I was like a kid in a candy store with that thing, it was almost embarrassing. I went right to my White copy and gave myself all of the version exclusives and legendaries and shinies I so desired. You could argue that cheating just makes a game more boring, since you can just look up codes to strong-arm past any challenge, but it was still really fun. Come on, you give a Magikarp the ability to use Judgment and tell me that that’s not funny.

But, anyways. I screwed around with using my GameShark on my White copy for a while, before I ended up getting sidetracked in my usual fashion. I decided to dig around my room for other games to try out my new toy on, and it wasn’t long before I found a game I hadn’t touched in at least a year: Pokémon Pearl.

Honestly? I sorta forgot I had it at all. It had somehow gotten buried in my dresser drawer, stuck in the sleeve of an old cat sweater. I dug it out and decided, hey, what the hell — I’d see what I even had on this, because I quite frankly didn’t remember.

As it turned out, I had left off around Canalave City. My team consisted of Empoleon, Staraptor, Luxio, Graveler, Bibarel, and Glameow. 

Basic, apparently. Honestly, I didn’t even like most of these Pokemon anymore, and I guess I must have gotten stuck because their levels were all over the place. 

I couldn’t really say I had a lot of emotional attachment to this file -- looking back at my nickname choices like ‘Emo’ the Staraptor was funny, but I could have built a better team than this. 

I liked Torterra a lot better than Empoleon, too, but I didn’t feel like going through all of the early-game again with how slow Diamond and Pearl can be … and then, the genius idea hit me. 

If this save file was already over halfway done, I could fuck with it all I pleased, make some crazy ideal team, have fun blasting through things, and then reset or glitch my way to Darkrai or something like that. Harmless fun.

I grabbed my GameShark off my disaster of a desk, as well as my phone to look up codes. The first thing that I wanted to do was get a Turtwig, and then some Rare Candies. I had put in codes like these before, but never in Generation 4 games, and like hell did I remember any code note-for-note anyways. 

In my search for the Turtwig code, I was quick to find a massive list of codes that would spawn any Pokemon in the tall grass. Sick. Just what the doctor ordered. I was starting to regain my interest in this file. Something else caught my eye at the top of the list, though -- “code to make all wild encounters shiny”.

Well, hey. If there’s one piece of candy stuck to another, I’ll take it. Okay, that’s a weird way to word it, but I always liked Torterra’s shiny palette. If I could make the Turtwig shiny just as easily as I could encounter it, well, why not? 

I carefully put the codes in, and then had Staraptor fly me somewhere with lower levels. Within a few moments, I had my darling on the screen.

A girl, too! That was just the icing on the cake. 

Looking back at this picture, I can see now that the sprite looked off, but I was too enamored by the sight of shiny Turtwig to notice or care at the time. 

I caught her quickly, and nicknamed her.

Harriet the Turtwig, replacing Pingu the Empoleon on my team. Of course, not a Turtwig for very long. 

Some very tedious repetitive pressing later, I had given her more than enough Rare Candies to make her the best giant tree turtle the world had ever seen. I was giddy, what can I say?

With Harriet in tow, I decided it was high time I made some progress. I didn’t know what other Pokemon I wanted yet, so I figured I could just breeze through things with a Level 100 Torterra and figure it out as I went along. Call me a filthy casual, but it was great fun. 

I quickly tore through Iron Island, as well as Byron’s gym. Harriet was pretty slow even for a Torterra, getting regularly outsped by steel-types much lower-leveled than her even though her speed stat seemed to indicate she would be faster. That said, the level difference made it so that it was hardly a big deal. It was on to the lakes, as well as the seventh badge.

Unfortunately, Lake Acuity and Snowpoint City is when things got sorta … weird? I want to say weird. I really don’t know what word I’d use. 

But I trudged through the snow, I just want to know who ever thought that terrain in a Pokemon game was an acceptable idea, and worked on conquering the cold section of the region. It was during Candice’s gym that things got any more off than a low speed stat.

I had struggled through the puzzle after an embarrassing amount of time, and was facing off with Candice herself. Her Snover was first, and I decided I’d use Earthquake. But when I clicked it, instead of using Earthquake, I got a message I hadn’t seen before.

“Harriet took too long to attack!” 

What? Before I could figure out what that was even supposed to mean, Snover took an extra turn, chipping a small bit of HP off of Harriet. The damage hardly mattered to me, but I was caught up on Harriet just deciding to skip her turn. This hadn’t happened before, she had just been slow. And that Snover had outsped me, so what business did it have using another move in the same turn? Did it somehow think it was the next turn because Harriet didn’t do anything?

I realized I was thinking about it like the Snover could think, and tried to focus more on the message itself. ‘Harriet took too long to attack’. 

Was that some sort of status condition? I had healed before the last gym trainer or two, so that didn’t make a lot of sense, and I’d never heard of that message in response to a status condition before. I thought maybe it could be a disobedience message, though that hardly made sense either, since Harriet had listened just fine before, and nothing had changed.

Maybe she’s just cold, I thought to myself, and got a little chuckle out of it. 

Well, it wasn’t the end of the world, so I decided to stop hanging up on it. Harriet used Earthquake just fine the next turn, taking Snover out without a problem. Sneasel was the next Pokemon on the field. 

