★ killed my only Pokémon.

"The save file is corrupted. The previous save file will be loaded."

My save file, corrupted with the loss of my starter's data, brought me back right to this spot that I was all too familiar with. Through frustrated tears, I begrudgingly went to pick a normal starter so I could play the game normally.

“I dare you to love again.”

And I’ve never found a shiny since.