Chapter Prologue

Once Upon A Time -

It started like any other day really, bits and bops now that I think about it, memories of a life I used to remember. They call me Louise I think? Louise something...Shinigami or some shit, the fuck? Why would my last name be Shinigami? That just makes no sense... I don't really remember.

I was some sort of Dev for some sort of company. Not too clear on that, my memory is very fuzzy when I try too hard to remember ya see? perks of being dead? Am I dead? I think I'm kinda dead.

yeah. 

Where am I?

Don't know...some Limbo hell or something?

My death kinda glitches out when I was hit by these rectangle box deathtraps that I could have sworn I used to remember this thing but I just couldn't recall it! darn it! Rectangle box of death? hehe...why would that be funny?

 Time seems to just stop. See that body over there? yep..over there the one being run over by some sort of vehicle...shit, what is this box of death called again? Is it a bus or a van? My memory is really jumbled up and yet all I can do is to try and remember stuff. Right..the rectangle box deathtrap is a bus or a van..maybe. It's not important anyway... A Van bus box. Box of a Bus or a Van. A busses of the van? what am I rambling about?

Think...

What do I remember?

That's right...I remember a certain Charizard that breathes fire!

Oh? Seems like I am remembering stuff about these Pokemon stuff.

Charmander, Bulbasaur, and Totodile! wait a minute...the order seems a little off, shouldn't it be Vegetable? no wait, that's not right. OH! It's called Turtle something, the turtle..is called uhh Squirtle! shit, being dead sucks.

I remember tinkering with save files on my computer, Oh! it seems I could try to remember stuff, but somehow it only pertains to Pokemon stuff. Well, I was a Dev of sorts for this Pokemon now that I think about it, yes..yes..it's all coming back to me.

Still can't remember my name at all but it's fine. I'm dead...I doubt if my name is even Louise. I'm Asian after all, what kind of self-serving Asian calls himself Uncle Lou?! oh, wait...me probably.

I make Pokemon games, wait..that's not entirely true, I make mods of Pokemon games, Roms and Rom hacks, and dabble in a few fangames. Perhaps you know such titles as uhh..wait, which one did I make again? anyway, I made fan games, dabbled, and played with a few of them too, some I like, some I adore. and those that don't fit these two criteria? It doesn't matter. I play all of them, critique and perhaps give feedback as well.

I love to expand upon their ideas. give feedback. To me, no two games are identical just like the Canon games. All stories are interesting, and all game mechanics no matter how strange and unique are great to me. Even the scary creepypasta ones. And there are a lot of scary creepypasta Pokemon games. 

Now that I think about it calmly when everything around me is deathly still...

I think my memory about my death just recently is coming back.

It all started with a day in the park with three old Gameboy DS.

............

April 4th 2023 - 

On my phone screen, a tiny sprite ran around in pixelated grass. However, I could only sigh and stop controlling the sprite as I turned on the menu, and clicked on the Pokémon option. I stared at this small team of three Pokémon for a few moments without doing anything.

I was testing something to get a certain Pokemon back to life. but decided to put the phone down. Testing my own fan-made game can wait. Something far more important has happened today.

I booted up the cartridge into the PC and checked for any errors, A crying boy across the room can be heard crying from the neighbour next door. It was my neighbour's son. A little boy who just thought he "killed" his Pokemon. The boy had his DS  accidentally run into a crash when he tried to mess around with some cheats, his favourite Pokemon that he had been playing for the past three years was gone. His favourite Pokemon is gone.

It dawned on him that his favourite Pokemon, the Dugtrio he captured and named "Vivi" and the Pokemon he brought to the league were gone, It dawned on him that all of the Pokemon he had collected, all those precious memories just disappeared, not just the favourite Pokemon, the rest of his team as well. The team that he built, helped grow since one of them was a starter and brought them to hall of fame after defeating the Champion.

Gone. Dead.

I could only frown as I looked at the cartridge and understood that this would be hard to do. I could think of several ways of reviving the Pokemon data but it will be difficult. Lots of trial and error. It's not something he's used to. He could still hear the cries getting louder.

What devasted the little boy was the "Continue" option was gone. He tried removing the cartridge and blowing on it, but nothing. The boy kept turning it on and off, but nothing worked. His badges, his work, every Pokemon he ever captured...was gone.

They are dead.

The boy was devastated, Nothing could cheer him up.

