Lying in a pile of dust at least four inches thick, at the very bottom of a bottom drawer, buried under dozens of socks and forgotten souvenirs, was an old Pokemon Ruby Gameboy Advance cartridge. Contained within the forgotten cartridge were three Pokemon. They were nothing but data, statistics and numbers, but they were still somehow alive.
The three pocket monsters existed in an endless, empty void; no up, no down, no left, no right, no light, no darkness. Nothing. They always existed in this void when their game wasn't being played. And their game hadn't been played for quite some time.
"I think I hear something!" Rory the Blaziken said as he strained to hear for sounds outside of the void. The whole of their reality shifted forward several centimetres.
"He just opened the drawer!" Rory said; the sheer excitement evident in his voice.
"He's just getting a pair of socks, Rory." Pete the Slaking said. "Y'know? Like he does every single day."
"You don't know that!" Rory retorted as he continued to strain for noises.
Pete turned to Dusty the Dustox, "Help me out here, would ya?"
"Oh, he always gets like this." Dusty whispered to Pete. "There's no convincing him otherwise. Best just to leave him to his own devices."
The whole of reality slide backwards into its previous location. Rory looked crest-fallen but immediately regained his optimism, "Tomorrow. Tomorrow he will definitely play with us again. You'll see."
Pete and Dusty exchanged a knowing look.
Rory caught their expressions, "What? What is it?"
"You tell him." Pete said to Dusty.
"No, Pete! We both agreed yesterday that we would both tell him!"
"Tell me what?" Rory's irritation was beginning to show.
"Well," Dusty fluttered towards him nervously, "Do you know what today is?"
"You know as well as I do that we have no idea. The internal clock clonked out years ago!"
"Well, as you know, I have a perfect memory. I always have."
"She does have a Quirky Nature, after all." Pete added.
"Thank you, Pete. So today, well today…."
"What?" Rory said, starting to become very exacerbated with his friends now.
"Five years. It's been five years since we were played with."
"That doesn't mean anything!" Rory yelled. "I haven't heard him watch Star Wars in a while! That doesn't mean he doesn't like it anymore! The same applies to us!"
"The last time he watched Star Wars was eight months ago." Dusty said.
"Not quite the same as five years." Pete grumbled.
"So you've given up hope, is that it?" Rory crossed his arms, "Well, I never thought my two best friends in the whole of Hoenn would give up that easily! Did we give up when I had a type disadvantage against Roxanne? No! Did we give up when Norman kept kicking our asses? No! Did we give up when we fought the Elite Four and the Champion? Of course not!"
"If he loves us so very much," Pete spoke the last five words with bitter sarcasm, "Then why didn't he transfer us over to Pearl?"
"Because he wanted to keep his three favourite Pokemon in his favourite Pokemon game!"
"Rory," Dusty spoke gently, "That may have been true at the time, but after so many years I think he's forgotten about us."
"I kept in contact with Amelia." Rory said, "Remember her? The Tentacruel? She said that as soon as she was transferred over to Pearl she was just stuck in a PC box in-between an annoying Dewgong and an obnoxious Vapoureon. Is that really what you would have wanted?"
"It would have been better than this." Pete muttered.
Rory continued as if he hadn't heard Pete; "And the last I heard, she was being transferred over to Black. And the same fate probably awaits her there. In fact, it may have happened all ready. I haven't heard from her in a while."
"Great." Pete said. "So I guess we can add Amelia to the list of people who have forgotten us. Sparky and Groundon said they'd stay in touch. They never did."
"Shut up!" Rory shouted, "Just shut up! Their messages aren't coming through, that's all!"
"Rory, there's something else." Dusty managed to stop a potential argument, although her voice stayed gentle. "The dust. We've been lying in dust for years now and well…"
"The internal clock's gone." Pete said quietly, "It's only a matter of time until we disappear as well. And even if the dust doesn't get us, he'll probably throw us out eventually. I mean, that new-fangled 3DS of his doesn't even play old games like our's."
Rory slowly uncrossed his arms and stared at his best friends, "What are you saying?"
"We're saying," Dusty began, "We're saying…"
Pete cut her off; "We're saying that we have three options. Stay here for who knows how long until the dust gets us, rot for all of eternity in some hellish landfill, or we can move on."
At that moment, a doorway-shaped hole appeared in the void. The light radiating from it was both beautiful and terrifying.
"It's the Deletion Matrix." Dusty explained, "It's where all deleted items in the game world go. Every used potion, every eaten berry, every released Pokemon. Except…"
Pete finished her sentence for her again; "Except as soon as we go in there, we'll stop being conscious. We'll just become streams of data. Everything about us will be lost."
"Then why the hell do you want to go?" Rory said in disbelief.
"We had our time." Dusty said. "We had all of those great times with him. Our trainer. Every flawless victory, every embarrassing defeat. I remember it all. But everything has its time and everything has its place. This may not be a perfect end, but it's still an end."
Dusty and Pete walked towards the blinding light.
"Time to die." Pete whispered. He turned around to face Rory, "You coming?"
"No. You two can go if you really want but I'm staying here. I'm waiting for our Trainer."
"For how long?"
"For as long as it takes."
Pete turned back to the light.
"Allons-y." He said as he stepped through the doorway. He seemed to disintegrate into millions of data streams. As he was disintegrating he let out one last mighty roar. Something he hadn't done for so, so long.
Dusty took one last glance back at Rory.
"Don't forget us." She said as she started to choke up.
"Don't worry." Rory said. "I won't add to your list"
Dusty smiled at him for one last time before she advanced into the abyss.
As the blinding light engulfed and disintegrated her, Dusty remembered absolute everything. Being caught as a level three Wurmple on Route 101. Evolving into a Cascoon. Helping to defeat Brawly. Evolving into a Dustox. Feeling useless in both the Fire and the Flying-type Gyms. All of those battles over the link cable. Challenging the Elite Four. Every single second of half a decade of darkness.
And then there was nothing.
The doorway seemed to disappear as abruptly as it had appeared. Rory looked around the endless expanse of the void and he waited.
He waited for so long.