I don't understand, this was just supposed to be some amatuer hacked game. This was just supposed to be some stupid joke played on me. But why doesn't he know?
New Beginnings
It was the first of April, and I knew what that meant. There would be an all-out prank war, the neighborhood would be the battlefield and every kid was a soldier. Except me, I was grounded. I was forced to stay inside and do almost nothing, but I was allowed to play my old DS.
I was sitting on the couch in the living room when it was finally my turn to be a victim of the prank war. There was a loud banging on the door, there was only one person who banged on my front door like that. I set down my DS and dragged myself off the couch to the front door. I opened the front door and to no surprise, my neighboor was standing there with a smirk spread across his face. My senses kicked in and I realized he was about to prank me, I figured he was going to do the classic water balloon in the face prank, but he just stood there. I attempted gradually shutting the door but before I could, he dropped something at my feet then ran off to join the other kids on the soaked battlefield, it was wet because of kids launching water balloons. I glanced down at the object at my feet. It was a miniature box with an also tiny note taped onto it. In sloppy handwriting, it said "April fools", I hunched over, picking it up. I smuggled the box up to my room in fear of my mom coming down the stairs to see me and thinking I was breaking a rule or something like that. Once I got up to my room, I opened the box, and inside it was yet another shrimpy note.
The note said, "Hope you're having fun being grounded. Here's something for you to play with. My older brother has been working on hacking Pokemon games and I want you to be the first test subject. Don't let your parents see. April Fools." I turned over the note, thinking there was more but when I lifted the note, there was a Pokemon cartridge at the bottom of the box. The cartridge had been tampered with so I couldn't tell what the game was originally made to be. I knew my neighbor's older brother couldn't have been that good with hacking games but I decided to play it anyways, just to witness how badly the game had been ruined. I had guessed that the game was going to be some amatuer work of hacking. I had guessed wrong.
I inserted the game into my old DS, I didn't want to put it in my new DSi because I knew the hacked game could ruin it, and switched the power on. I jabbed the A button to skip the ordinary DS menu and get straight to the game. The title screen came up and it said "Pokemon". I stared at the title screen, majorly confused. "No title? Not even some stupid crap like 'Pokemon Bloodbath' or something like that?" I mumbled to myself. I went ahead and clicked A and the traditional menu for "New Game" came up but then I froze. "Wasn't there supposed to be some Pokemon's cry after I clicked A?"
I mumbled once again to myself, but then I shook my head. I had to make myself realize this was just some stupid hacked game, it's not a real Pokemon game. I clicked "New Game" and continued. The game was apparently Heart Gold or Soul Silver since there was no introduction but the game did give you an option of picking your gender and the characters were the same. I picked my character and continued even though it didn't ask for my name. I started in the same house and went downstairs. The character's mom wasn't in the kitchen as usual. I ignored it and went over to the professor's lab, I wasn't stopped by the character that was should've been Ethan or Lyra. I went inside the lab, not noticing that no one else was outside. I walked up to Professor Elm and pressed A to talk to him. "Sorry, no more Pokemon." He said.
"What?" I gasped. I tried talking to him but he said the same exact thing over and over again. I shrugged and went to talk to his assistant. "No Pokemon here." the text box for him popped up then disappeared. I walked outside the lab, not sure what to do. My usual red-haired rival wasn't by the lab and the all the other people who were supposed to be in town weren't there. I snickered thinking that maybe they were all "murdered" like in most stupid hacked games.
I was about to go in the tall grass when a large group of policemen sprinted across the grass to stop me. "Sorry, you can't enter without a Pokemon. It's too dangerous. Come back later." is what they all said when I tried talking to them. So I couldn't leave but I couldn't get a Pokemon. What was I supposed to do? I went around the town checking all the houses, I went back to the lab and saw that the professor and his assistant were gone. I thought that the game was now failing because of the hacking but the game was behaving normally and the graphics looked like the original game. But when I went back outside, the police were gone. I decided to head into grass that looked like it had been cut. Well now I didn't have a Pokemon but wild Pokemon weren't going to attack me. I decided to head to the next town, it was empty too.
After a while, I realized how much faster the game went when you didn't have to battle at all. There were no trees to cut down or any reason to use any TMs or HMs, so that wasn't an issue as well. However, I was loosing interest since there was nothing to do. I even made it to the last city without battling or buying anything. Everyone was missing in that city too. Except when I got there, the gym was being blocked by four Pokemon. The three starter Pokemon fully evolved and a Togetic. I went and talked to them but all they did was jump up and a "!" appeared above their head. They all did that except Togetic. The animation for when a Pokemon uses the move "Fly" outside of battle appeared and it was Togetic who flew me back to the first city. It was on fire.
I couldn't help but gasping at the scene. Togetic flew off and left me alone in the flames. I went inside my burning house, the flames weren't actually hurting me so I was still unsure about what to do. Then I realized there was a pokeball on the ground which I knew it meant an item was there. I clicked on it and it said "Burned Painting" and it showed me pictures of people I knew, my neighbors, my friends, my family, etc. But they looked they were drawn in the same style of the way the creators Pokemon would draw, like the photos when you first enter a certain cave or something similar to that. I was really confused then, how would someone be able to hack that into a Pokemon game? On the last photo it showed me, it was written in something that I guess was supposed to be in blood, it said "April Fools."
My DS turned off at that point, I figured the game had broken it so I didn't bother turning it back on. When I first started playing that hacked game, I thought it would be super cliche where it's all death and revenge and all that but this was just confusing. I decided to go talk with my neighbor about the game the next day. So I did.
The next day, after a stupid conversation with my neighbor, I figured out he didn't know much about hacking or what his brother had done but I couldn't confront his brother since he wasn't home. I found out that the burning house was a stupid reminder of the movie I had watched with my neighbors last week, I laughed at that reason. We finally got to the topic of the pictures and the "April Fools" message written in blood. He looked at me like I was spouting paranormal crap. He finally said in a confused voice, knowing that his brother never put them in there. "What pictures?"