I had just arrived home from my summer-long vacation. My dad's car pulled up into the driveway and we got out. A garbage truck was emptying the neighbours' bins, but as I watched, I saw the box for XCOM: Enemy Unknown fall out of one of them and into the truck. I became exited, it was an awesome game and I desperately wanted to get my hands on it. The garbage man reached for the compactor lever and was about to crush the box. “Wait! Stop!” I yelled as ran up to the truck and scooped the box out of the back. The garbage man looked at me with a puzzled expression. “Hey, that thing was in the trash, kid” he said, “ya sure you want it?” I opened the box, and to my amazement, the disk was in there! Better yet, the manual and CD key were included and the disc was in pristine condition; no scratches or smudges to be seen! Why would someone throw out a perfectly functional computer game? I nodded to the garbage man as I inspected the disc, he shrugged and drove off.
I immediately ran up to my room and installed the game. Before I knew it, I was shooting aliens and commanding my squad. The game was everything I'd hoped it would be! I played the first mission and did some micromanagement at my base until it came time to shoot down my first UFO. I selected the contact on the hologlobe and launched Raven-1. Interception in this game is kind of shit, you just sit there and watch as your plane exchanges fire with the spaceship until one or the other dies. But this time something weird happened, I had nearly destroyed the UFO when suddenly, the UFO launched what appeared to be a Zangoose from Pokemon at my interceptor. “That creature...” said Dr. Valhen “It doesn't look like the other aliens.” The Zangoose grabbed on to my interceptor and started punching the canopy. Perplexed, I watched as the Zangoose depleted Raven-1's health bar, at which point it shattered the canopy and jumped into the cockpit. “PLEASE, NO!!!” shrieked the pilot as Raven-1 lost control and crashed.
The screen stayed fixed on Officer Bradford, Dr. Valhen, and Dr. Shen staring at the hologlobe, their confused expressions mirroring my own. “What the hell just happened?” I said to myself, “Why did a freaking Pokemon just appear in my XCOM game and punch my interceptor to death? This has to be some sort of weird hack, but then why was it in the official casing?” I decided I'd had enough for that night. I shut off the computer and went to bed.
That night, I had a terrible dream, I was the pilot of Raven-1 engaging the UFO from my game. Through my headset, Central Officer Bradford ordered me to fire at the UFO. I knew what was going to happen, but I obeyed. I pulled the trigger on my control stick and watched as three missiles impacted the UFO. Then, as I expected, the Zangoose from my game was fired out of the UFO and landed on the nose of my plane. The red marking on the Pokemon's stomach was unusually large, and it shot me a terrifying glare. Zangoose began punching my canopy, I watched in horror as the glass cracked more and more until it eventually shattered. The pokemon crawled into the cockpit with me, it grabbed my oxygen mask and tore it right off. With the wind shrieking past my ears and suffocating me, the Zangoose leaned towards my face and spoke clear as a bell: “See you on the wiki!” “PLEASE, NO!!!” I cried as the Zangoose ripped open my abdomen, pulled out my entrails, and shoved them right in my face. The pain was so real, I actually felt the hole in my body and the torn skin. I felt sick as the plane spiralled out of control and flew straight at the ground, with a deafening boom and a blinding white light, I jerked awake!
I looked at my alarm clock, it was only 3AM. I was afraid to go back to sleep, lest I have another nightmare. I thought about what the Pokemon said, “See you on the wiki.” what wiki could he be referring to? What does an online encyclopedia have to do with a Pokemon destroying an XCOM plane. Hell, what does a Pokemon have to do with a military strategy game owned by a totally different company? And come to think of it, why the flying fuck was I analyzing something a figment of my own imagination had told me, since when were dreams credible sources of information? The whole situation was completely ridiculous! But what bothered me most was the dream itself. Dreams are usually very foggy in nature, you never truly feel like your there in the moment, and you can't feel true pain in them either. But this dream was different, and to top it all off, I still remembered all of it.
