A Constant Whirring Sound

(Hey, everyone! This is my first ever Pokepasta, so it's probably not very good. But i'm hoping to get better at writing them as I go! This one's kind of a mess because I wasn't sure what I was doing, and it doesn't make much sense… I may or may not have just thrown on every idea I had.)

As much as I hate to share this, I feel like I don't have a choice anymore. If I don't tell it now, I won't ever have a chance. Maybe i'm a moron for having played that game, or maybe this would have happened anyway… But I've made some terrible mistakes, and I can't just sit and hope they'll go away.

Of course, I should clarify first. This… whatever it is, it started when I first bought a Pokemon game, Diamond to be exact. I've been kind of a long-time Pokemon fan, but I hadn't played any of the games from the fourth generation. It was a pretty trustworthy store, the game was brand new, still in the plastic wrapping. Everything was fine when I took it home, up until I popped it into the rather beaten-up DS I had.

Really, I should have known it was a warning sign when the game already had a save file. That couldn't be right, it was still in the wrapping when I got it! Unless, of course, they repackaged it. I was beginning to feel a little scammed, though nothing like this had ever happened to me before.

But swallowing my anger, I decided to check the file. The character was just named "Start", and had a zero for every stat, and upon loading the file, I was just right at the beginning of the game, in the middle of the main character's house. Start was a pretty accurate name.

This, though, was around the point when the awful whirring started. It's… it was like a high-pitched power drill, though the sound was very faint. It was just a little annoying at the time, but I had shrugged it off as the speakers starting to break - the DS had been dropped on the ground one too many times before this.

I didn't find anything interesting in Start's save file, and just deleted it to make my own, going with the simple name of "Diamond". The game had started and progressed as normal, albeit with the faint whirr in the background all the while. I chose a Piplup, naming him Droplet.

However, something odd happened as my rival, Barry, had the first battle of the game with me. Each turn, a little text box of some sort would say something about Droplet, despite how irrelevant it was to the battle.

"Droplet is muttering to itself!" "Droplet is hopping around with excitement!" "Droplet stuck its tongue out playfully!"

This confused me, as it had nothing to do with the battle and I hadn't heard of any such feature being implemented in Diamond. But it wasn't too annoying, and admittedly, it was even kind of cute. I just took it to be a feature of the game that I wasn't told about, and finished the battle. Barry's defeat dialogue, however, was strangely unnerving to me.

"Hey, are you alright?"

That's all it was. Just that simple, innocent question. I'm not sure why it bothered me so much, but upon reading it I just felt horribly uncomfortable, the whirr seemingly amplified a thousand times in my head as I read it. It was rather odd for him to ask right after losing, and from what I had seen of him, it didn't seem like something he'd ask out of the blue. It didn't let me answer his question, however, as the game went on as normal, with me spotting nothing else particularly odd.

As I played through the game, Droplet followed behind me, his friendly face reassuring. I was told that there was a generation four game where a Pokemon followed behind you, so I guess I just assumed it was this one, and thought it was normal.

I'm not sure how long I played. I had gotten the whole way to Celestic Town, but I felt like I needed to take a break. Droplet was now an Empoleon, his mid-battle messages more serious and mature, but it felt natural to the game at this point. Any other Pokemon I used had little mid-battle messages as well, though Droplet's were naturally the friendliest. But I felt like I needed to take a break, because I was now realizing just how tired I was.

That's when I noticed the blood dripping down the buttons on my DS. Honestly, i'm surprised the thing didn't short out. At first, my fingers felt entirely numb, though they bleeding and covered in blisters. In fact, my whole body was numb. But as the blissful numbness went away, I was in agony. It wasn't just my fingers that were hurting, but my eyes too, feeling terribly dry. I had a pounding headache, and the whirr of the DS just kept on going, seeming more like a terrible screech that kept on ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing...

Despite my pain, I forced myself to get away from the now blood-covered DS and head downstairs to bandage my injured fingers. My vision was horribly blurred, but even then I could tell it was some time in the afternoon. I had started playing yesterday evening. Wrapping my fingers in gauze, my mind barely registered that it may have been a better idea to call 911, but I was too tired to care. It didn't help that my thoughts were muddled by the persistent whirr, still going despite my distance from the game.