This time, I went for Crunch, and Harriet’s first attack went off without issue. The Sneasel managed to just barely survive, so I went for another Crunch that went just the same. Or, so I thought.

“Harriet is hit with recoil!” 

I stared blankly at the scree, wondering if I had somehow accidentally hit a recoil move instead. When the game asked me if I wanted to switch for Candice’s next Pokemon, I opened my moves to see if I could have somehow made that mistake, but there was no way. I didn’t even have any recoil moves on Harriet.

This was stupid. I mean, I couldn’t deny I was curious to figure out what was going on, but it was still pretty stupid. There was no reason for Harriet to be taking recoil and skipping turns. 

I sorta felt bad for her, too. She looked like she was sad about her moves acting strange. Confused, I decided to consult some of my friends about if they had ever had behavior like this in their games.

I mean, Harriet’s sprite looking a bit weird could be explained by that, but I didn’t really believe that fully coherent messages could be generated by my cheat codes screwing up. Maybe the recoil, but not Harriet ‘taking too long to attack’. 

I went back to the game and, luckily, with only a few more weird recoil and skipping incidents, I was able to muscle through Candice’s gym and get the badge.

Well, okay. No matter what was happening with Harriet, it was pretty obvious I couldn’t use just her. Her messed-up attacking would get in the way too much, and I didn’t wanna put all that strain on her. It was time that I replaced some more members on my team. 

My first idea was Rotom. It’s one of my favorites, but in Pearl, it’s locked off until you get the National Dex. Well, not anymore. I set up everything I had to, and made my way into the tall grass around Lake Acuity. 

This one was a bit harder to miss than Harriet’s expression. 

Rotom’s giant grin is probably one of my favorite parts of it, and it was a little depressing to see it look so sad. 

A Rotom was a Rotom, though, and maybe it would cheer up once I caught it and leveled it up.

...No such luck, apparently. 

Either way, I named it Alix, after a friend of mine who really loves Rotom. 

I also decided to get myself a Mismagius, who I wanted to test out impossible moves on, and a Crobat that I wanted to try and get past Level 100. 

It seemed I had screwed this file already, so why not have fun with seeing what I could pull off? Then I could have some fun beating what was left of the story. 

They both had similar, changed expressions on their faces compared to their original sprites. I didn’t really get the point of it — I’d have been willing to chalk them up to graphical errors if it weren’t for Harriet’s weird behavior. 

I decided to look at the rest of my team to see if they had changed either. The only ones remaining from my original team were Dopey the Bibarel, who I was keeping around for HMs, and Missy the Glameow, who I hadn’t really decided a replacement for yet. I did like Purugly — maybe I’d just level her up. But that's besides the point. 

Dopey just stared back at me as, well, dopily as ever. Missy’s sprite, however, I was almost certain had changed. Glameow didn’t usually look that angry, to my knowledge, but then again, Rotom never looked that exhausted either. I guess it was the fact that I had caught the rest of the Pokemon with those looks on their faces -- I was pretty sure Missy looked fine when I started up the game.

Well, I was going to try and not make a big deal out of it. I did the Lake Acuity cutscenes, and then made my way back to Veilstone to handle the next Team Galactic events. Of course, though, I wasn’t very far into their Warehouse and HQ when the game decided it was going to act up again. This time, though, it wasn’t Harriet.

“ALIX is too weak to attack!” was the very first message I got upon trying to fight a trainer with my Rotom. Great, so that meant that whatever was plaguing Harriet was affecting my other Pokemon as well. 

Was this some twisted variation of Pokerus, contagious and spreading through my team? Did somebody fuck with my game and somehow manage to slip it back into my room without a trace? 

That seemed like a really stupid theory, but I had never seen a game act like this. 

I tried again.

“ALIX is too tired for Uproar!” 

How could you be too tired with almost full HP? 

It wasn’t like I didn’t feel bad for my Rotom, but I couldn’t figure out what could be making it so exhausted. Looking things up on the internet wasn’t getting me any answers, so I tried quickly switching out for Missy and then switching back.

Then, I just kept clicking Discharge until eventually Alix used it, which was thankfully only within a turn or two. Maybe switching helped. I felt sorta bad, but I had the sneaking suspicion that my other team members were going to behave the same way. It was a blessing and a curse that I was level 100, I guessed.

It really shouldn’t have taken so long to get through a single Team Galactic grunt, but on the bright side, it was his only Pokemon. I figured that I would give Alix a break -- say what you want, but it sort of made me feel bad to make these Pokemon do successive battles when they didn’t feel well. My morbid curiosity pushed me onward, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t sympathetic towards my new friends. I may not have hand-trained them, but they were still the Pokemon I wanted on my team.

Jet was the next one I wanted to test out. I had managed to get him above level 100, and I was simultaneously curious and concerned about how he was going to act in battle. But, my mind was taken off of that when I opened the party screen. 

Alix was missing. Just, an empty slot in my party, even though I knew full well that I had a full team. Harriet now sat at the front rather than it, with no indication of where in the world it had gone. 

This was getting stupid. Pokemon didn’t just disappear, especially since Alix’s health was near-full when the battle ended. It made no sense that they would just warp out of existence like that. I mean, I suppose since I brought them in with cheat codes, there was the potential that there had been some sort of error, but that didn’t soothe my concerns. 

