Justinian

You are probably thinking this is going to be some cliche "haunted game" creepypasta; but I assure you, what I'm about to tell you is the truth. There are no lies here; just the truth. It all started with a roleplay in a Steam chat on January 12th, 2014 with my best friend whom I always keep in contact through that chat. My best friend (who will be referred to as "Matt", because I shan't disclose his real name) and I were roleplaying our respective Pokemon trainer fancharacters in the universe of the Nintendo 3DS game, "Pokemon Y". I was roleplaying a Team Flare grunt named Marilyn while my best friend Matt was roleplaying an average trainer named Kenneth. Marilyn had her Delphox (whom will be referred to by its nickname, "Justinian" from now on) burn Kenneth's Chesnaught to death with the move "Flamethrower", like in previous Link Battles in which I've used this move to faint his Pokemon. Not even Chesnaught's ashes were left. As Kenneth mourned the loss of his Chesnaught, Marilyn noticed something move in Kenneth's bag; it was a Chespin egg that he had received in the day care that had come from his Chesnaught. Kenneth had planned to name the Chespin that hatched "Barkley". You might be thinking, "Why am I being told all of this pointless information about some random roleplay?" This will all make sense soon enough.

Both Matt and I had the game Pokemon Y; and had our starter Pokemon to pretty high levels. Matt's Chesnaught was level 67, while my Delphox, Justinian was level 100. On January 20th, 2014, I challenged Matt to a Triple Battle with 6 Pokemon on our teams and no restrictions. Justinian fainted Chesnaught on the first turn with just one hit from Flamethrower. The battle carried on as usual, and I won with 5 Pokemon left. After the battle was when things began to get strange. Matt's Chesnaught had a "Fainted" status; it was the only Pokemon in Matt's party with that status. We joked about Justinian's one-hit KO being so powerful that the fainting remained even after the Link Battle was over, and we shrugged it off as some odd little glitch in the system. Matt promptly healed his Chesnaught at a Pokemon Center, and proposed an idea that Justinian and his Chesnaught have a Single Battle against each other with levels set at 50. Despite the fact that he said the idea was insane because of all of the near-instantaneous defeats of his Chesnaught by Justinian in the past, I encouraged him and took his offer. The battle commenced, and Justinian made the first move: Fire Blast. Surprisingly for me, Chesnaught wasn't knocked out in one hit this time. Matt used a not-very-effective move, Grass Pledge, and Justinian remained standing. I then proceeded to use Flamethrower, and finished Chesnaught off. When the battle was over, Matt's Chesnaught went missing. All that was left was a seemingly empty space at the end of Matt's party where Chesnaught had been.

My first thoughts were that Matt forgot to save after adding Chesnaught to his party to battle me, but he did a hard reset and there was still a blank spot. He checked every single box in his PC storage system, and Chesnaught was nowhere to be found. I was baffled, and strange thoughts were flying through my head.

'Did Justinian kill Chesnaught?'

'Had Chesnaught been erased?'

His dear Chesnaught was gone. I was thinking about giving him this Chespin egg I had, when he looked at his party and saw that an egg had taken Chesnaught's place. He checked the summary, and the summary stated that the egg was received on "1/20/2014" and that he was also the original owner of the egg. He then proceeded to do a hard reset. Upon returning to his game and looking at his party, he found that Chesnaught was still missing and that the egg was still there. He checked the summary this time, and to his surprise, it showed the message "It's making sounds inside! It's going to hatch soon!". Usually, you would have to walk around for a Pokemon egg to eventually hatch; Matt's sprite had been standing still this whole time. My friend couldn't believe what he saw, and hard resetted once more. This time, the egg was no longer an egg; the egg hatched into an already-nicknamed Chespin named "Barkley"...

...Remember how I told you that my friend's roleplay character Kenneth wanted to nickname his Chespin Barkley?

