Safety Last

I always loved the Pokémon Gardevoir- it's one of my top ten favourites, to be honest. No matter what generation, from gen 3 to gen 6 and beyond, a Gardevoir- shiny or not- was always on my team. Though, I made this mistake only once, I never did this again. What am I talking about you ask? Well, I'll tell you now. It was a warm summers' eve, the frogs were going mad in the swamp I neighboured, and the fireflies were absolutely aglow. I scrolled endlessly on my tablet from boredom. "Ugh," I sighed, "Why isn't anyone on?!" I put away my tablet and started searching for things to do. Board games? Nope. TV gaming? Nah, too hot for that. Then I found something. It was a red Gameboy Advance, with a Pokémon Emerald cartridge inside it already. All of my memories of beating the elite 4 came flooding back. "Oh, I remember this," I said, talking to myself like a weirdo. I didn't think twice, or once even, and booted up the game. The in-game cutscene didn't play or even show. Rather, just the words Pokémon Emerald Version flashed on-screen. I just passed it off as a bug, punched the start button and selected my file.

My character was named MAY, just like I remembered. When the overworld loaded, it wasn't how I remembered it. I was in Littleroot, but it was covered in a red fog and I was in front of MAY's house. "Weird," I said, "I saved in the Battle Frontier, didn't I?" I thought about it for a few moments and shrugged it off as my memory failing once again. I checked my party Pokémon and my team was still intact, A level 87 Swampert named SWAMPY, a level 50 Latios with no nickname, a level 12 Trapinch named FLY, a level 30 Banette named CURSED, and a level 100 Mew. Wait, what? Mew? I never used a cheating device on a raw cartridge in fear of breaking my game. I looked for my Gardevoir but it was nowhere in sight. I started to become scared and thought about what could have happened to my sweet Gardevoir. I explored the odd town of Littleroot a bit. The NPCs wouldn't talk to me no matter how many times I spammed the A button, and if I tried to boot up the computer in my character's house, a text box would appear saying "R..........U...........N.........." I tried to leave the town, but my character would back away from the only exit from this messed up town. "oh come ON," I said, losing my patience, "just leave the town!" when I said that, as if the game heard me, a text box expanded.

"GRACE wants you to stay!" I was confused. My Gardevoir wasn't even in my party and I didn't see a sprite in front of my character. The Gardevoir cry, distorted and deep sounding, played out and a battle started. My trainer sprite came into view and a red and black hued Gardevoir sprite came into view. Its pinkish-red horn had blood dripping from it and its eye, the only one visible on its sprite, was jet black with a small blue pupil. I was shocked by its mangled and mamed sprite. "GRACE wants you to stay! GRACE isn't going to be alone anymore!" Alone? I knew Pokémon were beings themselves and social creatures but I didn't think that they would bear loneliness. I was forced to send out my Swampert, but it didn't bring up the text box saying "what will SWAMPY do?" the box instead read "How will you apologize?" There were 4 options: RUN, HIDE, BAIT, ROCK. Wondering where the mistake comes in? Well, I'm glad you waited this long because here it is, due to my fidgety and twitchy hands I chose ROCK. I watched regretfully as a rock was chucked at my once beautiful Gardevoir.

The game suddenly crashed and the screen went black. "Huh? What happened?" Sparks flew from the game and a hand broke through the screen. I dropped it and ran for my life, for I had seen one horror film too many and knew what I was in for. I tripped and fell onto the wooden floor that was once below me hard, becoming temporarily paralyzed by the impact. "Ow...That smarts!" I took a look behind me and became scared, for behind me was my Gardevoir, terribly bloodied and looked evil. "You left me....for exactly 11 years, Izzy!" she screamed, "and now, you will rot in HELL for it!"