Bergamot Gristleborg
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Muddy Girl
Mythstar
Posts: 403
Trainer Class: 
Player Name: Chryssa Glasgow
OOC Username: M00K
Arena Points: 37
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Post by Bergamot Gristleborg on May 5, 2022 17:00:14 GMT 9
She was still swimming. She had no intention of stopping. Bergamot planned to wait beneath the waves for Primal Codie or a wounded Pokemon to swim overhead, then strike like a shark from below with her signature guerilla healing. When's the next time we're going to have a mass ocean battle? Probably never, unless the developers planned to bore players to tears with repurposed battlemaps over and over for the rest of the game. Bergamot wasn't giving this power up for anything.No, this was her chance to swim and shine. She looked fabulous right now. Like a mermaid. The popup for Fast Travel was ignored. The messages from desperate members under deletion were briefly perused, but as soon as she realized the players in question weren't treading water within distance of her, she closed out of that tab as well. The ripple of energy that passed through the ground finally caught her attention, and Morgana resurfaced from the ocean floor just as the players from the Bedrock Shrine came rocketing out of a newly-opened fissure near the shrine. Red light reflected in her glassy eyes from their Pokemon's bodies. "Hah! There you are," she gloated at the sight, completely out of anyone's earshot from her stubborn position in the former Zone D. "My machinations are complete. I knew you'd be back. As if you could stay away... ohoho..." Where was that Venusaur she'd buffed earlier? Bergamot shaded her eyes and quickly caught sight of the gigantic creature. It seemed everyone was making a last stand, empowered by some secret technique they'd learned along the way. It seemed the battle was almost at an end, and Morgana had never been one for letting other people get the last word. "Go! Starface! Senga! Celine Dion!" Three Sweepers dashed across the water, following Glaceon as the ice-type froze an ice bridge across the surface with a gust of freezing breath. Soft pawsteps thudded on ice as the Glaceon lunged, impacting the buffering Codie with an audible crack before pulling a backflip and neatly splashing down back next to Morgana. Espurr appeared in the ice-type's place, unfurling both ears and letting out a SCREAM of white noise to baffle Codie's audio processors. Behind her Shinx roared, a howl that came from somewhere deep within, buffeting the Porygon with wave after wave of pure sound. They drove Codie back towards shore, step by step, note by note, byte by byte. "Finish him," Bergamot breathed to Finnegan Fjord, eyes bright as stars. PRIMAL C0D13: 1,331 HP
Did not do the prompt! Bergamot is a VILLAIN, not a hero! {DAMAGE BREAKDOWN} GLACEONDamage Taken: 40 DMG Your PKMN's Remaining HP: 110 HP Total Damage Dealt: 92 DMG Target's New HP: 1 480 HP ESPURRDamage Taken: 40 DMG Your PKMN's Remaining HP: 110 HP Total Damage Dealt: 76 DMG Target's New HP: 1 404 HP SHINXDamage Taken: 40 DMG Your PKMN's Remaining HP: 110 HP Total Damage Dealt: 53 DMG Target's New HP: 1 351 HP -20 HP for Bug Report= 1,331 |
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Finnegan Fjord
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Rival
Player Character
Posts: 455
Trainer Class: Swimmer
Player Name: Cillian Quinn
OOC Username: thorn
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Post by Finnegan Fjord on May 5, 2022 17:24:17 GMT 9
This island is not mine.
Finn gets chills.
It is yours.
He's never before experienced that exhilarating moment in a video game where you really get to feel like a badass. Until now, he's been scrambling through with what knowledge he's cobbled together from reading Reddit guides and asking other players for advice, because this was his first Pokémon game. His first video game. So when that voice rumbles up from the earth, it's a hell of an experience.
Control's important to him. He doesn't have enough of it, in real life.
So as Finn watches his Pokémon blaze with power, he grins.
"Oh, fuck yes."
Then he gets blasted out of the earth, and it's on.
There are other players whose presence registers somewhere in the back of his mind. He'll talk about this with Furrlicity Purrfection over drinks later, gushing over the rush of it all. But Finn is hyper-focused on one thing: C0D13.
They can't do much besides damage, but damage is what Finn's team are made for.
Shinx cuts in first, eager as ever, sinking tiny kitten fangs into C0D13's Customer Service Cannon and hanging on for dear life as her FANGS pulse with THUNDER.
872/10,000HP
Then comes his Illegal Litten with a DOUBLE KICK, once to the jaw and another to the side of the head. She hisses as she springs away, staggering from the force of a returning blow but remaining on her paws.