I lay in bed, kept awake by anxiety and hypnic jerks, but eventually I drifted off again. I slept soundly the rest of the night, I must have had dreams, but I knew they were normal because I couldn't remember them afterwards. That morning I was nervous, but I knew I had to get to the bottom of this, so I booted the game up again and continued from my save file. The game was normal most of the way through. I completed abductions, terror missions, council missions, and progressed through the story just as a normal player would. However, I got UFO interceptions much less frequently than normal, but whenever I did, the same thing as before would happen. The evil Zangoose would jump at my interceptors and destroy them. The second time this happened, I freaked out, thinking it would give me another nightmare, but I continued to sleep soundly the next few days no matter how many times the little bastard showed up. Of course, being unable to successfully shoot down UFOs did make the game considerably harder, as nations pulled their support and I kept getting poor grades from the council. I was beginning to dismiss the whole thing as being nothing more than a weird easter egg put in by one of the devs, believing the dream to be just my brain trying to process all the weirdness that had occurred.
But then, I eventually got to the point where I could build my first Firestorm. I got the usual cutscene of Bradford, Valhen, and Shen looking at the ship being tested in a lab, Bradford said “This'll show that little rat who's boss!” I immediately got a UFO contact, exited to see would would happen, I launched Demon-1 and engaged the ship. Before the Zangoose could savage my pilot, Demon-1 fired it's plasma cannon and took the UFO down in one shot. Everyone in HQ cheered, but the UFO was still down on the ground. Just like in a normal game, I was supposed to send out the Skyranger to the crash site. I knew there was no way around it, so I gathered my best squad and, with a gulp and a nervous sweat, I clicked “Send Skyranger”.
The skyranger touched down at the crash site and my squad disembarked. The first few turns consisted of my troops being moved up towards the ship, usually the most boring part of any battle, but for me it was terrifying! I was convinced that something fucked up was about to happen, and I could only imagine what kind of monstrosities could pop up out of the darkness. My fears were lifted when the first enemies I ran into were a group of sectoids. There were also some thin men and floaters guarding the UFO but I took them down in very short order. Once I had killed them all, the BGM cut out and for a few tense seconds, everything was silent. Then, an ear-piercingly loud Zangoose cry screeched in my headphones! I recoiled at the sound and threw my headset at the floor! My ears were still ringing, but I picked the headset up and put it on again. I moved my troops up to the entrance of the ship and my initial fears were confirmed, standing just in the doorway of the ship was the scarred Zangoose from earlier. It's opening animation was of it standing perfectly still, before cutting to another screamer with a close up of it's menacing face. Zangoose instantly ran up to my sniper and kicked her to the ground, it then tore her head off with graphic detail. My assault panicked and fired at the murderous pokemon, but the plasma blasts harmlessly bounced off Zangoose and flew back at the poor man, killing him instantly. Zangoose retreated into the ship. Just his opening movement and already, two of my squad members were dead.
I moved my squad into the ship, Zangoose was nowhere to be found. I was more nervous than I had ever been, and I desperately wanted to close the game and go outside, but some mysterious force beyond my control kept me glued to my monitor. I had my heavy split off from the group and explore a narrow corridor, and he came face to face with ANOTHER pokemon. This time it was a Mewtwo wearing a crown and king's robes. After his opening animation, which was identical to Zangoose's, the Mewtwo used a PSI mindfray on my heavy and killed him; I watched in horror as I got a close up shot of his terrified, screaming face as he clutched his head and dropped to his knees before recoiling back and sprawling across the floor. All I had left was my support and an Alloy S.H.I.V.. Reluctantly, I moved them into the middle of the UFO's central command room, and what I saw truly shocked me! There were human bodies hanging by shackles from the ceiling, they had all been killed in different ways; some had been decapitated, others had been gutted with huge holes in their chests, some were completely clean, I can only assume they were asphyxiated. However, one body hung lower than the rest, right in the middle of the chamber: it was a man in a military flight suit bearing the XCOM logo, the pilot's mask was sitting on the floor below him, still connected to his suit by it's oxygen hose, there was a massive hole in his abdomen, and his intestines were wrapped around his neck. But worst of all, his face... it was my face! I sat back in my chair, stunned and appalled. I was no longer questioning where the game came from or who had created it, the moment I saw that body, I was overcome with dread. At that moment, the entire command room lit up and Zangoose and Mewtwo walked up. They were followed by another figure, it was the blood-eyed Sonic from Sonic.EXE! Yet another figure approached, it was Jeff The Killer! A green column of light appeared and the Link statue from Ben Drowned materialized next to them. At that moment, I realized what this whole thing was, it was some kind of nightmarish Creepypasta family reunion! I ejected the disc and slammed the power button.
