Chapter 1

That morning I was pulled from my contented dreams into the land of the almost awake by the shrill ringing of my malicious alarm clock. I moved with the groggy uncertainty of an indecisive alcoholic as I stumbled from my bed to my closet and riffled through in search of something even remotely sanitary to wear to my classes that morning. But on par with every other nineteen year old student on campus I had nothing but a collection of petri dishes I insisted were still shirts, so as usual I pulled a clean shirt and pants from my roommates closet and staggered back towards my bed for my shoes.

The room we shared was split literally down the middle, a visible line separating the unrepenting filth of my room and the almost sterile clean of his. We lived very similar lives aside from our cleanliness habits. Same classes, same clubs, same friends, we were close friends who covered each others backs and tolerated the others cleaning obsession/phobia because we likely couldn't live with anyone else. I waded through the swamp of clothes and other crap with a practised ease, holding the clothes a good distance from the floor to avoid contamination.

For the first time that morning I caught sight of the clock and swore angrily, once again Matt had set my alarm back an hour in another attempt at getting me up earlier than was strictly necessary. Realising I had an hour to kill before class I abandoned my attempts at dressing, dumping his clean clothes on the floor to rot with the rest out of irritable spite, and reached underneath the mattress, removing my secret shame from its hiding place. Matt and many other people on campus agreed that pokémon was, and I quote 'pretty gay', and my love of the games had not been tolerated, I had already lost one DS to their inter-bloody-ventions so I had started hiding my DS and pokémon games much to their ignorant joy.

I unsuspectingly flicked the power switch lazily and rolled onto my back. Even as the start up screen rolled by I felt strange, the world seemed to return to that feeling of half asleep and out of focus. Then as the opening screen loaded I saw something different. The screen looked like this…

You have been selected

Load

[Endgame]

Amazed and somewhat worried I tried to switch the DS off, the power button flicked back and forth but the screen remained the same. My mind said to leave it, the power would run out eventually and it'd turn off, wouldn't it? But another part of me was curious. What was this Endgame? A virus? Some kind of special feature or Easter egg? Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined what would happen next, what the Endgame truly was. But maybe from the moment that I saw the words on the screen I was trapped, I doubt anything would have stopped what happened next.

I pressed the A button, and everything changed. The room swirled and fluctuated around me. It was reminiscent of the only time I had ever tried LSD, for a moment whilst laying there surrounded by entrancing colours and shapes I wondered if Matt had been right; had the fumes from my rubbish tip final formed some kind of super drug? Suddenly to my, vocalised, disappointment the colours faded into pitch black. I found myself standing and had no idea how it had happened, with no other choice I simply stood and stared into the blackness. Despite my brief experience of it I quickly decided this was too boring to be the effect of an LSD, however I didn't have to wait long; words suddenly appearing in the blackness.

"Humanity has been chosen, its crimes are many and its self destruction seems imminent."

The whole thing seemed so surreal, despite the insanity of it all I still found myself thinking the most mundane and inexplicable thoughts. My first; all that for a freaking hippie speech? Second; I'm gonna be late for class. And third; I should ask Jane out before Simon does. Then the words continued and the tangents disappeared from my mind, like tuning a radio; clearing the background noise and sharpening the sound.

"Humanity must prove it is strong enough to survive the trails to come and work together to survive."

There was a brief pause as I processed this, wondering what it all meant. The words continued however before I got a chance to come to any real conclusion short of the same super drug explanation I'd had before, of course if it was true this gave me a worrying insight into the messed up nature of my own psyche.

"So it will be tested, you and forty nine others have been chosen. Spread about the universe you use for your games with only the tools of that world to survive, find others, unite, and survive. Almost everything that isn't human will be your enemy, and if you fail humanity is doomed. Everything you know is at stake, it is time for humanity to face… The Endgame."

Before I could reply everything shifted, the words swirled and were sucked into the darkness like water down a drain. The same happening to the blackness revealing the swirling colours underneath. Finally the intertwining colours grew brighter and brighter burning into my eyes painfully, until total white filled every inch of my vision. Impenetrable and brutal. After that, I could remember nothing more.

I groaned as I woke up, surprisingly before my alarm clock. I thought about that insane dream I'd had last night, Endgame huh? I'd had some weird dreams before but nothing like that, I'm probably a psychiatrist's worst nightmare. Hah! Try and figure out the meaning behind that! I had never liked psychiatrists, I found the way they always acted like they were better than you incredibly aggravating. At my old high school you were required to visit the school psychiatrist once a year, I'd just make stuff up and eventually get sent to a real psychiatrist who I'd tell the truth to. I got three psychiatrists fired during my time at that high school.

Reaching out I felt for my alarm clock, I was fairly awake and I didn't need the damn thing doing off while I was having breakfast or something. I was surprised to discover I couldn't find it, or my side table, both those discoveries quickly led to the revelation that I wasn't lying in my room. I was lying on grass. Taking the default response to something this weird I sprung to my feet and swore loudly, glancing around so furiously my eyes darted back and forth for several seconds after I stopped.