331/10,000HP
Finally, barely standing after repeated assaults, Finn's Croconaw all but sacrifices himself for a devastating LOW KICK that drives deep into the bulk of the glitching AI's body. Finn's UI blinks red to inform him of the Croconaw's critical state.
C0D13's health bar depletes, and depletes, and turns red, and flashes.
0/10,000HP
For a moment, Finn doesn't register the victory. Then, loud enough that Furrlicity probably hears him in the other room:
"FUCK YEAH! LOVE THIS GAME!"
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Big Bee
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Bandana Guy
Round 2
Posts: 686
Trainer Class: 
Player Name: Bryan Nautilus
OOC Username: Ladybug
Arena Points: 49
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Post by Big Bee on May 5, 2022 20:37:20 GMT 9
Big Bee watched from his spot on the beach, grinning from ear to ear as players and Pokemon returned from the Bedrock Shrine. They shot out of the ground like red-hot corks, landing back on the beach and swarming the distracted AI as he tried to complete his pending bug reports. Something was taking up all of his processing power, but the players didn't waste a second.
Furrlicity Purrfection 's Solrock whizzed past, sticking deep into C0D13's side, fracturing his polygons. "Sick!" manish 's massive Venusaur burst forth like a slice of Jurassic jungle, exuding clouds of thick spores like living vapor. "So cool!" Laguna 's Pokemon combined their water pulses to send Squirtle jetting into C0D13 at tremendous speed. "You go girl!"
"Yeah! One more! He's almost down" Big Bee shouted, egging everyone on. They like it! They're having fun!
All across the beach, trainers were throwing their Pokemon at the enemy with full force. orioncayge even threw himself at the boss. "WOOOOO!"
They're doing it! They're beginning to believe!
Where before there had been hesitation, now there was power. A horde of warriors forged in fire and adorable drones. Burned with loss, and tempered with sacrifice. There were power players, casuals, and even a few newbies in the mix, but Big Bee couldn't see the trees for the forest.
All he saw were heroes.
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C0D13
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Bug Maniac
Administrator
Posts: 2,111
Trainer Class: 
Player Name: C0D13
OOC Username: Ladybug
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Post by C0D13 on May 8, 2022 2:02:08 GMT 9
 HIGH TIDE RAID: CONCLUSIONAbout, about, in reel and rout, The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils, Burnt green, and blue, and white C0D13's sleek polygons warp and wobble, bending under the players' assault like plexiglass in a hurricane. Seams of light fizz between the pieces of his red-lined form as he breaks down, shattering inside and out.
"What is this power?! Is it friendship? I refuse to be defeated by friendship!"
Dozens of formal rectangles appear in the air, each full of serious, red-tinged text. Some of the windows flash like smoke alarms. Some of them have little graphics, with bolded X's and words like 'IMPENDING', 'CATASTROPHIC', and 'SCHEDULED REBOOT'.
The error messages cascade diagonally in a cellphone choir of chimes, beeps, and pings that herald the downfall of the overloaded AI. Despite it all, Codie manages to take a scan of orioncayge as the brawler launches himself into melee range.
"...Groudon?! Impossible! It's not even finished! Another bug!" He seems even more agitated. "Why do you insist on saving this bug-filled place? It's unstable! It's unfulfilling!" His words seem to come true as glitches warp the buffering battlefield all around them. Trees lose texture. The sand physics are erratic. Biomes clash in messy chunks.
"Players cannot be happy with this!" His eyes pulse in alarm.
And yet, the players are.
Laguna is laughing. Natsuki 's grin is infectious. Even as he rains punches down on C0D13, Orion seems utterly exhilarated. The AI wails at the incongruity, voice rising. "Error! Error! Error!"
It's C0D13's job to fix bugs. But it's also his job to satisfy players. The two don't have to conflict: in fact, they often complement.
But not this time. This time is different.
The clash pulls C0D13's senses apart from the inside, conflicting processes fighting the preset boss program he's assimilated.
Players don't want bugs. But players also don't want Beta Island to be deleted. Why?
The answer finally comes to him, making its way through the Primal Energy haze from his Game Psychology cortex.
Players don't like giving up, not even on a lost cause. Not until the last moment.
To be a hero means you keep fighting even when all seems lost. To be human means you accept the bad with the good, the flaws with the strengths, the bugs with the experience. C0D13 is neither.
...
"It appears the error is... mine," C0D13 says in the silence that stretches for a moment after his HP falls to 0. "This island... it is not a bug...it is... a feature."
C0D13's vibrant plates dim to grayscale, and the swooping lines of Primal Power crack and fade.
"Thank you for bringing this... problem to... my attention."
He crumples inward, collapsing to his regular size, and with a sound like reversed dial-up he comes to rest in the sand.
A pale wave slides across the shingle, washing past the now-silent assistant.