I marched right out of the warehouse and down to the Pokemon Center to check my PC Box.

No dice. I checked each and every box, but Alix was nowhere to be found. It was like they had never been a part of the game in the first place. Something about that made me feel very, very wrong -- I wanted my Rotom back. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something horrible had happened to them, or that they were trapped in some digital void. 

Confused, I continued to search for answers, but I was turning up nothing. My bag didn’t have any hints, nor did any of the NPCs I talked to. I made an attempt to interrogate the Galactic grunt that Alix had disappeared after fighting, but he didn’t have anything special to say. Helplessly, I scrolled through my team, wondering if maybe Alix had just gone invisible or if something else had changed.

Well, I didn’t make any progress with finding out where Alix was, but I did notice another change in my party composition.

Missy again. She was smiling at me now, eyes wide. Frankly, I think it looked more like Glameow’s standard sprite than before, but something still unnerved me. She also held a Grip Claw, which I was certain I hadn’t given to her. I stared at the Glameow, and she stared right back. It felt like I was being made fun of, but I supposed that was only in-character for the ‘Catty Pokemon’, according to Pokedex category.

I scrolled through my team a few more times, squinting for changes, but Missy’s new face and hold item were the only things that were different. Well, besides Alix going AWOL. 

Frustrated, I figured that I’d do my best to clear out the Galactic HQ, and then I’d figure out what to do with my team. Assuming nobody else would decide to flicker out of existence, I could wrangle my way to the next plot point and move on. At the least, most things fainted in one or two hits, when I actually managed to land those hits.

But that would just bring me to noticing the issues with the rest of my team.

Jet would actually attack pretty consistently, surprisingly enough. The main issue was the fact that he always, no matter what move I selected, took recoil damage. Air Slash, Cross Poison, it didn’t matter -- recoil. 

His high HP made it so that he could attack for a while before I had to heal him, though, so he was probably my best bet for a main battler. I tried to heal him whenever he went into the yellow, though. I didn’t want to risk things, somehow, getting worse.

As for Sabrina, she had just decided to not listen at all.

She didn’t move often, and when she did, it was almost always something like this. I knew of disobedient Pokemon using the wrong moves, but that was only for trades. 

And besides, there was a much more glaring issue: Sabrina didn’t know Growl. I had deleted it already. Future Sight, Nasty Plot, Shadow Ball, Cosmic Power -- that was her moveset. That was all. She had known Growl before, but there was no way she should’ve been using it. 

I wasn’t going to kid myself at this point. There was obviously something really wrong with my team, and I was determined to figure out exactly what that was. I decided to go test things out in wild battles, which I could easily run from if my Pokemon decided to completely freak out. The more I tested, though, the worse they seemed to get. Harriet had to be the worst example.

With each Pokemon I sent her out against, Harriet attacked less and less. It would take her more and more turns to finally use a move against anything, and when she did, she wasn’t even knocking them out. 

I felt my heart sink -- what had happened to my poor Torterra? Sure, I hadn’t had her with me long, but I still cared for her. It felt like she had some sort of sickness, and there was just nothing I could do about it. 

Regrettably, I decided that I wasn’t going to use Harriet anymore. It felt like no matter how many times I spammed Earthquake or Giga Drain, nothing was going to happen, and I felt bad trying to force her. 

Maybe if I got another Turtwig, that one would feel better? I didn’t want to replace Harriet or anything, but I really did want a Torterra. Though, more than anything, I just wanted to figure out what was wrong with my game. I know I said that I had a hard time sticking with Pokemon games, but this definitely had my attention in spades. 

Apologizing to my screen, I put Harriet in the PC, and turned back to my codes to get myself a new Turtwig. 

I figured I’d switch Missy up to the front of the party -- it had occurred to me that she knew Hypnosis, and with the relatively painful catch rates of starter Pokemon, I figured that would help me a lot. 

Codes in hand, I went back to the tall grass and encountered my Turtwig.

I really should’ve expected something to go wrong at that point.

The first thing I noticed were the eyes: Identical to Harriet’s back when she was a Turtwig. Then, the fact that I had managed to encounter another female one -- and then, the name clicked with me. The wild Turtwig was named Harriet.

That was the first point where I just wanted to put the game down. Turn it off, throw the cartridge back in my drawer, pretend nothing had happened. Something about the wild Turtwig having the same name as my Torterra made me feel … I don’t know, wrong. 

Even so, I felt like this was my chance to do something better for Harriet this time. What that was, I wasn’t sure, but … just, something, y’know? I know I’m not that good with words, but in the end, I decided to try and continue the battle.

I put “Harriet” to sleep with Hypnosis, and then selected Faint Attack.

The game didn’t even bother to alert me that Missy was disobeying -- it acted like I had told her to use Bind, and she had followed through. I was baffled. 

I was plenty used to my Pokemon not doing what they were told at this point, but it wasn’t like Sabrina -- as far as I knew, Missy had never known Bind. Her moves were Faint Attack, Fury Swipes, Slash, and Hypnosis. I wasn’t even sure that Glameow could learn Bind.

Anxious, I decided that I needed to catch this Turtwig before things got any more odd. Besides, I didn’t want Missy to knock it out on accident. Luckily, I had an absurd surplus of Poke Balls, so I could just throw as many balls as I wanted until I had the new addition to my team. Or, so I thought.