I knew it couldn't be a hacked game, because my my face was modelled perfectly in it! There had to be something supernatural at play! From that point forward, I made it my mission to gather as much info on these creepypastas as I could, and then I would find as many haunted games as possible, play them, and face the monsters that they'd sic on me. I went to bed that night knowing I'd have another nightmare, but I knew I had to suffer through it if I wanted to get to the bottom of this. I drifted off, and sure enough, I found myself in the body of the support lady back-to back with the S.H.I.V. in the command room of the UFO. I was surrounded by characters from creepypastas all over the net, some I recognized, some I didn't. The S.H.I.V. fired it's Gatling gun, but Zangoose lunged at it and tore it's hard drive out. I tried to shoot at some of the freaks moving towards me but King Mewtwo PSI-choked me Star Wars style, it lifted me into the air and Zangoose jumped on me and climbed up until it was staring me in the face, it said to me: “Remember these words: Lesbian Gale”. Zangoose jumped off of me and two metal shackles decended from the ceiling like snakes and clamped onto my wrists. Mewtwo released his grip and I hung there from the ceiling, a heavy floater flew up to me and shot me in the face at point blank range! I once again jerked awake! Zangoose had given me another message: “Lesbian Gale”, but what could it mean? Is it a name? “See you on the wiki, Lesbian Gale.”, no, it didn't sound right, who would name their kid Lesbian?
With many questions, I decided to consult my best friend. God knows how I originally made friends with him, he's actually a pretty shitty person; he's disrespectful to me, he's narcissistic as all hell, he's an absolute coward, he couldn't write a story to save his own life, and he has this weird fetish for timing things. Nevertheless, he has experience with haunted games, so I knew he was the best person to go to. I arrived at his house but he wasn't home, there was a note on the front door stating that he was visiting his cousin in the hospital. I lifted up the doormat, and sure enough, the house key was underneath it, it's just like him to use such an old trick. I entered the house and began to look for something I could use. I walked up to my friend’s room only to find him dead on the floor with his throat slit! There were big paw-prints in the blood that looked like they had been left by some kind of giant rodent, I instantly knew, it was Zangoose! It had entered the real world!!! I found another note on his body, it read: “A Japanese translation, Of, Another word for it” I stared at the note, perplexed as to it's meaning, it looked like some kind of riddle. I put it in my pocket and began to search the room.
The computer had Internet Explorer open, it was displaying 'DETH TRUMPET' on the Trollpasta Wiki, I also noticed a half-empty tissue box and a garbage bin filled with crumpled tissues. “The guy had some really weird interests”, I muttered aloud. I checked the shelf, it was filled with blank game carts, CD roms, and other storage devices, they all had the names of various games written on them in black sharpie marker. I took them all so that I could dig up info on my new enemies. Finally, I walked up to his bed and took the gilded stopwatch he likes to sleep next to. I smirked, knowing that I'd need it if I was going to do hardcore creepypasta-baiting I was planning on. I also went to the fridge downstairs and grabbed 5 cartons of SunnyD to keep myself hydrated during the battle that was to follow, then I left and walked home.
I arrived home, and immediately started preparing. I used my mother's mascara to streak my face like war paint, I took a red piece of fabric and tied it around my head like a bandanna. I fashioned plate armour out of pots and pans and stole my father's shotgun as well as a giant AC battery. I also stole my mother's crucifix from the mantlepiece and I took every game console in the house as well as a old CRT TV up to my room. I was ready to begin my great creepypasta war. I knew that if there was a power outage, I'd be screwed, so I plugged all my electronics into the battery, it had enough power to last me weeks. I plugged all the game consoles into the little TV and stashed all of my late friend’s haunted games and SunnyD where they'd be easily available. I put on the crucifix, knowing that I'd have millions of demons after me once I had gotten through all the evil games, and if that didn't stop them, a blast from my shotgun would. I boarded up the door and windows so that nobody could disturb me, I booted up my computer and turned on the TV and game consoles, finally, I inserted the first haunted game of the battle: Sonic.EXE. With a stopwatch in one hand and a glass of SunnyD in the other, I chuckled and said “Come and get me!”
