Ah...Pokemon. As a nerdy sort of kid who grew up in the late nineties, it was one of the staples of my childhood, a game that I could always get together with my friends and play. We always had a lot of fun with it, trading, battling, even sharing tips with one another on how to get the most out of the experience. Yet, as we grew older and the newer generations of the game came out, my friends started to lose interest. Most of them complained about the new games lacking originality when it came to the designs of the Pokemon, but I never shared their thoughts. After all, every gen had its own share of lame designs. Regardless, I soon was one of the only people in my nerdy little group of buddies that still played the games.
Well, you don't really want to hear about all that, do you? I have a story to tell and I'm pretty sure you're all much more interested in that than what I did when I was a kid. It all started about a month before the release of X and Y. I was playing my copy of Black, like I usually did on lazy Saturday afternoons. With my copy of X already preordered, I was pretty excited about the entire thing. I had been playing nothing but fifth gen for a while and craved something new. Something different. As I sat there, EXP farming the elite four like I often did to raise my lower leveled Pokemon, I vaguely wondered if I had any other versions lying around my room. After a while, I shut off my DS and decided to look around. Nothing turned up. Though I remember having copies of Diamond and HeartGold somewhere, I couldn't find them. Being a slob really did have its disadvantages sometimes. It didn't help that the cartridges were so tiny, either. Since I had a little extra money from work, I decided to head over to my local game store and see if they had any replacements, though finding Pearl, Platinum, or SoulSilver would be just as good. They usually had a bunch of used games in a case near the front, so it hopefully wouldn't be too much of a problem.
When I got there, I wasn't disappointed. They had both Diamond and SoulSilver, slightly used, but supposedly still in good shape. I paid for them without any problems and left the store. Once I got home, I headed up to my room and popped SoulSilver in. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, thankfully. I had gotten used copies of games before that wouldn't start or had sound glitches and that sort of thing.
Everything seemed alright as I loaded the game up. The opening cinematic played as it normally did and I started my adventure, choosing Cyndaquil as my starter. Within a few hours, I had already caught a Zubat and a Mareep, the latter of which I used to beat the Violet City Gym. I then decided to make my way into the Ruins of Alph.
To be honest, I had never really liked this area of the game. It was huge and mysterious...only to house what was arguably the lamest Pokemon in the entire series. Unown. Still, nearly every time I played a Pokemon game, I liked to try and complete the PokeDex, which meant I had to catch one of the stupid bastards. With a sigh, I took the ladder down into the ruins.
To make things a little more interesting, I decided to hunt around for a specific letter. T. It was the first letter of my character's name and I was feeling too lazy to really come up with a different letter. As I made the little sprite run back and forth, it didn't take long for me to get a wild encounter. Unfortunately, though, it was an L rather than a T. I huffed and had my character run from the battle. The next one was an E. Then an A. Then a V. I was beginning to get slightly annoyed by this. I mean, there were twenty-six different letter-themed ones and then two punctuation-themed ones, but one would think that it wouldn't be quite this difficult to find a specific one. I made my character run around a little more until she encountered another Unown. This time, it was an E again. I paused at this. Wait. As I thought back to the other letters I had gotten so far, I realized something. They spelled a word.
L
E
A
V
E
Leave. Was the game...telling me to leave? I shook my head a little. No, that was ridiculous. Surely the order that they had appeared in was pure coincidence. Surely. I made the character run back and forth some more, trying to get another wild battle, just to prove that nothing weird was going on. It didn't take long to find another Unown. An N. Alright...I ran and soon got into another battle. This one was an O. I swallowed roughly.
L
E
A
V
E
N
O
This was really getting strange. I decided to get just one more encounter. This one was...a W. W.
L
E
A
V
E
N
O
W
Leave now. LEAVE NOW.
Nope, fuck this game. Even if this was still just a coincidence, this was getting way too weird and creepy for my tastes. I didn't even bother to save and ripped the cartridge out of my DS. I had read CreepyPastas before and I wasn't going to end up as some idiot who was killed by a haunted game or some shit. Opening my window, I tossed the game outside, where it disappeared into the bushes. Maybe some stupid kid or a mysterious old guy would find it.
That'd be their problem, though.