Careless
By: Divine_Sky_Messenger
I was well on my way to challenge the next gym leader and earn my fifth badge. But before that was going to happen, I had a few other things that needed to be taken care of first. You see, for a long while now, it has been one of my goals to catch a Chibi Iku. I couldn’t, however, because I still had a few key things to take care of first as I had mentioned before. I won’t list these things since I think you might already have an idea of what they are.
After many tedious hours of level grinding, all of my puppets were ready to tackle the challenges I had mentioned about above. Finally being rid of those few tasks, I was now able to advance and move on to the next town. However, this is also where things started to become strange… Quelling the enraged, previously slumbering turtle wasn’t that difficult of a task to complete. As the great turtle emitted its cry, the sprite sank into the ground; nothing abnormal about it, right? Well, the text that appeared right after is what made me confused “Wild Genjii died!” ‘Wait… “died”?’ I thought ‘Pokemon can’t die…’ I was then returned to the over world map; everything seemed normal.
Thinking it was probably just a mistake on the creator/programmer’s part, I thought nothing of it and merely dismissed it. Now having obtained a Super Rod, as eager as I was, I went straight to the nearest shoreline and threw my line in the shimmering, sapphire blue water, hoping to encounter the puppet I had been looking for. Before this actually happened, while still on the overworld map, ‘B’ button pressed and held down, I had failed to noticed the over world sprite of a puppet that was right in my character’s path. Almost immediately my character stopped running when something close to a squeak was heard beneath where my character was currently standing. ‘That’s odd…’ I thought to myself ‘Pokemon don’t squeak either…’ Now, I was starting to become suspicious. Moving my character forward, the overworld sprite of Iku appeared in the spot where my character was at previously.
‘Iku? What’s it doing on land?’ Then, I remembered something ‘Oh yeah! Iku is an Electric/Dragon typed puppet so of course it can move about on land!’ Maybe the creators were trying to make a joke about Iku being a fish out of water or something of the sort. And I’m not talking about the idiom either. Eh, it doesn’t really matter anyway. Just then, the Iku overworld sprite turned to face me. It then jumped up and down two times without a pause in between jumps. Then, a textbox came up “Chibi Iku attacked in a fit of rage!” I clicked ‘A’, causing the textbox to disappear. The sprite charged at me, initiating a wild pokemon battle.
As the screen faded and the normal battle sequence started, what happened next stumped me slightly. As our sprites slid across the screen to face on another, the text itself is what had me stumped for a brief moment “Chibi Iku wants to battle!” My trainer sprite sliding off of the screen, my first puppet, LwCrino, was sent out. Despite the enormous level gap, the mini oarfish went first. “cIku used Twin Drills!” Almost instantly, LwCrino fainted… Or so I had thought… “LwCrino died!” This cycle continued until I was down to my last puppet, LwTenshi. “cIku used Baton Pass!” As if I were fighting another trainer, cIku switched places with another puppet, LwIku. LwIku’s sprite was a bit… Off… It wore a harsh frown, eyes cold and full of hatred and malice. I assumed that it was supposed to look extremely ticked off, which it was. Once again, before I got the chance to attack, the level 100 LwIku beat me to it. It had used the same move cIku did on my other puppets, except that LwTenshi managed to hang on with 1 HP left.
As if things weren’t already weird enough, the battle suddenly ended. The Iku didn’t run off to some other place like I thought it would and when I tried to talk to it, all it said was “…” Giving up on why it was still there, I ignored it and continued my journey, only to find that… thing following me. The same message appeared each time I tried talking to it. When I tried to back to Prism River Town, it would quickly block my path and push my sprite back a square, preventing me from going there. It did this each time I attempted to go back. And the damn thing even did the same thing when I tried to go into Pokemon Centers and Pokemon Marts. I couldn’t fly to any other city because all of my puppets except LwIku and LwTenshi were gone, whipped clean from my team, almost as if I never caught them. And even in battles, LwIku would appear instead of Tenshi; although Tenshi was in the first slot of my team.
Looks like there was only one other option left… Release it. When it finally allowed me to go in to a Pokemon Center, I went straight to the PC to deposit the evil little thing and release it. When I tried to do it the first time, a textbox popped up “LwIku is threatening to murder you with its drill!” Slightly creeped out by this, I tried a second time; got the same message. On the third and final attempt, a different message appeared “Want to try that again?” Then a Yes/No option came up. I selected ‘Yes’. Seconds after that, Tenshi’s cry could be heard. My last puppet… Had died…. I checked my team. Gone… All of them were gone. Disappointed, I exited the Pokemon Center and continued my journey with this crazed puppet that wouldn’t stop following me.
Getting close to the next town, I was engaged in another trainer battle. They sent out A-Yukari and LwKomachi while I sent out the deranged, psychopathic puppet, LwIku. Every time I tried to give it a command, it would either ignore me, go to sleep, or hurt itself instead of the opponent. When the situation seemed rather grim for me, the psychopath of a puppet decided to obey me and used a move that I didn’t think it existed “LwIku used Giga Drill!” The animation for Drill Peck played, but the screen flashed red when each jab of the so called ‘drill’ hit not one, but both opponents. Hearing their slow and slowly decreasing pitched cries , both puppets slowly sank into the ground “A-Yukari died!” followed by “LwKomachi died!” Then, the battle ended. From that point on, no trainers challenged me to a battle when they saw me and that psychopathic puppet that was still following me, not wanting the same fate to befall their trusted companions.
No wild puppets appeared either, in fear of the aura the deranged puppet gave off. Though it wouldn’t leave me alone, I continued on, nothing else appearing to be out of the ordinary as I went to defeat the fifth gym leader. I had managed to defeat her, but she did not give me a badge or an SC. Instead, she said “…” And nothing else was said after that. All of the other trainers in the gym said the game thing. So, I left. After exiting the gym, I had two choices, go back to Hakugyokurou or I could try and catch myself a Water typed puppet and teach it Surf, which… I did not have at the time. Even if I did manage to get Surf, I would be able to use it since I am currently stuck here, unable to reach my next destination. I think I’m starting to regret stepping on that poor youkai. It didn’t deserve it. I was just being careless… And somewhat selfish. Now I was starting to understand why this puppet was following me: It was keeping me in check. One careless mistake and there wouldn’t be a second chance. Moving my character towards the shoreline where one would normally travel on in order to reach Scarlet Island and obtain their sixth (or was it seventh?) badge.
At long last, that psycho decided to go somewhere else. I was safe… For the moment. After a while of not having any luck, I was just about ready to reel my line in. This is, until I felt a tug on my line. Looks like luck was on my side after all. I pressed the ‘A’ button to reel it in, but a textbox came up “Something is pulling on the other end with great force!” Mashing the ‘A’ button repeatedly, another textbox came up “The force is too great!” My character fell into the water “Lost was pulled into the water!” Since the characters can’t swim, I held on to the fishing pole tightly, refusing to let go as I was being dragged down under the water by the same force that had caused my character to fall in. When I was submerged under the water, I finally got to see what was pulling me under: A big group of Chibi Ikus and several Ikus, all heading downward and towards the darkest depths of the sea. My character tried to swim back up, but the force off all of those puppets was too great. I had to accept my fate.
Don’t make the same mistake I did… You will soon regret that you had done it.
