((THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU ANNOY ME CONSTANTLY TO WRITE A FULL STORY
HORRIBLE THINGS HAPPEN TO SATORI
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH))
I don't really know why I'm doing this.
I guess I really have been spending too much time on the internet. Is this really what humans find acceptable forms of entertainment? Reading tales like this?
Then I'll give you one piece of advice; beware of blank cartridges.
It was about a couple of months ago that this whole fiasco started. You see at some point earlier, Miss Houraisan had (somewhat regrettably) managed to hook me on a series of video games from the Outside, Pocket Monsters. I admit it wasn't exactly a difficult match, though; the game was certainly relative to my interests. It was fun, too, and I whiled away many an hour with it while Rin and Utusho were out at their respective duties.
One day, though, I found a package at my door.
It hadn't any return address, and I hadn't heard anyone come by to drop it off; nary a thought had come into my range of hearing. I asked Hoshiguma whether she'd seen anyone, and both her answers were no; this, paired with the elegant script my name and address had been written in, immediately turned my thoughts to that of Yakumo. And how couldn't they? A package with no sender, or at least an invisible one?
However, what I found when I opened it, turned my thought quicker to my newfound Lunarian acquaintance.
A translucent pink game cartridge, fit for a Gameboy, with a blank green sticker on the front of it. I certainly found it odd, but it didn't look particularly out of the ordinary, I thought. So I popped it into the bottom of my DS Lite (coral pink in color—Kaguya really did look proud of herself when she presented it to me) and switched it on.
A blank title screen is what showed, with pink flame curling up from the bottom of the screen. Rather reminiscent of FireRed. I wondered why the colors had changed, briefly, before pressing the A button and continuing on with my mini-investigation.
I'm not entirely sure it is possible to describe my sheer surprise when in the midst of the professor's explanation, a very small version of Reimu popped out of the Pokeball in the old man's hand, grinning with two talismans in each of her hands. Looking back at the decision I made right then, I most certainly regret it; because right then and there I assumed Kaguya had merely played around with this game on a whim, something to do in an afternoon, and posted me her results.
Shaking off my initial surprise, I continued through the beginning parts of the game, naming my character, as always, HITOMI—the pseudonym I usually used to publish my works aboveground, but I also found it fitting for my player characters, a projection of myself into something else entirely.
The game began in New Bark Town—it seemed to be mostly modeled off of the new Johto games, HeartGold and SoulSilver. The beginning seemed normal enough. My 'mother' still gave me a phone I never intended to use, 'Ethan' still found a way to chat with me with his now-small-Nitori, and my soon-to-be rival was still peering into the side window of the lab (and yes, he still kicked me out of his way). The only strange thing I could find in that beginning moment was that, inside Elm's Pokemon (or now, Boneka, I suppose that's what they were called) Lab, there was only one Pokeball sitting on the table, in the very center. After the obligatory sending me off to collect Mr. Boneka's Egg, I was allowed to thoroughly inspect the ball on the table, which sent me my second, but far lesser, surprise of the evening.
It was a 'Boneka' of my little sister, Koishi. A 'CKoishi', to be exact, and of course it didn't give me the option to refuse taking it (although there really was no way I wouldn't!). To say it was love at first sight was a bit of an understatement—I found it utterly adorable and even nicknamed it, an oddity for most of my Pokemon adventures. KOI-CHAN seemed to have a Quirky nature (neutral, as was expected), and strangely, the third eye on her sprite seemed to be open rather than closed (not that I was complaining). She also had some odd starting moves, certainly nothing I'd seen before in Pokemon… although I suppose this certainly wasn't Pokemon anymore. It was… something completely else.
The feature I loved most about this new acquirement of mine was that my little KOI-CHAN followed my character about everywhere. I know it sounds just like the walking mechanic in HeartGold and SoulSilver, but it was different, very different, almost more like the classic Yellow. Only KOI-CHAN ever would follow me, and from any position in my party—and when I turned about and clicked A on her, I would be presented with the option to talk to her, praise her, or scold her (not that I once ever brought myself to do the latter!). I found also that her nature seemed to change depending on what I did with her and what happened in the game— for example, her nature changed to Nervous when we went to that wildly swinging Bell Tower, and it wouldn't change back to a positive one until I'd managed to calm her down.