“Missy blocked the Poke Ball!” The game oh-so-helpfully reported to me, as if I had thrown a ball at a trainer’s Pokemon. 

This was wrong. Harriet, Alix, Jet, and Sabrina had all had their issues with attacking -- but for the most part, it seemed like they were trying to obey. If they didn’t attack, it was because they were ‘too tired’, or in Sabrina’s case, ‘misheard’ me. They looked miserable. 

Missy only stared wide-eyed at her opponent, continuing the turn without my permission. Was she doing this on purpose?

Missy used Bind again, not bothering to answer my questions of how she was using it, or why she was doing this. 

“Harriet”’s sprite flashed in response to the attack, and I noticed black lines spread across her shell. Were those cracks? Missy’s actions had been stressing me out, but it was only then that I realized she was potentially doing serious damage.

I had to get out of the battle. Forget the Turtwig, I could catch another one, or find another Pokemon to use entirely. I felt horrible for the little thing, and it was probably for the best if I separated her and Missy as quickly as I could. Clicking my Pokemon menu acted as if I hadn’t selected anything at all. 

Starting to feel absurdly sweaty for just sitting on my bed and playing Pokemon Pearl, I selected ‘Run’ and prayed.

I barely had time to register my emotions towards the ‘Can’t escape!’ message before the turn went on. I winced and hoped it wouldn’t be too ugly. 

Before Missy could attack, though, “Harriet” woke up and fought back. 

As the screen flashed, three red lines appeared across Missy’s tail -- apparently where “Harriet” bit her. I wondered if her tail was how Bind made sense in the first place. 

That said though, it was a feeble resistance: Missy’s health bar only barely dropped. I could only watch as she finished the fight without any input from me.

The cracks continued to spread across the Turtwig’s shell as its HP fell down to 0. It looked utterly miserable as its sprite dropped off the screen. 

Ugh. What had I just witnessed, and why did it feel more brutal than any Pokemon battle I’d done in the past?

As the game told me that Harriet had fainted, I noticed something flicker in the corner of the screen. 

Oh. Now she was staring at me. That was just what I needed after all of this. 

I hoped that the Harriet that was in the PC box didn’t know about what had just happened to her … whatever this other Harriet’s relation was to her.

The game faded back to the overworld as if any other normal battle had just ended. I felt like things had just gone from … well, not a zero to a one-hundred. More like a twenty to a one-hundred. But that didn’t make it any better. 

I opened my party to look at Missy -- her sprite had changed before. Maybe it had changed again. 

It had. And I was absolutely, positively, not a fan of what I was looking at. 

There was no way that I was just going to sit here and let this Glameow, whatever it was that she wanted, rip apart any more Pokemon. I wanted to know why she was doing it, but I wasn’t about to just let her go crazy on whatever she pleased. I was curious, but not that curious. Once a kids’ game starts bleeding at you, you shouldn’t keep screwing with it.

I went back to Veilstone, wondering how many times I’d have to struggle with the PC box in this city. I opened it up to move Pokemon around, and selected Missy. The original Harriet wasn’t in the box either, and that only steeled my courage to get rid of Missy before anything else went awry. As I hovered over the ‘release’ option, I mumbled to the screen, thankful that no one was around to see me talking to my game like this.

“I don’t know who you are -- what you are -- or what you want with me. I don’t know why you hurt that Turtwig. But I’m begging you to please either tell me what you want, or leave me alone. Please?”

Hoping that my prayer was heard, I selected release and confirmed that yes, I did want Missy gone. I think that Missy did, somehow, hear what I said to her.

But I don’t think she cared.

“Learn? Learn what? That I somehow put demon data in my game and screwed up my Glameow?” I snapped, shaking the DS slightly as if that would give me answers. 

I needed to calm down. It was a game. A screwed-up game, but a game. Missy couldn’t actually hurt me. I wasn't about to play with fire by keeping her on my team, but I was pretty confident in the fact that she couldn't cause me any physical harm. That was the sense of safety I held on to.

I decided that if Missy wasn’t going to leave on her own, I was just going to quarantine her. I stuck her in a random PC box, far away from all the other Pokemon.

Hopefully, she’d stay there. 

I was starting to wonder if beating the game was worth it at this rate, but I felt like I deserved a little bit of payoff for seeing my Glameow flip out in front of me. And who knew, maybe there’d be some answers at the end of the game. That was my hope, anyways.

For the rest of the Galactic HQ, I mainly used Jet. I was a little anxious to grab any more new Pokemon, and Jet was the best attacker that I had out of him and Sabrina. Alix was still gone, and I didn’t really expect Harriet to be doing any better than before, so I was just going to deal with a two-Pokemon team (well, and Dopey) until I figured out what my game plan was.

Thankfully, with Jet’s remarkably high level, I was making quick work of pretty much everything that stood in my way. None of the Galactic grunts were any match for Jet’s power, and I was starting to feel comfortable again. Cyrus hardly posed a challenge either, and after healing the building recoil damage off of Jet, I went to face Saturn.

I figured it would be fine at first -- Saturn was probably even less of a challenge than Cyrus. He sent out his Kadabra first, and I was quick to go for Air Slash. Unfortunately, it moved first, and I started to get flashbacks to Harriet’s decreasing speed stat.