When I was told about this newly-hatched Chespin, I was left without words. I told Matt to place the Pokemon in a PC Box to see if it would function as an actual Pokemon and to see if it really wasn't just a Bad Egg in disguise. He did as told, and everything went well. However, he couldn't get the Pokemon back out. I wanted to see if that Pokemon would be able to battle and I told Matt to place Barkley in the Battle Box, but the battery of his 3DS was running very low. As he went to get the charger, the 3DS shut down. Unfortunately, he didn't save the game when Barkley mysteriously "hatched" after that hard reset. When he plugged his 3DS into the charger and turned it back on, he booted the game back up. He checked the PC Box where he placed Barkley, and Barkley was nowhere to be found. Matt then checked his party, and found an empty spot where his Chesnaught once was.

I told him to click and drag the "empty" spot in his party with his stylus and place it in an empty box. There seemed to be an invisible sprite, as the empty space was able to be moved from the party to the box. As expected, nothing actually appeared in the empty box. However, when the cursor was moved onto the spot where the "invisible" sprite was placed, a moveset and stats were shown as if there really was a Pokemon there. I instructed Matt to look at the Pokemon's "Summary" page, and a Chesnaught sprite appeared. Something was off about Chesnaught, though; the sprite was completely static, and its name had been changed to a single question mark. Instead of the Amulet Coin that Matt gave it, it was holding a Soft Sand, an item that boosts Ground-type moves. I joked about how the dead re-emerge from the ground, hence the item Chesnaught held. Nothing else about that Pokemon was otherwise out of the ordinary. Its HP bar was completely full, and its stats and moveset seemed perfectly fine. I asked Matt to bring the Chesnaught into battle to test if it was still a perfectly capable Pokemon, and he accepted. I decided to place Justinian in a storage box, and used 3 Fennekin that I hatched from placing Justinian in the day care instead. I was paranoid of having my best Pokemon get corrupted if it came in contact with that strange Chesnaught.

When I battled his Chesnaught with my small team of Fennekin, there was something wrong with Matt's game. For some reason, his Chesnaught kept using the move Grass Pledge when he obviously selected a different move like Aerial Ace. I went for a few seconds to get my camera and came back to take a picture of the battle; as soon as a pressed the "Fight" button however, I didn't even have the opportunity to pick a move. Matt's Chestnaught used Grass Pledge one last time and knocked out my very last Fennekin. The minute-long time I had to make a move hadn't even expired when I arrived with the camera; something was wrong. My friend Matt joked about that odd time bug by saying, "Chesnaught wanted revenge and was taking it out on Justinian's children". I responded jokingly with, "If vengeance is want he wants, it's what he's gonna get". We snickered and continued our investigation.

I planned on battling the Chesnaught again, but in a 3-against-1 Triple Battle with all Pokemon limited to level 50 just for kicks. My friend Matt was going to use just his Chesnaught, and I was going to use 3 Delphox: Justinian and his 2 shiny descendants, Jaiden and Janario. Everything about the battle was normal, besides the odd fact that Matt's Chesnaught still used Grass Pledge no matter which button on the touch screen he pressed. When Justinian dealt the finishing blow on Chesnaught with Flamethrower, I said, "Meet your maker!" Matt's Chesnaught fainted one last time.

He had clearly saved the game after re-acquiring his Chesnaught before this final battle, so he did one last hard reset. When he booted his game back up, Chesnaught was gone one last time. No matter how many times he reset his game after that, his Chesnaught never came back. It was about 11 o'clock PM in our area, and we were both very tired. We bid each other good night and went to bed. The next afternoon when Matt and I contacted each other over the chat, Matt had informed me that his saved game had disappeared from his Pokemon Y cartridge. We both came to the conclusion that the game had been so severely corrupted that it deleted itself entirely.

All I could tell you from this experience is that hatred can be a powerful thing. It has the potential to wipe out another being from existence if the one with hatred has the capability to end their world.

Justinian is proof of that.