Of course, I can't forget to mention my rival, now, can I? He was still as rude and as obsessed with powerful Boneka as ever, and I might mention that as my starter was KOI-CHAN, he apparently got his hands on a CSatori! Of course, I couldn't possibly have thought that I would be the sole immunity to having a double of myself in this game, but it was still rather a shock. 'I' seemed to have no type resistance to my little KOI-CHAN, and neither did she seem to have a type advantage; it seemed to be a purely aesthetic choice. Nonetheless, I managed at least for the first few hours of the game to put it firmly out of my mind, named my rival HOUJUU as always, and focused on defeating the Gym Leaders one by one, who seemed to be the same as they always were. Falkner, Bugsy, Whitney, even Morty passed without incident, and this I chalk up to the enormous level gain required to initially evolve Boneka. Past that, every last one was a changeable 'stone' evolution; Attack version, Speed version, etc.
And so I was blissfully unaware of anything about to happen until I had progressed far enough through the game to decide, once and for all, that it was a harmless reboot, made for fun.
My rival, of course, approached me whilst storming out of the Olivine City gym, muttering something about how Jasmine should just let some DWriggle at the top of the lighthouse die if it wasn't strong enough to fight off its sickness by itself. By this point I was familiar enough with the sheer offensiveness of my rival to chuckle at the firefly joke rather than feel like, oh, wringing his neck (although I do confess the wish was still there, just a tad less strongly than usual. For some reason, a rival battle initiated, which I knew usually didn't occur there. I didn't think much of it.
When that TSatori flashed out of the Pokeball, I started thinking a little more of it.
I must have stared at the thing for 20 minutes before I could recall that I had to press A to go forward in battle. I'm sure I wasn't the only person who would be… dissatisfied, to say the least, with an 'evolution' of theirs—I recall seeing a few other Gensokyans rendered in-game as something rather strange and somewhat unnerving.
KOI-CHAN wasn't at the front of my party at the moment, as I had needed to let some other members of my party see some level gain, too! And seeing as she hardly had an advantage against it, I saw little reason to bring her out, until the blasted Technical started bringing down… well… everyone I tried to use against it. I had to admit, my rival's AI was a bit better than I strictly remembered it being (namely, using any old random move), and so decided to bring out KOI-CHAN and teach him a lesson in humility. But the instant my little partner saw the light of day, my rival's tactic suddenly changed again, with two little moves that, I suppose, was really the starting point of everything very wrong with this game.
-Rival's TSATORI used DESTINY BOND!-
-Rival's TSATORI used SELFDESTRUCT!-
I really only could stare at the screen as I saw the combo take place.
There was no Pokemon that could learn that combination of moves, at least legitimately—I guess that's why I didn't see it coming. But I could have sworn I saw it use three other moves against my other Boneka that most certainly weren't either of those moves.
But, it seemed to be a viable combination, despite the eerie, 'suicide-bomber' vibe it gave off. KOI-CHAN was my last Boneka at that point, and HITOMI blacked out, handing 711 'Bone-yen' to HOUJUU and running off to the Boneka Center.
As with all rival battles, this one was steadfastly recurring. I checked out the TSatori's type in my Artbook (Heart/Dark—thanks for asking, as if I wasn't worried enough by this evolution), trained a bit more, and headed back down to Olivine to try my hand at this encounter again. Unfortunately, KOI-CHAN was still the first in my party; I guess I forgot to switch her back a bit farther behind before I charged into battle once more.
-Rival's TSATORI used DESTINY BOND!-
What?
-Rival's TSATORI used SELFDESTRUCT!-
Again?
And for the second time in a row, my cute little partner fell prey to the same suicide bombing tactic.
I blinked at the screen a few times. That hardly made any sense from a tactical standpoint; the TSatori was, ostensibly, his most powerful Boneka. In fact, none of his others had evolved even once yet. The rest of his team was an easy mop-up from there. It made little sense from any logical standpoint, actually.