Jet held on with a little under half of his health, and met Kadabra with a devastating Air Slash. 

I cheered for a moment, until I saw how much recoil damage I was taking.

On one hand, I wanted to be angry that there was no possible way I had done enough damage for recoil to take out Jet. On the other hand, I figured I shouldn’t have been surprised at that point. 

The recoil had seemed pretty serious in the battle against Cyrus -- it occurred to me that it was probably getting more severe, the same way that Harriet had attacked less and less. I mentally scolded myself for not noticing.

Using Sabrina against Saturn wasn’t any fun, but after many random instances of Growl and Magical Leaf, I got just enough proper uses of Shadow Ball and Future Sight to end the battle. Saturn admitted his defeat, and I went to heal before I made any more progress in the game.

I very much would do what I liked — and what I liked was the idea of getting to the end of the game. 

It was really only Mt. Coronet, the last badge, and the Elite 4 now, so I felt pretty confident that I could wrangle my way through. I was mumbling to myself about what other Pokemon I’d pick up — I always liked Giratina, and Drapion … maybe Gliscor, or Porygon-Z? 

I was caught up enough in my own thoughts that I hardly noticed Nurse Joy’s dialogue was different until it was almost too late to catch it.

I wasn’t given a chance to protest, as the text box promptly closed afterwards. I tried to talk to Nurse Joy again, but she just offered to heal my Pokemon like normal. 

I checked my party and, to my non-surprise, Jet wasn’t in the party. Only Sabrina and Dopey stared back at me. Something about that felt very anxiety-inducing.

Well, if Jet didn’t want to fight, I wasn’t going to make him. But I at least wanted to check on him, if he was bad enough that Nurse Joy felt the need to do something about it. I opened the PC, but Jet was absent from Box 1. I started to feel like this was going to be another Alix incident. 

I was getting sweaty at this point, rapidly clicking through the boxes in search of Jet. Right before my anxiety was going to boil over, I saw a flash of purple. I went to click on it instantly, but found that my game wasn’t responding to my inputs.

Oh no.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I mashed on the D-Pad, trying to get some response — any response. 

I might’ve only seen one incident from her, but I didn’t trust Missy for a second. Not near Jet. 

I was pressing every button I could think of, desperate, when a text box popped up. And then, without any further input from me, a battle started. 

My heart sank as I saw Jet on the other side of the screen, and Missy on my end, without any indication of my character sending her out. 

The game gave me the control to select an option, but the buttons refused to work. ‘Run’, ‘Bag’, and ‘Pokemon’ all acted as if I was pressing absolutely nothing. It wouldn’t let me move over them with the D-Pad, and they offered no reaction when I tried to click them with my stylus. 

I thought to just sit there and try to wait it out, but the longer I watched Missy stare into Jet, whose eyes were finally open with what I imagined was fear, the sicker I felt. Hands shaking, I pressed ‘Fight’. 

I winced as I saw a large chunk of Missy’s tail disappear after Jet used Air Slash, as well as a deep nick cement itself in Jet’s wing. Recoil damage began to tick down. 

The game didn’t prompt me anymore. Missy took her turn, using Hypnosis, and I prayed and prayed for Jet to wake up soon. He could take her down easily. He just had to wake up.

Turn one.  He didn’t wake up. Missy trapped him in Bind, and his sprite flashed and changed — now his wings were held to his sides, like he was being forced into that position. The extra Bind damage was luckily minuscule.

Turn two. He kept sleeping. Missy continued her attack, and Jet’s health reached the red. There were now deep indents across his body, and I was starting to understand what ‘Bind’ really meant. 

This was it. Jet had to wake up this turn. He didn’t have a choice -- he’d die if he didn’t. I began to murmur to my DS, giving soft prayers that he would wake up and take Missy down.

“Please Jet, please, please, just wake up … you can do this, you’re strong … you won’t even have to fight anymore after, please…” 

The battle stalled for a moment, as if it had paused to hear my plea. A bit of hope swelled in my chest. 

A hope that was immediately crushed. The text scrolled out slower than ever as Missy stared me in the face, knowingly. I began to helplessly mash at buttons, hoping that the game would somehow allow me to intervene again -- but it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t do a thing. I pressed every button combination my frantic brain could think of, but they all amounted to nothing. 

The next text began to scroll across the screen, and I already knew what it would say. I didn’t bother to read it. I just kept button-mashing, despite how useless it was. The game hadn’t a care in the world as it continued to show me the brutal display.

Jet just dropped off the screen, without a message announcing he had fainted.

The game stuttered for a moment, probably trying to handle his HP bar in relation to his level or … something. I didn’t know. I didn’t care.

Eventually, text scrolled across the screen again.

Missy’s victory was practically thrown in my face by the cheery sound effect of a level-up. 

I was pretty sure I had started to cry, if only the littlest bit -- I felt scared of this stupid Glameow. I didn’t know what she wanted with me, why she was brutalizing my Pokemon. It was obvious she wanted to teach me something, and maybe I was just stupid and oblivious, but I didn’t grasp what.

“It’s enough! It’s enough, Missy! Please, just stop and leave me alone…”

I knew in my heart I could just put the game down. Rip the cartridge out of the DS and never touch it again. But my body felt like it was frozen with fear, and my better judgment was not the part of me making the decisions. 