I felt sick to my stomach, painfully staggering back up to my room to go to sleep. Yet, reaching over to my DS to shut it and put it away, I saw a text box pop up on the screen.

"Droplet wants to know if you're alright."

I just closed the DS, pushing the system away and getting into bed, wanting to just sleep forever. I guess I went to sleep so easily from the exhaustion, because otherwise I would've never been able to sleep through the whirring sound. It was a lot fainter now, but it was still there. It was definitely still there.

I certainly slept for a while, and while I was still very sore when I woke up, I felt far better. The whirr only lingered in the back of my mind as I went about my day as normally as I could, though my thoughts kept drifting back to the game every so often, usually accompanied with a sudden mild headache.

Sometime later, most likely late evening(I didn't check), I found myself heading back to my room and opening the game again. It wasn't the brightest idea - well, actually, it was downright stupid - but I felt compelled to keep going. I wasn't even sure why, at least not consciously. I don't even remember having cleaned the blood off the DS, but it wasn't there when I opened it.

"Droplet is getting worried about you."

Another message on the screen. The little overworld sprite of Droplet seemed sincerely sad, as sad as such a sprite could look. I felt tempted to talk to the game, and tell Droplet I was okay. But it was just a game, it couldn't hear me. Besides, if I said I was okay, i'd be lying. Even my in-game sprite didn't seem okay, with the trainer looking incredibly pale. As I began to move in the game, I noticed I was going incredibly slow, decreasing in speed more and more.

"Droplet is very worried."

The screen was darkening now, the whirr getting loud and grating and so painful and so so sos so so so s oso sosos sosos sos o LOUD. I was slightly noticing how hard I was pushing on the buttons, so that it hurt just to move.

"Droplet is worried. Droplet is worried. Droplet is worried. Droplet is worried Droplet is worrie?d Droplet is worried w orried worri ?ed Drople worried? dro?plet w o?oried i ssi is ?is is d rro?p? l?et wor ??riedd? i s?…"

This text box didn't go away, it just went on and on, getting continually distorted as the screen grew darker and darker. The whirring was growing continually distorted, though whether that was the game or my head causing that, I don't know anymore.

The next couple minutes are kind of a blur in my mind, i'm not sure what happened, but I do remember that when I was in control of my game again, my character was in a simple room with a grey floor and black walls. Well, really, it was more of an unshaded grey square in a void, but as I could only walk on the grey part, the void was kind of like walls. There was nothing but my character and the square. Droplet wasn't even there - though, upon checking my Pokemon, he was in my party, at least. There was no music in the "room", only the awful whirring noise which wouldn't go away.

"who are you why are you here what's wrong what's wrong what's wrong"

This kept popping up on my screen, but no matter what I did to try and make it go away, it wouldn't. Despite it being there, however, I could still walk, though the text box obstructed part of the screen. All I could do was walk in circles uselessly, as there was nowhere else to go. After a while of doing essentially nothing, something interesting happened. A screen full of buttons popped up, with a message above them saying "press the buttons" It was something like Simon Says, which I guess I was decent at. But after a little bit, I made a mistake, and an awful electronic screech played, causing me to clutch my ears in pain.

"youre no good at this. youre no good at anything.

why are you here why are you here why are you here

GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT"

With that, the message vanished. I was shuddering violently, wanting to put down the game. It didn't make any sense, and it was unsettling me for reasons I didn't understand, as though it was awakening a primal, uncontrollable fear of the unknown. And the whirring didn't stop. it just DIDN'T STOP. i want it to go away i want it to go away i want it to gI was beginning to have trouble breathing, and I didn't know why. It felt like my throat was just tightening up and choking me. I had a deep gut feeling it had to do with the game, so I shut it as quickly as I could while still struggling to breath, ejecting the cartridge from the game. That was definitely what did it, as when my DS was shut off, I could breath just fine again. Not wanting to take any chances, I threw the game to the floor and began to stomp on it, only hesitating for a moment. After it was thoroughly destroyed, I thought it was over.

But the whirr was still there. If anything, it was LOUDER now. I laid down in my bed, still shaken over my experience. How and why was the game choking me? What the hell was I just playing? Many thoughts rattled through my mind, but never any that gave me answers or helped me.