Unless, for some reason, the Technical held some sort of grudge against KOI-CHAN.
But that was ridiculous, wasn't it?
I decided it was, at that point. It was just an unlucky series of events—obviously it was a programmed tactic that just happened to come up on KOI-CHAN twice in a row. It happened. Nothing out of the ordinary, really.
Until, of course, it happened again.
The next rival battle I had with him, KOI-CHAN was in the fifth slot in my party, and his TSatori wasn't the first one out. So I switched around as usual, finding type advantages, and one of his Boneka was weak to KOI-CHAN's type, so I naturally switched her in.
-HOUJUU withdrew his Boneka!-
Hm?
-HOUJUU sent out TSATORI!-
… strange, but withdrawing Boneka isn't that uncommon, even for AI—
-Rival's TSATORI used DESTINY BOND!-
Oh—
-Rival's TSATORI used SELFDESTRUCT!-
Oh you have got to be kidding me.
And as it went, my rival switched out his Boneka for the sole purpose of bombing poor KOI-CHAN not one turn after she was switched in. I simply could not believe it. In fact, having saved before the battle, I switched my game on and off, rearranged my party and re-entered battle. This time I switched KOI-CHAN in against a Boneka of his she was weak against (I remember reassuring her it was just for a turn, just to see what my rival made of it), and the same damn thing happened. Switch in TSatori, Destiny Bond, Selfdestruct. Every single time KOI-CHAN came into battle, regardless of who or what she was facing, the TSatori came in.
Very, very simply put, it was beginning to piss me off.
I admit it fully, if this bundle of pixels on a screen had a grudge against mine, I was very quickly accumulating a grudge against it. I was very attached to KOI-CHAN. The walk-and-talk mechanic had worked wonders, and I really felt a bond with this little bit of code. We took a walk on the town after every defeat until she was confident of herself again; I'd take her out to Goldenrod and buy her some vending machine treats whenever we defeated a Gym Leader, no matter where we were currently on the map. I made it my goal that my cute little partner Boneka was as happy as she could possibly be all the time, and constantly being blown up seemed to not only be shaking me, but her as well—I constantly saw her displaying NERVOUS behavior before any one of the suddenly more numerous rival battles occurred, and it took an awful lot of encouragement from me before she would calm down… only to be taken down in the exact same manner by that thrice-damned Technical Satori. It just didn't come out for any of my other Boneka, and when we'd battled through all its reinforcements, it downed all my other Boneka one by one, almost effortlessly until I was forced to switch in KOI-CHAN. And color me surprised, it went the same way as always. It seemed the only strategy to beat my rival now was to voluntarily let KOI-CHAN faint first, so the Technical would be out of the way as well.
That didn't sit right with me, not by a long shot.
I was done. I was so very, very done with this TSatori. I was going to defeat it with Boneka-inflicted damage and I was going to defeat it with KOI-CHAN, as goddesses were my witness.
So although it went against the moveset I was planning for my little pride and joy, I let her forget two mostly inconsequential moves and learn both Protect and a Faith-type move, the only type that seemed super-effective against both Heart and Dark types. I gave her a Quick Claw, buffed her levels a bit, and searched for my rival.
It wasn't a long search; in this game he seemed to be just about everywhere. I defeated his first Chibi and sent in KOI-CHAN.
I had her use a self-boosting move while the TSatori took the bait and switched into battle. Protect was next, deflecting the Destiny Bond move that would have otherwise sealed her fate; and finally a Quick Claw aided Faith-type move.
What I remember most clearly about the following events was the low, hate-filled growl that rose from my throat. In fact, it might have been the thing I was most worried about, if not for what happened next.
"Don't you dare touch my little sister!"
And I swear as my third eye sees, the sprite of the TSatori blanched.
Its visible eye widened as my KOI-CHAN let out a cry that sounded just a little too distorted for my liking—and a red slash went across the entire screen, blossoming out until the entirety of the upper screen was the same dark red.
And then the game switched itself off.