Say what you will, but the game was targeting me, and that was enough to make me more scared than I had felt in a long, long time. Missy’s cold glare and Jet’s empty HP bar blankly stared back at me until, eventually, the battle faded, and I was back in the PC Box.

Box 13 was empty now. I felt sick. I didn’t know where Missy had dragged Jet off to, but I figured he probably just ceased to exist after she brutalized him. It wasn’t fair -- what had he done besides exist? 

It seemed like Missy was more angry with me than the Pokemon, and that only felt worse. I was playing with something that was way past what I ever expected it to be. I only stared down at the DS for a moment, trying to gather my thoughts and fully grasp what had just happened. I really couldn’t. There was something deeply disturbing about seeing a Pokemon go on a bloody rampage just for a grudge against me. God, would I have a story to talk to my therapist about. 

It occurred to me that I wasn’t sure if anyone would actually believe this had happened, but at that point, I was too exhausted to care. 

I wanted to get to the end of all of this. I kept thinking that, every time something horrible happened, but now I was determined. I didn’t care about finishing the game at this point, though. I didn’t care about Palkia, or Team Galactic, or Volkner or Cynthia or any of that. There was just a part of my soul that felt like I owed it to what Pokemon I had left. 

Sabrina. Poor Sabrina. I hadn’t used her much, but I knew she was trying for me. I wanted to, somehow, defeat Missy, so that Sabrina could be safe, and so that I wouldn’t feel the creeping paranoia that Missy was going to somehow kill me in my sleep.

I opened my party to check on Sabrina, and mentally cursed myself for speaking of the Devil.

I don’t know when Dopey disappeared from my party, or when Missy hit level 39. I had the sneaking feeling those events were correlated. Dopey hadn’t even done anything. But I guess he blocked Missy’s way to her next victim.

Her next victim. I felt sick. No. She couldn’t hurt Sabrina. I had other Pokemon in the PC, sure, but something was sickening about imagining Missy destroying the last Pokemon in my party, the last one I had made for this adventure-- 

There was a vague realization then, but I was too panicked to think about it. Instead, I fumbled for my phone, typing as quickly as I could. 

Missy needed to go away. She needed to be stopped. I felt like I might break down sobbing if I had to watch another thing be killed. She was closing in on Sabrina, and if the battle started, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stop it. I doubted she would go back in the PC. This was my best chance. 

I had seen codes for implementing Pokemon directly into the team. Slot 2. This had to happen. It had to. I was certain just shutting the game off wouldn’t get rid of Missy, not that that would be the end of the world, so I switched around what I had to without worrying about it, fumbling to the code input screen with sweaty, shaking hands. My only fear was that this wouldn’t work, or that I would enter the code wrong and make everything worse.

The first one I found was for an Arceus. Fine. Sure. Whatever. I didn’t really care about a legendary or a mythical or whatever, it could’ve been a Feebas for all I cared, I just couldn’t stand having Missy in my game anymore. I must’ve caused this problem somehow, and I was going to solve it. 

I finished inputting the code, and booted the game back up. The intro scene was frozen, making some sort of horrible one-note noise that sounded like a dying animal, but that barely registered in my mind. 

I was still in the Pokemon Center. I opened up my party, holding my breath. I only hoped I hadn’t done anything wrong. 

… Well, obviously I had. Whatever I had just created in my party was absolutely not an Arceus -- but it wasn’t Missy, either. That was what mattered. It looked like some kind of horrible Bad Egg, but it wasn’t Missy. The game absolutely refused to let me hover over or select the Egg, but I hardly cared. 

As the adrenaline finally started to fade a little bit, I realized I wasn’t sure what my next goal was. Finish the game for Sabrina’s sake? Maybe. That was what I had sworn to do before I worked myself into another panic over Missy -- but I was also fairly sure that Missy was gone now. There was another Pokemon, or at least something resembling a Pokemon, in her spot in the party. I decided to at least step out of the Pokemon Center to get some virtual fresh air. 

Apparently, nothing was going to be easy. 

I opened and shut my party a few times, but Veilstone City’s graphics didn’t bother to come back. It remained a huge white slate, and none of the NPCs I tried to speak to registered my inputs. I had probably destroyed the game beyond repair at this point, huh? 

I’d catch Palkia, I decided. I’d catch Palkia, and that would mark the end of the adventure. That would make me feel confident that everything was fine, if not … glitchy. 

Maybe I was just a person who desired an end point, or maybe I wanted it for Sabrina. Who knew. 

My path up Mt. Coronet, though, had no intentions of being simplistic. Not that I expected it to be.

My wall collision was completely gone, and believe it or not, that really destroys your sense of direction. Random patches of tiles were completely gone, and NPCs refused to acknowledge I existed. 

It felt … isolated, I guess? I wish I knew how to describe it. It felt like something was going to jump out at me any moment, but it just never did. At the least, the lack of collision let me skip over any necessary HMs, even with Dopey gone.

At some points, the screen would just … blank out or corrupt completely, and I had to wander around helplessly until I eventually went through a doorway that reset it. Opening my Pokemon or Bag didn’t seem to do anything to remedy the situation, so that was all I could hope for. 

Team Galactic grunts rarely ever appeared, let alone fought me. I supposed it made things at least slightly easier. 

I still got wild encounters, though. Most of them looked … unsettling, to say the least.