The following week felt empty. My friends were worried about me, saying they hadn't seen or heard anything from me for a few days. I didn't explain why. Everything just felt like I was going through the motions but feeling nothing, my head filled entirely with the faint whirr. But I felt better, albeit dazed. I felt like I could return to normal after that experience.

Maybe if I wasn't so foolish, I could have. Feeling bored one night when my thoughts were more muddled than normal, I wanted to play Pokemon Emerald. I knew this cartridge was okay. I had played it several times, and I on my current run I was almost at the end of Victory Road. But booting it up, I felt a familiar twinge of discomfort. The whirr was amplifying, but I didn't realize at first. When I hit continue, I was immediately thrust into a Pokemon battle, much to my shock.

"A wild Empoleon appeared!"

My mouth was agape as the impossible sudden encounter came into view, but my surprise immediately turned to horror as I saw the sprite. One of the Empoleon's wings were missing, crudely bandaged over but still leaking blood, the crown-like crest on top of its head was completely broken, and various parts of its body were scuffed up and covered in blood. The Empoleon looked sorrowful, hunched over and in obvious pain. Despite the battle just starting, its health bar was already in the red, and pitifully small.

"Droplet understands why you did that.

Droplet forgives you."

I cringed, both out of guilt and from the sheer volume of the whirr. Sending out my Sceptile, I didn't even bother to attack, but instead went straight for the Pokeballs, and threw an Ultra Ball. It worked without even shaking. The battle screen left, and I certainly wasn't in Victory Road. The place I was in looked like something out of a corrupt game, the walls and floor garbled and colorful. The location name appeared in the corner, labeling the place as "Somewhere". How helpful. There were NPCs everywhere, some being silhouettes of people and Pokemon, and some being distorted, garbled forms, often with hideous deformations.

"Droplet is so sorry for getting you involved in this.

Droplet is suffering."

Talking to the NPCs, most simply spouted gibberish or asked whether or not I was alright, though some simply said "WHIRR WHIRR WHIRR WHIRR" over and over again, making the awful noise get LOUDER AND LOUDER until they stopped talking. One, however, said something very interesting. This particular NPC had a far larger sprite than the others, and its horrid appearance made me cringe. It was like a hybrid of a human and an Arceus, the human body stretched into painful proportions it should not have taken, with fleshy tendrils contorted into the shape of the wheel. Worst of all, however, it was riddled with tiny holes, some bleeding and others full of eyeballs. It played a heavily slowed down version of Arceus's cry as it spoke.

"who are YOU? who are WE? we're YOU and YOU're US and everyone is everyone else and it's your fault. whirrrrrrrrrrrrr

YOU keep hurting everyone because YOU are blind and WE keep getting hurt because WE are blind. YOU know what YOU did."

My head was reeling, the headache was so bad. I couldn't understand what the thing meant at all. I couldn't understand anything of what was going on anymore, and everything hurt. everything hurt so much and it won't go away it just WONT make it go away whirr whirr wh

"YOU never helped YOUr friend when he was hurting

he is dead now because of YOU.

what of YOUr dad's accident?

YOU called him at the wrong time and now he is gone"

The thing just kept listing on more and more and more and more of the mistakes I had done that had hurt people, and I felt sick with guilt. I didn't know what was going on, and I felt so small and pathetic and confused as all of my mistakes were listed out to me. My hands were dripping with blood and I didn't care. Everything hurt and I couldn't care. All there was now was guilt and whirring whirr whirr whirr whirr whirr whirr whirr whirr whirr

"Droplet wants the noise to stop too.

Droplet wishes you didn't have to find out about this."

I had broken down into tears, getting the system soaked though it should have stopped working ages ago.

"Droplet wants to tell you how to make it stop."

What he said next… well, I feel like it's too personal for me to share. But what he said to me helped me understand.

"It's time to go."

On the screen, everything had vanished but the little trainer and Droplet, and they walked into a bright light, going somewhere I can't name, for his sake. And after i'm done writing this, i'm going to go fetch my knife and find out just what that place is like.

I can only hope Droplet was right about the whirr.