The ensuing war was one of endurance and sanity. I spent the next few weeks locked in my room playing through every cursed game in the collection. They ranged from laughable to downright traumatizing. As I expected, many of them ended with some kind of demon or monster being sent after me; I couldn't even count how many dolls were sitting on my bed by the end. Every time I finished a game, I'd nail it to the wall and shoot it so that it could never haunt anyone else again. As I played through the games, I quickly became desensitized to the horrors they would throw at me. Soon, the sight of hyper-realisitic blood became mundane, the thought of my beloved video game characters being turned evil or being gruesomely killed provoked nothing more than a faint laugh, and the screamers didn't even so much as raise an eyebrow. The cliches went from ironically funny to downright painful. By the 3rd week, I was starving, the taste of SunnyD had worn out and become absolutely sickening, my room reeked of piss and shit since I forgot to bring a porta-potty, and I hadn't bathed, slept, or brushed my teeth in days. It was hell on earth, but eventually I had finished every single game in the pile... except for one: XCOM Enemy Unknown. Without a moment's hesitation, I inserted the disc into my computer and started it up. I thought it would be fitting to honour my friend’s death with this final session, so I decided to write a creepypasta in his signature (Read: shitty) style, detailing the events that followed. I got out a pen & paper and readied my stopwatch, the following is what I wrote:
"''It was the Autumn of Friday, I was about to play XCOM ENEMY UNKNOWN so I could find out about the ghosts that we're haunting me. When I started the game, the base appeared and I went to the hologlobe and played the gam. I did mission, but every time a soldier died, the screen would turn read for 5 secounds and a scream and there was nothing but blood. I was scared, when my best heavy dyed, I cried for half an hour, striken with greif! Onece I was moving through the UFO, but then a Mewtwo waith a crown appeared in the black ship background! He turned to my assault and looked her straight in the eye, but it was as though he was actually addressing me! “I am the king of Pokemon!!!!!” yelled the mew, I was paralized in fear! The Twomew attacked my assalt and ripped ther skin off, I vomited at the sight of the exposed fleash and muscle, shiny, reflective blood went everywhere! The screen went balck, and I continued to fomit for 12.3 seconds. When I finally looked up, I was in the final level at the end of the game where you attack the temple ship!!! I moved through the lvl, it was covered in blud and internal organs from humans and alieans. At the end of the ship stood the Tuber-Etherial but in a bloodstained robe ! But he lifted up his helmet and said “SEE YOU ON THE WIKI” with blood-red eyes! I emitted a screech and kept on screeming for 30 and a half seconds. Hen the Etherial used an attack, but the psychic particle effect was replaced with 666 repeated over and over and over and over. Everyone dead, but forming underneath theier bodies was a pools of hyper-realistic blood! I was cowering in feer, but then the Gameboy screen opened up and behind it was a blank void! I inspected closser, but then, a skeleton popped out!” ''
The skeleton flew at me, I didn't have any time to react and was grabbed and dragged into my monitor. When I came to, I was lying in a polygonal re-creation of my bedroom. I looked up and saw a Zangoose plushie floating above me, next to him was a young boy wearing a crown and king's robes. “Rise and shine... Kyle.” said Zangoose. “Looks like we have an unusual one” said the child, “Most people don't have the willpower to play more than one of our... 'special' games.” I stood up, “What is this?!” I yelled. I reached for my shotgun only to find myself stripped of my equipment. Zangoose chucked, “Welcome to our humble operation.” he said, “Allow me to formally introduce myself, I am known as the Killer Pokemon. This young lad is my sidekick and first victim.” “I'm the king of Pokemon!” said the boy proudly, “I was bored with my life, until I played a cursed Pokemon game in which I used Zangoose here to kill all the NPCs!” “Ah, those were fun times” Said the Killer Pokemon “Once I had killed everyone in the game world, I entered the real world. The first thing I did was murder King here, and his spirit joined me on my quest to kill every single living thing on this planet.” King floated down and landed in front of me, “At first we just went around killing people, but it got old fast. So we instead decided to mix things up and create games to hide inside. Then, we'd wait for some poor schmuck to buy it from Gamestop or a flea market or whatever, they'd play the game, and we'd start using it to haunt them! Only after giving them a good scare would we finally kill them.” I was taken aback, the story they were talking about, it was 'The Man And His Pokemon'!
Zangoose continued; “Of course, it was all very hard work, so we started to create monsters and demons and put them in games to do the work for us! Sonic, BEN, Ghost, Succabus, even troll characters like Evil Patrixxx, they are all our creations.” “So what you mean to say,” I said, “is that all those creepypastas are true?!” “Exactly!” Said Zangoose “Every single “haunted game” style creepypasta in existence is a true account from whichever poor bastard ended up playing one of our... 'gifts'” “Even shitpastas and trollpastas!?” I said in disbelief. “Yes, even those” said King, “Even we can have an off day.” I persisted; “Wait... even 'Shrek Is Love, Shrek Is Life'?!?!?!” Both of them winced, “We don't like to talk about that one!” said Zangoose. “But why would a traumatized devil-magnet upload his experiences to a ghost story wiki?” I asked. “Illusion can be very powerful” said Zangoose “What is a fun story site to most people can appear as an emotional counselling site to those who have been haunted.”