That boy's name was "Carl" he has a soft spot for Dugtrio because he is one of the triplets in the family, All of them have matching Gameboys, Carl, Bob, and Gary. They all have their own Dugtrio in their own handheld. But Carl decided to cheat because he wanted to beat his brothers so badly in the Arena. I like Carl. Just like me, He's kinda a semi-specialist compared to his Generalist brothers.

Despite that one Dugtrio, most of his team consists of water Pokemon. A boy after my own heart.

Me? Well, I'm a hobbyist. I dabbled in cartridges since the early 90s, coded ROMs, and probably even created some of those cheat codes the kid tried to use but ended up having data-saving issues. It happened to me before so I know how devastating it can be for a kid. However, the game has been going on steadily towards the current generation.

Perhaps an oldie, generation three or four, but the sentiment stays. What's the current generation anyway? Gen nine? or was it then? wasn't so sure anymore with all the fangames. The reality between all the different games kinda gets lost in the passage of time. Or is that just death-talking? Either way, it doesn't matter.

I lost a Pokemon myself when I was younger. 

I lost my favourite Blastoise the same way in Pokemon Red all those years. Have I ever mentioned I love Water types? Yep, I do have a soft spot for water-type Pokemon, call me weird, but I had a crush on Misty when I was a kid, sorta...till she did a lot of dumb stuff in the anime, and that's where it ended. Then Nessa came and heck, Guess I never moved on from that water phase.

Something about water type calms me. Playing and nurturing one does the same thing over the years. Dragon type? sure they can be strong, but water is versatile. Sure the fairies are fun to play and a little devious, but I'm not that smart to play those types of meta. Ghost type? Okay...maybe ghost-type. Next to water type, I do love those murdering haunting bastards. Creepypasta Pokemon are so fun to read after all, and the various theory about Ghost type Pokemon fueled my imagination.

Maybe if I had time, I would love to create a custom ghost water fakemon..or maybe not. I can never get into fakemons. Delta species are fine, just not fakes. Although some of these fakemons can be really good, even better than the canon Pokemon.

But I still couldn't actually mesh well with it. There is a dissonance when relating to one.

Back to the topic at hand, Restoring Carl's Pokemon save file aka reviving his Pokemon World and my own experience.

I remembered when I lost all of my precious Pokemon on my Pokemon Red, it was devastating, especially heartbreaking. No kid deserves that, part of the thing I like about Pokemon is that it retains that certain innocence about a kid's journey in life. It's part of growing up, like summertime days when kids are out of school and you're having the best days of your life.

Pokemon does that to kids. It did it to me when I was younger, Wouldn't change it for the world. Pokemon got that magical touch I guess. That is something special that touches the heart.

So what am I doing here? Perhaps I want to believe in magic too.

Could we save a Pokemon that was deleted? Maybe. I'm not too sure myself. There was no guarantee that this would work but I'm willing to try. Using a Cartridge editor, something I made on the fly using some old GBA parts, I began hooking it up to a PC and booting the reg-editor I coded into the files I needed in the cartridge, here's hoping that I'm able to pull it off, I worked on it for several days.

The kid next door was anxious. Carl was super anxious. His palms sweaty anticipating my little pet project as he hoped. A kid could really pray and hope really. Pray to Jesus, Pray to Allah...Or Arceus maybe?

His mother, Catherine, and Father John are very anxious. The boy hardly eats and doesn't go out either. He totally shut off during the summer holidays. His siblings Bob and Gary came to visit my house and asked almost every day, asking about my progress, asking if I could really do it. Those sceptical brats.

"Hey Uncle Louise, can you really do it?"

Gary asked as he looked at the PC I was editing, looking, at, and combing through the files one by one. 

"Yeah, I'm almost done...I think I found your brother's Dugtrio too, here."

I showed the little guy the screen,  a picture of a distorted Pokemon egg in the pokePC. seems like all of the corrupted Pokemon are somehow related to the slot. Gary looked towards the PC but couldn't understand a thing, I could see the confusion on his face.

His brother Bob was always the quiet one, He often stares at me while working and sometimes looks towards his brother's shoulders as if these triplets could communicate without speaking.

A little unnerving at first, but I'm used to it. It kind of makes you wonder if that's how psychics communicate.