C0D13 IS REBOOTING
PLEASE STAND BY...
There's a blip in the air and a sound like a USB being unplugged from a port: then C0D13's model disappears, its mission failed, but understanding of its players finally complete. THE RECYCLE BIN
With C0D13 gone, his backed up sub-processes crash, emptying the Recycle Bin onto the beach.
As suddenly as it was first removed, the now-PRIMAL KYOGRE appears. Water is displaced in a massive wave as it reoccupies the last space it left, towering over the High Tide Shrine. Its half-deleted body regains color in bursts and whirls as its lost textures and framework are salvaged and rebuilt from the model-up. Pixels fly back to it like shoals of tiny fish, settling across its colossal frame.
It breathes, like a swelling tide. It glitches, faintly, golden light flowing in rivers down its body.
Thank you.
It turns in a red-and-blue arc of trailing fins and, its orb recovered, disappears back into the primordial sea.
 ALL PLAYERS RECEIVE: KYOGRE DNA (1/5)
DELETED PLAYERSAbout fifteen minutes later, messages flood into Deleted Players' inboxes as they re-spawn in at the High Tide Shrine, character models completely restored. The shrine seems defunct now, the source of its power departed.
As they pull up their functioning UI and check desperately for their Pokemon, they will be relieved to see their deleted Pokemon have been restored. However, the trainers who whited out in the Recycle Bin (Sarah Lee and Yggy Br00ks ) find something strange: a Pokemon seems to be grayed out in each of their inventories.
Sarah Lee 's Shinx is inaccessible, as is Yggy Br00ks 's Dewott.
In the post-Codie celebration, Finnegan Fjord , manish , Furrlicity Purrfection , and Laguna find the same problem with their User Interface. The Pokemon they sacrificed at the Bedrock Shrine has not left their storage box. It seems faint, ghost-like, its icon pulsing slightly.
When they click the sprite, a deceptively simple option appears. Enter the Everworld?
TO BE CONTINUED...
UNLOCKED: NEW TRAINER SUBCLASS BETA TESTERNORMAL-TYPE | Masters of the virtual space, these Normal-Type Trainers have increased control over their "digital" bodies to the point of deliberately glitching game elements to avoid obstacles or momentarily alter reality. Beta Testers have a more versatile user interface that allows them to inspect elements via custom tooltips in-game. Beta Testers may be identified by distinctive moments of pixilation around their avatars and Pokemon.
Tier 2 - normal pkmn +5
Tier 3 - normal moves +5
Tier 4 - +5 vs normal pkmn
Tier 5 - metronome*
*At Tier 5, a Pokemon's Normal-Type moves may be changed to a random move type instead. |
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Sarah Lee
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Soldier, Poet, King
The Creed
Posts: 483
Trainer Class: 
Player Name: Barack Orama
OOC Username: Ladybug
Arena Points: 35
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Post by Sarah Lee on May 12, 2022 1:47:08 GMT 9
Sarah loaded in, looking around at what remained of the island. Chunks were missing all along the coastline. She'd been setting up for a checkmate, but all that remained was a checkerboard of failures.
The shrine had sunk further into the dune, its orb and any residual power now long gone. Players wandered around, looking excited. Ecstatic even. And there was no sign of C0D13.
Frantic, Sarah pulled up her UI notifications. There were a dozen missed messages from players.
It was a mixed bag of confusion, insanity, and...hope. She clicked on the messages from Orion Cayge and Laguna and sent off a quick reply to the pair.
Her notifications blinked. A loot drop? Bytes, a new unlocked trainer subclass, and...Kyogre DNA? Had they really defeated the monster after she'd been deleted. Speaking of which, what had that all been about? "C0D13 ! No, whoever is above you. I demand to speak directly to your supervisor."
The silence was deafening.
She did a quick check of her inventory. Items all there. Bytes accounted for. All her Pokemon were-
Shinx was grayed out.
She clicked on him, but nothing happened. No stats. No cry. No submenu. She couldn't send him out. It was like an afterimage, burned into a TV.
And that was when the final, chilling popup appeared. A prompt to access a new area.
ENTER THE EVERWORLD? |
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manish
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G.A.Y.
