TST 1 asdf tkelSDCW

TST 2 poi dview ERfeQE

Test run, can anyone read this? Whatever, I'll just assume you can.

Ahem.

To whoever reads this message, I hope you are an avid player of pokemon. Emphasis on avid, player, and pokemon. As in, pokemon the video game, and you are a skilled enough player of said game. Preferably, you (the reader of this note) is either a knowledgeable competitive battler or an experienced ROM hacker.

If you feel that you do not fulfill the criteria above, I recommend that you pass this note on to someone who does. Of course, even if you don't fulfill the criteria, feel free to read this note anyway, but I warn you in advance that what you read will most likely appear to be gibberish otherwise.

Anyway, now that the formalities are out of the way, it's time for me to tell you my story.

It all started with a simple trip to the nearest game store. I came in to sell some of my unused games and maybe buy some new ones when one of the clerks suddenly came up to me.

This particular clerk was an acquaintance of mine, he knew what I did in my spare time, so he made me an offer. He offered to give me a secondhand copy of pokemon black 2 for free.

I asked why; it seemed a little shady. All he said was that the game was broken and I would have more use for it than anyone else.

I asked him 'broken how?' and he told me that the data was corrupted. Hacked, was the word he used.

That piqued my interest. I haven't seen a hacked version of any of the generation 5 games at the time, so I was eager to take a shot at it. I'm sure there were plenty swimming somewhere online, but I was too lazy to search one out.

Timeskip further ahead to when I got back to my house.

The game by the way, was in cartridge form. So I could play it on my DS regularly.

I start the game.

Several minutes in and everything seemed normal.

The first sign of something being off was when I got to Bianca to pick out my starter. Her dialogue was off. Like, way off. I can't remember what it was she said exactly, but it sounded kinda ominous. I think it went,

"So you've come [PLAYER]. Do you want to go on another challenge? A path of conquest? To gather yet another army of fell beasts?"

Don't quote me on this, my memory's not the best. I just remember there being a lot of questions and some pretty prose-y wordplay. Some flowery insults were there too but I can't remember how they went.

Bianca was a major contrast compared to her original counterpart.

Next thing that was obviously not right were the starters.

(This is a pretty common thing in hacks. Rarely anyone ever uses the usual starters. But how they hacked this part of the game was especially mind-blowing in my opinion.)

Somehow, they managed to fit 16 choices of starters. One for every element bar dragon. I mean, they managed to perfectly mimic the 3D pokeballs of the starter menu choice and everything. Even re-structured the whole thing to make it look like all the pokeballs were looping upwards like a gigantic ferris-wheel.

It showed that this guy knew how to animate, to script, program etc. A lot of work for a simple hack.

I don't remember what each of the starters were, though I think they were all pretty sub-par. I just remember that I chose the poison starter, gulpin.

I don't particularly like gulpin, I just felt like using a poison pokemon as my starter.

From there on, the game's script was identical to the original, save for the random encounters. It was one of those typical 'able to catch all pokemon' hacks.

I got to around the second gym before my curiosity got the best of me. This game was pretty interesting, I couldn't resist the urge, I just had to tear it apart for the resources.

So I do just that. I whip out my card reader, put the game in, and proceed to very carefully crack the cartridge (not literally, I mean crack the cartridge's programming so I could read it with a computer).

Once that was done, I open one of my ROM altering programs.

I have several of those. One in particular was of my own creation, the result of cannibalizing several small-time pokemon hacking programs for resource/reference. Pretty proud of it actually, my pokemon ROM altering program. I uploaded it on mediafire, but I doubt anyone's ever run across it yet. It had a non-indicative name; 'ROLYGON Ver 1.3.1'

...Don't ask me why I called it ROLYGON.

ANYWAY, I tried opening the black 2 hack with ROLYGON and was surprised to find that it was not supported. As in, I couldn't open it.

That was a bummer, since it meant the guy never used the basic pokemon template to begin with, or he/she'd tampered with it to the point that it was unreadable. Plus the fact that I cracked the cartridge? That meant I couldn't run the game anymore. Not on my DS at least.

Ah well, I could still play the .nds game on an emulator I thought to myself.

Now this was where things got really weird.

I ran the thing on an emulator, and the game screen suddenly freaks out on me. Ever run terminal or command prompt? Yeah, the game screen suddenly looked like that. With a bunch of long lines moving too fast for me to read.

But after it was done running... whatever the hell it was running, the screen suddenly prompts a question.

I remember the question perfectly.

"BE DEAD? Y/N"

Obviously, I answered NO!

Shit was creepy enough as is.

But after I answered, the game screen tells me an error and another question gets prompted.

"BE REBORN? Y/N"

Once again, I say no.

Unfortunatle, the game yet again gives me an error message. But this time, the same question gets prompted.

"BE REBORN? Y/N"

A couple more times I say fucking no. But the thing was looping back, constantly asking me whether or not I would like to be reborn.

At some point I finally went fuck it and tried to just close the emulator window.

Surprise surprise, the game won't fucking let me. The window just won't close.

Figured this was an error, so I try to turn the power off.

Still didn't work.

I'd pull the plug on the power or something, but I was using a laptop. I'd also eject the battery, but the eject button's been jammed for ages. Taking out the battery would risk me never being able to put it back on ever again.

So finally, I fucking cave and answered Y.

And then... I died.

LOL J/K

I wouldn't be able to write this if I'd died lol.

Nah, I just got reborn.

Into a pokemon.

Yup.

...

Seriously, I'm like, a pokemon now.

I shit you not, I really did turn into a freaking pokemon!

And, believe it or not, that's the end of the story.

I'm not even sure if anyone's able to get their hands on this note. I gave this note to my mistress' kadabra after I heard a rumor that they could 'teleport through dimensions'.

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if this note got teleported to a desert in the middle of nowhere, but still totally in THIS dimension. The pokemon dimension, I mean.

So yeah. I guess that ends this note?

Moral of the story? Black 2 is shit, all the cool pokemon are on White 2.

PS. I now have a new appreciation for the existence of opposable thumbs. Or at least, fingers. I wish I still had fingers (;_;)

PSS. If the person who reads this is actually someone who lives in the pokemon world, please simply assume that this note was written by a nutjob with schizophrenia or something.

xxx

A/N: I'm doing rebirth fics now!

Cookie goes to anyone who can guess what the MC got turned into, HINT: he has no fingers.