I have mostly recovered most of the files and replicated the same exact coding, it's not exactly the same Pokemon, I was just basically coding in a brand new Pokemon with the same...stats and personality traits as his Pokemon. This is the fourth day of my tinkering, Hope and Determination filled me with more tinkering drive to make this work.

Surprisingly fast if you ask me, I thought I would take at least a month to do this, Until the Summer Holiday ended. 

I think I've found traces of the Dugtrio in PC slot 32, this is it. For the corrupted Poke egg, the dumping process was slow but work is in progress. I loaded the save editor and found it. Restoring the Pokemon edited and then proceed to save it on the save file and download the fix into the cartridge. 

The moment of truth. 

I took out the cartridge from the registry tool editor and hooked it up to my main laptop on an emulator to reboot it. It works fine. 

Bob finally speaks and said

"He fixed it"

his eyes open wide in excitement astonished that I was able to bring back the dead Pokemon to life. Perhaps to adults like us, these digital constructs are nothing but fantasy and make beliefs but, Kids still hold that innocence in life. Digital and data hold true to life for these kids. To them, I have done the impossible.

I just revived a dead Pokemon the old-fashioned way.

It does look like I was able to bring a Pokemon back from life. But maybe I should just keep that to myself, it's not exactly bringing a Pokemon back to life, more like Cloning the Pokemon and editing their characters to life. Playing god just like Arceus. That does put a smile on my face. Perhaps even a little smug grin as Carl was clearly happy and crying holding his Gameboy close to his heart.

I looked at Bob as he gave me his handheld I inserted the cartridge into the handheld and it was lit. Gary ran off and shouted

"Mooooooommm!! Uncle Louise fixes it!! Carl! he brought back your Pokemon to life!!"

Carl ran and looked at the little Pokemon screen on the Gameboy DS and cried. His little Pokemon lived after all. His brothers all hugged him and celebrated as their brother Pokemon was back. Now they could play together again. I could only look with a smile on my face, as the parents came in as well and patted the boy's back.

Carl, Gary, and Bob looked at me gratefully, especially at Carl. His eyes were literally sparkling right now. The three of them  said the magical words together,

"Thank you, Uncle Louise!"

I could only grin and smile even wider at this. Helping the kids was totally worth it. As long as the kids are happy, I'm happy. Several minutes later, I was downstairs with ice cream in my hand. Ice cream is my favourite after all. part of the reason I rented the location here.

Carl, Bob, and Gary were playing together again, each on their own handheld playing the Pokemon game in an Ice Cream shop licking their Ice Cream as they ran off towards the Park across the street without any Adult supervision, It was a public park so a lot of people were crossing as well The parents were relieved and John even gave me a triple scoop of Chocolate Chip Ice Cream. It was glorious.

Oh, right, the neighbour next door? they owned the Restaurant downstairs. I was their only tenant since getting rent in this City is hell, and this is the only place near my Area so I rather rent than buy some overpriced house in the city.

John gave me another scoop, make that quadruple scoop then,

" Thanks for fixing my kid's game. That little thing means a lot to him"

I just smiled at the man and said "thing" since I happen to make such fangames as well. Not that he needed to know that.

"I can relate to the little guy, something like that happened to me in the past as well, except back then I didn't have anyone to fix it for me"

I looked towards the park across the street, as the kids were playing together, other kids started to come by and started to chat, kids will be kids. One of them even had a limited edition Nintendo Switch, showing off the brand-new Pokemon game.

Gary, Bob, and Carl left after the new kid started showing off as the trio ignored him and walked towards back the restaurant as they crossed the street, then I heard a screeching noise and something honking..like a Car, I knew something was wrong as alarms were ringing in my head so I stood up instantly, John instinctively knew it as well as he ran towards his kid,

but I was faster, I saw the oncoming Car, and the traffic light showed red, The car was supposed to stop but too late, I jumped in and tried to push the three kids trying to cross the street who kept standing there in fear from what was going to happen to them, in a split second I managed to push the three of them back, instead, I was flung over the car, cracking the windshield as I catapulted behind the car and rolled off backwards, my head was twisted, I could feel my hand and legs were broken.

That wasn't the end of it, a bus came through and -

splatter my he- never mind you get the idea. Too graphic to say.

Death came for me in a hit-and-run.

The last thing I saw was Carl..that boy, running towards me..crying...

 

only one thing came to mind...

"EMOTIONAL DAMAGE!"

But does it matter? 

I died.