Glitched, layered-over sprites and corrupted HP bars made up most of what I was running into. Sabrina was doing her best to fight them off, but she usually ended up using Growl or Lucky Chant a couple of times before actually getting a damaging move. 

It hurt, to imagine how tired she must be if she could never understand what I was telling her to use. I thought of the Harriets, Alix, and Jet. They all seemed so tired. I felt terrible.Could this really be my fault? 

If it was, I owed it to Sabrina to make it up to her. We’d finish this together.

It took her a while to complete fights, but I had a practically endless supply of healing items. I tried to not pay attention to the fact that I could see her attacks doing less and less damage, and her speed stat lowering. 

“You can do it, Sabrina. You can do it. Almost all done.” I whispered to the game.

I was saying it to convince myself just as much. I needed this in order to get myself to put this horrible game down. It was self-assurance, and I knew it. 

We continued our ascent, and I had to constantly be careful to not walk directly into the void. Not that it really did much if I did, but I was terrified of getting stuck or walking so far that I wouldn’t know how to get back. I was lost enough, considering I really, really didn’t have the map of Mt. Coronet memorized, and I still don’t. I’d hear some sort of pixelated howling noise from time to time, and it managed to startle me each time. Occasionally, the game would pop up with a message to alert me that I should heal Sabrina.

Her HP was usually full whenever it did that, but I had stopped being shocked by the game’s odd behavior at this point. I would give her a Hyper Potion, and the game would let me know that she felt a little better. Whatever helped, really. 

I had finally managed to access the last few rocky, corrupted corridors before Spear Pillar. The distorted, glitched yowling grew louder as I got closer and closer. The deep pit that was already in my stomach grew even deeper. 

Spear Pillar itself was a disaster.  Half of the map was completely replaced by some sort of gradient void that I imagined was usually meant to be the area’s backdrop, and the game was incredibly wishy-washy about if it wanted the sprites of the Team Galactic members to appear or not. They’d appear and disappear as I walked around, and none of them bothered to challenge me. 

No cutscenes were initiated, no battle side-by-side with my rival, no Professor Rowan and Lucas running up to let me know that Palkia wanted me to catch it, no Lake Trio destroying the Red Chain. I just walked right past everything. It felt wrong.

I walked up to where Palkia was meant to stand, waiting for my challenge. I should’ve guessed at that point, though, that I couldn’t fix my problems as easily as I thought I could. There was no ruler of space waiting to challenge me. 

Instead, perched in the center of all the corruption like some kind of twisted queen, she was there. She had been waiting for me.

The music started to pause and skip wildly, and I waited to see what was going to happen next. I felt sick. I didn’t want to see this stupid Glameow again. 

But she didn’t care. She began to speak, and miserably, I followed along.

I really, really wasn’t.

After a moment’s pause, the game offered me a YES/NO box. I selected ‘No’. I had my ideas, but I really, really wasn’t sure. And I didn’t want to infuriate Missy further.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! I told you before to just tell me what’s going on!” I begged to a screen that wasn’t going to respond to me. 

Before I had time to brace myself, the DS speakers emitted a distorted screech that caused me to reach up to clutch my ears. As if I wasn’t overwhelmed enough. It was probably some mesh of Pokemon cries, but I didn't have it in me to discern what. 

I could feel tears pricking the corners of my eyes, stress and fear and simply too much happening all culminating in a tight feeling in my chest. My head was swimming as I squinted at the text, trying to ignore the pain in my head.

The screeching startled all over again, and I felt the tears start to pour over. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry--” I blubbered, apologizing to a game for no coherent reason. Maybe I did want this all along. I wasn’t even sure anymore.

Through my tears, I could see a battle start. 

A horrible, glitched mess of a Pokemon scrolled onto the empty screen, emitting a horrible, warped yowling sound at earsplitting volumes. At the sight and sound of the awful thing in front of me, I only began to sob harder. This wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair! I felt like a tantruming child, the only thoughts racing through my mind being how much this shouldn’t have been happening to me. 

The yowl continued as the game stuttered out text boxes. I was in Hell. This was some sort of screwed-up punishment. 

As Missy screeched at me, the game prompted me to take my turn, and I selected Fight and then Shadow Ball. I thought I clicked Shadow Ball, anyways, I don’t remember anymore.

Psywave. Psywave did damage, that was fine. But it only scraped off the smallest bit of Missy’s HP. And the second her HP stopped ticking down, she started to mew and yowl again. I felt like I was going deaf, or I at least wanted to.

I was given a moment’s respite from the noise, and the game once again gave me brief control. Similar to the battle between Missy and Jet, I couldn’t choose to run, use my bag, or switch Pokemon -- not that any of those would’ve done anything. I could only pick ‘Fight’ -- or, as it had changed to, ‘Check’. I didn’t have any choice, so I selected it.

I felt my heart drop as it hit me.  I already had the suspicion, but it finally all came crashing on me. Harriet, Alix, Jet, Sabrina. It was my fault they were in pain. It was my fault that they were too tired to use their turns, or to use the right moves, my fault that they took recoil. I had done this to them, and enraged Missy. Guilt gripped me, and I could barely read the words on the screen anymore.