I had no recollection of how I had got here, or where here was. I was in a small clearing in what appeared to be a forest, there were no forests for miles around campus. I stared amazed at the dense forest around me, as if I could make the trees transform into my bedroom with the sheer force of my will. Then unprepared I looked down at myself, and swore in amazement again. I was dressed almost exactly like the pokémon trainer character in pokémon red! Right down to the cap, which I threw away in disgust. I have always stood by my belief that caps were the stupidest part of the pokémon trainer's wardrobe, considering the weather was almost always sunny and mild they served no purpose what so ever. I didn't mention it very often as it was embarrassing to discover few cared. Most thought it was redundant, struggling to understand why I cared that much about something so trivial.

It was then that I had a brainwave, the guys on campus had found my pokémon games. It all seemed to click into place after that. Finding my pokémon games they had quickly planned another intervention, buying an Ash Ketchum costume or something similar they had decided to leave me in a forest and make me find my way back to civilisation. No doubt I was about a mile or so from a bar where they were waiting for me with drinks and self satisfied smirks.

Sighing I started walking in a random direction, sure I would find an nature trail or something on the way I started working out how much it would cost to replace all my games this time. Deciding to forget it I examined my costume, they had done a good job. It came with a pokéball belt, leather and faded, that even had six pokéballs clipped to it. I shrugged, I had to hand it to them they had gone all out on this one.

After a few minutes of walking I heard a rustling in a thick clump of bushes to my right, relieved to have found someone I ran over crying out for them to stop.

I charged headfirst through the bushes, stopped and was sent tumbling backwards. To my shame I actually screamed like a little girl when I saw what had landed almost silently on leather pads just a few inches from my prone form. At first I thought it was a puma or lioness that had escaped from a local zoo, staring at the gleaming knives that were its teeth and the piercing claws that dug into the soft earth with the feeble hope I could reason with a relatively tame beast.

As it paced around me, smiling with malicious glee as it saw I was completely at it mercy, I realised it was no ordinary puma. Its arched body and toothy smile all looked like any big cat you could see at a zoo, but the six thick whiskers and the medallion fused to its skull weren't normal. I realised that this creature was a Persian, or what a Persian would look like in the real world. This could no longer be a prank, had some demented millionaire grafted a medallion to a lioness's head in an attempt to make pokémon real? What in god's name was going on?

Terrified I scrambled backwards desperately as the Persian approached me. Its tongue slid over its lips as if tasting the fear that gripped me, the smile of a predator gracing its features. Scared, desperate and confused I tried flinging dirt at it. The Persian ignored the mild irritation and continued to advance slowly, savouring the new wave of terror on my face with each step. My hands shook and my heart pounded so ferociously in my chest it felt like it was tearing through my skin with each beat, my shaking hand grasped one of the pokéballs on my belt and I flung it at the advancing huntress. I don't know what I expected it to do, I was only hoping it would buy me so much as another measly second of existence.

Whatever I had hoped would happen I would never have expected what happened next, the pokéball snapping open, the flash of bright white light, and the sudden appearance of another creature in the clearing. I looked on amazed as an Arcanine stared down the Persian, its teeth gleaming as it snarled a primal challenge to the fellow hunter. But this Arcanine wasn't just any Arcanine, the black patch over one eye, the cracked canine and the floppy left ear that made its head look lopsided. This looked exactly like Blaze, my Arcanine! My Arcanine? I didn't have an Arcanine, well except of course in the pokémon games and my (admittedly bad) fanfics

I watched the fight with the dazed fascination that came with humanities natural attraction to the inexplicable, I already seemingly knew what was going to happen. Or more correctly what Blaze would do. Opening with Extreme Speed, his fur blurred and his claws tore earth from the ground as he ran. In one smooth motion he leapt his opponent, embers breaking away from his fur and trailing behind him as he arced over the Persian. As he attacked with Fire Fang, his teeth shining red hot, I realised that this Arcanine didn't just look like Blaze, it was Blaze! The way he fought seemed so familiar and I found myself mouthing the attacks before they came.

Blaze clamped his jaws around the Persian's leg, the flickering flames searing the limb and scorching away fur. The Persian retaliated by clawing at Blaze's face, leaving a few shallow gashes on his muzzle which were enough to make him let go. The pair separated before colliding once again, flames spewed left and right as the pair tumbled across the clearing grappling with each other. After a few moments of furious fighting the pair separated again, this time Blaze spat a brutal inferno at the Persian. The flames cleaved the clearing in two, I lay dazed on one side of the searing inferno while the Persian dived towards the other side in order to avoid it. Even as the flames died away Blaze was moving, he dashed through the flames and erupted from the dwindling blaze to the accompaniment of an earth-shattering roar. The graceful yet brutal beast tackled the Persian to the ground. Then with such unbelievable ease its vice like jaws closed around the Persian's neck, and he tore the huntress's neck out.

The blood sprayed everywhere, Blaze had torn in my direction so the spray of blood that ensued drenched me completely. Blaze trotted over to me incredibly satisfied with himself, the Persian's blood still dribbling down his neck. As he approached I saw his throat convulse as he swallowed the Persian's flesh. I wiped the blood away from my eyes and stood, I glanced around and saw; a corpse, the creature that had killed it, myself covered in blood, and they were both pokémon to boot.

"I don't think we're in fucking Kansas anymore Blaze"

Since Shadow Virus i had a few false starts when it came to writing new fics, however as Shadow Virus captivated my every thought two years ago so to does this fic today. i've promised myself i'm gonna see this one through to the best of my abilities. i hope you will all enjoy reading this as much as i enjoy writing it.