“B-But-” I stammered, “ENOUGH QUESTIONS!!!!!” Yelled Zangoose. “Your friend, or should I say, Tom, was one of our favourite playthings. It all started when Sonic.EXE found it's way into his hands, at the time, BEN and the Haunted Majora's Mask pasta were going viral, so our attention was focused elsewhere, we were going to let Sonic kill him, but while the scout doll was relaying his information to X, he came across another one of our games: Starfox 6664. We took notice because it was the first time someone had ever found more than one of our haunted games within a single life-span. We watched his reactions and read the creepypastas he put up detailing his experiences, needless to say, we were rolling on the floor laughing. He was such a riot, we convinced the Cult Of X to hold off on killing him so that we could send him more games and let him write more creepypastas. His friends and family proved equally entertaining, his cousin was so dumb that he ended up shooting himself in the eye! Sadly, all good things must come to an end, Tom was starting to wisen up to our tricks, so I killed him and made it look like the Cult Of X did it.”
“But then, how does your riddle tie into all of this?” I asked. “The riddle?” said king, “Ah yes, that! I thought you would've figured it out by now. The riddle is the name of our next target, it ties in to the dream messages that Zangoose gave you, come on, try and put two and two together!” I thought about it for a while, “Lesbian Gale...” I thought aloud, “A Japanese Translation, Of, Another Word For it... Well, another world for Gale is Wind, You have “Of” between them, and the Japanese word or Lesbian is... no... it can't be!!!” Zangoose grinned an evil grin, “See you on the wiki, YuriOfWind!” “But why?!” I yelled, “Why would you kill Yuri instead of haunting him, he's just a depressed, colourblind, YouTuber, what threat could he possibly pose?!” “I'm glad you asked!” said Zangoose, “As creepypastas increased in popularity, dramatic readings of them began springing up on Youtube. Channels like TheStickyPaddle and SomeOrdinaryGamers gained immense popularity off the backs of these stories. We found the phenomenon... amusing, and decided that as long as they only attacked our monsters' hauntings, we would be safe. Even when Sonic.EXE gained popularity, we decided that the X and his followers would never be taken seriously enough to be properly investigated. But then, YuriOfWind crossed the line... In the second episode of Bullshit Creepypasta Storytime, he read out “A Man And His Pokemon”, he revealed and mocked my very origin story, attacked our operation at it's roots. This represented not only a grave insult, but a serious threat to the source of all gamepastas. In later videos he continued to attack our closest allies, like James McCloud and Succubus. This is unacceptable, we mast eliminate him before he can do any more damage.”
“So what are you going to do to me now?” I asked, “Kill me like all the rest?” “No” Said King, “You're far too valuable to go to waste, why else do you think we explained ourselves so thoroughly? Like I said earlier, it usually only takes a single haunted game to traumatize a person for life and coerce them to record their experiences in the from of a creepypasta. You, on the other hand, decided to take action. You played through every single game in Tom's collection, and of your own free will, too! This is our preposition; join us, travel the world with us, assist us in the creation of murderous haunted games, and we'll make sure you live the high life... er, afterlife.” “And if I refuse?” I said brashly. “Nothing” Said Zangoose, “You see, Kyle, you're already dead! That skeleton killed you when it dragged you into your monitor. Contrary to popular belief, there is no heaven or hell, when someone dies their consciousness simply disappears, the only afterlife is the one I provide. This is our offer, join us, or cease to exist!”
That is the story of how I came to join Zangoose and the King Of Pokemon in their quest to haunt, and ultimately exterminate, all life. Already, I've detailed my experiences and uploaded them to the Trollpasta Wiki (knowing that the Creepypasta Wiki would never accept my story.) Now, as I sail over the clouds and skip along the stratosphere hand in hand with my new allies, we are planning a very special game for our next target, one so malicious and evil that he will no doubt be left with no choice but to kill himself, effectively doing our job for us.
Look out YuriOfWind, we know where you live, we know your worst fears, we'll find you, and when we do, you'll wish you never saw the light of day.
...See you on the wiki, YuriOfWind!