Lovingly remade for Pokemon's twentieth anniversary, here's an updated version of a fic I wrote almost exactly ten years ago! Shout-outs to past me for being a stud, and to Game Freak for forgetting to properly code Cinnabar Island.
glitch
(a mistake)
Start at Pallet Town and head due south at an easy pace, and within the day you'll find yourself at Cinnabar Island, the fiery town of burning desire. No need to build roads or bridges when a Pokemon will take you there just fine. Its people are kind to outsiders, open and jovial; but there's always a bit of edge in their voices, and they do not like to talk about the burned-out mansion or the earth below their feet.
Such misgivings about the state of the dormant volcano the town was built on or the creature that killed a whole team of scientists in its escape seem paltry in comparison to the thing that stands before her now.
Shit, she thinks, and there's not anger but fear in her mind. This isn't right.
In her pocket, her Pokedex beeps; she holds it up, hoping against hopelessness that this is some kind of stupid trick stirred up by some Ghost-type, but it pulls up Rhydon's entry, gives off a single horrible off-key note, and crashes.
I woke up in the Viridian City Pokemon Centre, she thinks, stashing the Pokedex back in her pocket. The Sylph Scope gives nothing either. Prepping to fight the Elite Four. Thought we'd take the afternoon off. Ran into that old man - let him show me how to catch a Weedle, whatever - flew here, lost my Rainbow Badge in the shallows, started surfing up and down looking for it -
It turns (turns?) and looks (looks?) towards her. Burbles a sound that sounds like a Nidoran drowning. She'd been heading up and down the east coast of Cinnabar Island trying to find that stupid badge when suddenly there had been this great wave of white noise, and something had risen out of the water.
She blinks a few times, bites the inside of her cheek. That one had gotten her out of a nightmare in the belly of the Lavender Tower; this clearly isn't a ghost. It's a tower of static and stray pixels, a translucent horror that whirrs as it rolls (rolls?) towards her.
"Sir," she says, holding her hands up. When all else fails, politeness sometimes works. At least it had gotten her away from a pissed-off Onix when she was lost and near wit's end in the Rock Tunnel. "Sir, I -"
01000110010010010100011101001000010101000010000001010000010010110100110101001110001000000100100101010100010001010100110100100000010100100101010101001110 it says, its voice crowded and hollow.
"-Right, of course," she mumbles. She looks to her right. Lapras is still there, thank heavens, and it looks to her with - fear? reverence? impatience?
come gsvr ,r pm ;smd , it says. an error in the code! an error in the cOdE! qgR;A yoUR NaMe?
"My name -"
dark one
"I -"
missing no.
Enough is enough. She reaches to her side, for Lapras' Pokeball. She's getting out of here, heading straight for Pallet Town -
It sees the ball in her hand and lets loose a scream, something like that magnificent thunderbird she'd glimpsed in the Cerulean Power Plant, and she throws the ball down. Lapras returns; she holds her hands back up, to show no thing.
Another wave of static. An actual wave - it rises from its left, where no wave should be rising, and swallows the thing whole. In an instant it's gone. She falls to her knees in seawater, staring at where it once was; heaves, vomits, stares, repeats, until she's spitting blood and the sun is threatening to set but it still has not returned.
Tomorrow there will be nightmares and a curiosity involving an Ultra Ball that always replaces itself, but until tomorrow comes there is only the place where the sea meets the island, and the lingering thought that she had just caught sight of a mistake, something that lived behind the veil.