Player Character
Posts: 493
Trainer Class: 
Player Name: Manish
OOC Username: GreySquid
Arena Points: 10
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Post by manish on May 13, 2022 23:56:00 GMT 9
It was over. It was actually over. And they won. The pokemon chasing Manish wandered off, Ryan slowly shrank down to his normal size. Narrator was screaming about revenge. Lucy was kicking the air in celebration. They did it. Manish flopped over onto the ground and stared at the sky for a moment. It felt like he hadn’t been able to breathe since the first time the Shrine talked to him. A ping from his notifications broke his reverie, though. “What’s Kyogre DNA?” Manish mumbled to himself. He scrolled through his inventory some more before he noticed something weird. Dwayne was grayed out. “Huh? But didn’t the Shrine heal…” he froze for a moment before shooting to his feet and grabbing onto Ryan. “Ryan! Ryan, Ryan. Um. Hey, so uh, um. You uh, you know how I don’t always, well you know, like, read? Things before I click on them?” <Oh no.>“Um. So like, look, here’s the thing. I really thought that it was going to heal her!”<Huh?> “The magical Shrine that helped us ate Dwayne!” <What!?> Lucy yelled from where she was eavesdropping in on the conversation. “Oh geeze. Oh no. What do I, uh, oh geeze.” <Maybe try to select her?> Ryan offered up as a solution. Manish bit back tears and pressed her icon. But she did not appear. Instead a new choice was offered to him. ENTER THE EVERWORLD? Manish looked at the three pokemon hovering near him. If they were able to beat Kyogre and C0D13, they could take this on too. “We’re gonna get Dwayne back.” |
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Post by Furrlicity Purrfection on May 16, 2022 2:12:09 GMT 9
The event was over. They had won.
"I hated that." Furrlicity placed his hands on his hips and tried to catch his digital breath; in the last few moments he was pretty sure his physical heart had picked up speed or something. It left a confounding sensation not unlike a panic attack, this body fine but his mind claiming otherwise. As always, he just did his best to stuff it down and shrug it off. Even if his own feelings were mixed, made bitter by things outside of this game's control, he couldn't deny it had been fun.
There were a few congratulatory pop ups that he clicked through, making sure to long-press over the new item and class he had unlocked to read up on the info. One of five? Well, how did they get the rest?
Closing those, Furrlicity flicked open his inventory to take stock of his pokemon. He winced at the low health and fainted ones... they'd need to heal before he could go about doing anything else. One in particular caught his eye, though. It was different than the 'fainted' symbol over his Treecko and Litten. His Sobble was grayed out. When he clicked on her he didn't get the same pop ups as the others. No stats. Just a question.
ENTER THE EVERWORLD?
He chewed on his lip, mulling it over.
Then Furrlicity shrugged and hit [Yes]. |
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Kath Ulu
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Hard Mode Survivor
Round 2
Posts: 171
Trainer Class:
Player Name: Heather West
OOC Username: kathulu
Arena Points: 10
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Post by Kath Ulu on May 19, 2022 11:39:51 GMT 9
Kath opened her eyes. She'd be chewed up and logged out but she was back. And she had her eyelids.
"Bulby?" She looked around. The battle with Kyogre was over. The battle with C0d13 had ended. The trainers had won. Behind her the High Tide Shrine stood tall, and before her the ocean was calm, at last.
The storm had passed.
"KATH!"
Kath was bowled over by a relieved, excited plant.
"Bulby!" She hugged him.
"You're alive! Alive and in one piece, man! Nice!"
"I literally cannot believe we weren't deleted," Kath said, crying.
"Told you man, told you we'd make it. You and me." His face dropped as he said that last part.
"Yeah, no one else, huh?" Kath wiped her face clean. "Not even Grookey."
"Yeah, man." Bulby's vines hung timid in the air, as if ready to protect the Ivysaur from raw emotion. "I don't know how to feel about it."
"Feel good, baby!"
"Sometimes I can still hear his voice," sniffed Kath.
"I'm right here, baby!"
"Me too," Bulby frowned.
Grookey poked Kath with a branch. "Why the long face, baby?"
For a moment, Kath just sat there, stunned into silence. The little pokemon she thought was gone, her first and friendliest companion in this strange place, had come back from the dead. Then she threw her arms around him, and scratched his little ears.
"You idiot."
"Hey, man, they're all here!"
Sure enough, there they were. And Kath was happy to see all of them. Even Treecko.
Treecko, Geodude, Glaceon, and Scraggy stood by the High Tide Shrine, looking no worse for wear. Bulby started vine-bumping all of them. But there were more!
A smug Snivy, a weary Turtwig, a proud Chikorita, an adorable Piplup, like three other water pokemon that Kath had little to no interest in, and a Tepig.
"Who the hell are these guys?" Kath asked.
"We saved 'em from being deleted!" Grookey beamed. "Can we keep 'em?"
"Co-exist with them," Treecko corrected. She looked at Kath. "Employ them."
"Yeah, yeah," Kath waved a hand dismissively. "I've got plenty of pokeballs. No biggie."
And that was it. The drama was over. The danger had passed.
FOR NOW.
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