“But what … what about Dopey? They didn’t … they didn’t-- didn’t do anything wrong… they weren’t … in pain … they … you didn’t need to kill anyone to punish me!” I wailed. “Please! Please, I’ll stop playing, just … stop hurting them! Why them? Why the overworld? Why…”

The game began to make sounds again, and I realized that Missy had more to say to me.

No. 

No, no, no. Her HP was draining at a brutally fast pace as the game repeated over and over and over that Sabrina was being hurt by Bind.

I couldn’t take it anymore. Without even thinking, I shut my entire DS off, threw the GameShark as far away from me as I possibly could and, after taking a few minutes to hyperventilate and think about my own crushing guilt and the sight of Sabrina, turned the DS back on. 

The game would still be overwritten with all the codes, of course. And that meant Missy would still be there to hurt all my Pokemon. It was my fault. But I couldn’t take it anymore. I had learned my stupid, awful lesson, I just needed her gone.

I wasted no time in pressing ‘Yes’, but I wasn’t quite fast enough for someone’s liking.

My chest tightened up.

“Yes you will! I got it! I learned! I’m done!” I insistently selected ‘Yes’ over and over until the game accepted it. I was upset, and guilty, and crushed, but I was also determined. I think it was the adrenaline.

Obviously!

As I pressed down on ‘Yes’, a telltale screech assaulted my ears as the game forced itself down to the ‘No’ option.

I resisted right back. It was practically a wrestling match between me and what I could only assume was Missy still trying to grip onto punishing me. It almost felt silly, if I wasn’t so terrified of what might happen if I couldn’t delete the file.

After maybe 10 or 15 seconds that felt like hours, I managed to press the corrupted ‘Yes’ before Missy could move it again. The game howled one more time, pixelated rage and pain and fury that caused me to drop my DS -- before it cut off into dull silence.

I stared at the DS, wide-eyed, too scared to touch it. The little clock icon ticked away in a rhythmic circle, alerting me that it was deleting data. I half-expected another interruption.

But no interruption came. The game returned to the title screen, and when I nervously reached out and tapped the A button, I was brought to Rowan’s introduction.

It was over. The file was gone. Everyone was gone. They probably would’ve been killed anyways, but I didn’t want to imagine myself as a mercy killer. That made me think too much of Missy. 

I left the DS on the floor, and crawled into my bed, allowing myself to just break down. I was already crying heavily, but for a while I just let myself wheeze and sob and whimper into one of my pillows, getting all of my feelings about. I felt so horribly guilty and so, so scared. I had hurt those Pokemon, but I couldn’t help but feel like Missy was evil too. I didn’t know. It was too much to process all at once. I was tired, and I needed to sleep.

I didn’t remember falling asleep, and I didn’t remember dreaming either. But at some point I woke up, face still sticky from tears drying all over it. My DS was still on the floor. I was a bit anxious to touch it, but I felt like I had to. I just wanted to ensure things were safe.

I dug around my room until I found where I had pitched the GameShark to, bringing it back to my DS. I didn’t feel good about putting it back in there, but I wanted to delete all of the codes. I knew I couldn’t permanently undo the changes I had made to the game, but I figured I’d do the best I could. I didn’t feel like I was going to faint at any moment now, at least. I had turned off the lights and closed the blinds in my room so the light didn’t hurt my eyes so much. 

Carefully and methodically, I deleted each code. Thinking about the game made me start to feel panicky again, but there was something calming to lists, taking out the codes one at a time. I tried to take deep breaths, ensuring that everything was gone before I properly started up the game again.

Pearl. Just normal, regular Pearl. I didn’t have many intentions of playing very far in, but my brain was foggy and I was just sort of pressing buttons. Making sure I didn’t completely destroy my cartridge, y’know?

I went through the beginning game motions, vaguely annoyed by how slow the whole thing was. Diamond and Pearl were always slow, I guessed. It wasn’t exactly the primary thing in my mind, you get me? 

I picked Turtwig when I got to the starter selection screen. I was still a Turtwig person. I was going to try and not let that change. Or maybe I’d just have to become a Chimchar person.

When I saw the sparkles spin off of the Turtwig, I audibly gasped. I knew for a fact that I had gotten rid of all the shiny codes, which meant that this was a honest-to-god, full-odds, completely legit shiny Turtwig. 

I nearly broke down again right there, though this time it was with laughter. Was this a gift? Or was it making fun of me? I liked to think the former. All that pain, and I finally got a dumb shiny Turtwig. I didn’t even know if I’d play this file all the way through, and I got a shiny Turtwig on my first try. There weren’t even words. 

I liked to think that this was something in the universe making things up to me, even if I wasn’t sure I deserved that. I decided to roll with it. I wasn’t going to say no to a lucky shiny. I fought off the beginning Starly with ease, dropped off by my in-game home to talk to my mom, and then set off on my way with Turtwig. I wondered what I’d name her. I didn’t really wanna name her Harriet again. That seemed like it would be asking for things to go sour. Shelly, maybe? Or was that too simple? I’d have to get something figured out by the time I got my character to Sandgem Town. Not that it was an especially long walk, but I had to go through a few encounters in the tall grass.

As if on cue with my thoughts, my character stopped, and the battle music started to play. Guess I would have more time to figure out my Turtwig’s nickname. I didn’t think about it, though, because my mind completely blanked out. Like somebody had just wiped all of my current thoughts away in an instant.