We never tried to get Pikablu again after that – I barely picked up my Yellow version again, I was too annoyed at having lost my almost-full Pokedex. In fact, the next time I traded Pokemon with Jeff was when Gold and Silver versions came out, a couple of years later. By then we were both in middle school, clearly much older and wiser and beyond such myths. Friends had come and gone for both of us even in that short a time, but we stuck together, and we were both still Pokemon playing fiends. Once again, I was determined to complete my Pokedex, and in order to do so, we had to trade from the original games with the Time Capsule. Jeff would come over after school almost every day and we’d spend hours catching the Pokemon and legendaries we’d missed in Red and Blue and transferring entire PC boxes full of the original 150 Pokemon over to his Gold version and my Silver one.
One late afternoon, while we were going through the process of searching our PC boxes, I came across the Pikachu I’d traded from my Yellow version what felt like ages ago, but was really just a few years. I took a look at its sprite – it still looked kind of sad to me. In fact, its sadness seemed more noticeable to me now. Its tail seemed to droop, and it looked like it was… pouting, almost. But that was probably just the memory of it clouding my judgement.
“Hey, Jeff, boot up my Silver version, I wanna move my old Pikachu into it.”
“Oh man, I remember that thing! You never put it back into your Yellow game?”
“No, I never tried again. But I never caught a Pikachu in Silver.”
“You know, you never gave me mine back, either. I had to totally restart my Yellow version again.”
“Yeah, well. Fly to the nearest Pokemon center, okay?”
”Sure, I’ll make sure your party’s all old ones, too. Does it still look kind of depressed to you?”
I paused for a moment at his question, then showed him my Gameboy.
“It totally does. That’s… that’s really creepy…”
“It’s not just me, then?”
“No, it… it looks sadder.”
Unable to decide what to make of this, we were both silent as we prepared the trade.
“Maybe it really will evolve into a Pikablu,” I joked after a while, trying to lighten the mood. Jeff laughed.
“I have like twelve Marills. I don’t even like Marill. You ready?”
“Yeah, I’m sending it over.”
We lolled around watching the trading animation for a little while, discussing our mutual distaste for Marill and Azumarill, when suddenly Jeff jumped up from the corner of my living room floor he was sitting on.
“Holy CRAP! It’s SHINY!! Your Pikachu is shiny like the Red Gyarados!”
“REALLY?!”
I practically bowled Jeff over trying to get to see my screen, snatching the gameboy color with my Silver cartridge in it. He was right – there was the little star icon on its stats screen, and its body was a very different shade of yellow than it should be. It was the first Shiny Pokemon I’d ever seen besides the red Gyarados from the Lake of Rage. I was completely overjoyed, so much so that I barely noticed how unhappy the sprite also looked, and my mood carried through the entire rest of the evening, after Jeff had gotten picked up by his mom, after I’d eaten dinner with my family, and that night, as I lay in bed under the covers, playing Silver version with a light attached to my link cable port.
I was leveling up my Pikachu, waiting for it to evolve so I could finally own a shiny Raichu. But it never happened. Level 30… nothing. 35… nothing… and I was starting to get sleepy. Then I remembered – Pikachu evolved with a Thunderstone, not by leveling up… duh. And I’d just gotten one from a trainer I’d beaten! I flipped through my inventory screen as fast as I could until I found it near the bottom of the Items list, selected USE and then my Pikachu.
“ASH’S PIKACHU refuses!”
…What? I tried it again.
“ASH’S PIKACHU refuses!”
It… it didn’t want to evolve? Didn’t that only happen in Yellow version? Could it not evolve at a certain level or something? And it was still using the name Ash from that old version… I checked my Pikachu’s stats screen just in case, and with a creeping shudder, realized that I hadn’t been imagining things before – its sprite in this version of the game looked depressed as well. In fact, it was a lot more visible now – pretty much beyond a doubt, that sprite wasn’t normal. It was definitely frowning, and looking slightly down. I quickly closed out of the stats screen, and desperately tried one last time to use the Thunderstone on it.
“ASH’S PIKACHU refuses!”
I groaned a little, half out of exasperation and half out of nerves. Why was my game doing this? Why this one Pikachu? All I wanted was a shiny Raichu!! I put my Gameboy down quietly, not wanting to alert my parents that I was still awake at this hour, and took a deep breath. So there was some kind of glitch or corrupt data around this one particular Pokemon or something. Fine. That’s not weird at all. The original games were really glitchy.
…Maybe I could breed another shiny Pikachu and evolve that?
Without a second thought, I Flew on my Crobat to Goldenrod, grabbed a Jigglypuff out of my PC to breed my Pikachu with, and biked over to the Day Care. I was almost glad to get that Pikachu out of my party and into the little pen outside the Day Care – it felt like a dark cloud had been lifted from over me. I stepped outside – the two sprites sat idling behind the white picket fence of the Day Care, just like they normally would. Hopefully they were compatible. Oh wait, I could check that, couldn’t I? Heading back inside, I talked to the old man I’d given Pikachu to.
“Your PIKACHU and JIGGLYPUFF are doing just fine! The two don’t seem to like each other very much.”
Crap. So much for that. Maybe I could find a Snubbull or something to breed with it instead. As I contemplated this, however, another line of dialogue popped up on screen.
“Your PIKACHU seems too homesick to play with other Pokemon.”
I whimpered. I’d never seen that happen before. My strategy guide definitely never mentioned that happening, either. What was going on?
“Your PIKACHU doesn’t seem to want to level up. Would you like it back?”
Doesn’t it normally cost money, even for five seconds of Day-Care? Doesn’t want to level up? What?! I took it back and frantically checked its stats screen again. Its sprite had changed once again. Was… was it crying? I flipped through the each of the three screens – I don’t even know what I was looking for at this point, I just needed some kind of a sign that I was just imagining this whole thing, I suppose – and on the third one, under the “OT” section I saw the word “ASH”. Below that, just barely fitting on the screen, was a three word phrase.
“PLEASE COME BACK”
That proved it… something was wrong with that Pikachu. Maybe it was a glitch? Maybe I really should put it back into my old Yellow version? But I’d lost my the cartridge months ago…
Finally, I decided I’d just get rid of it. Clearly, the thing was glitched up. I didn’t want it messing up my game. Faster than was probably necessary, I walked to the nearest PC, selected the Pikachu and then selected RELEASE. I noticed that I felt somewhat relieved again as I read the “Bye-bye, PIKACHU!” text – probably because that thing was pretty creepy. I saved my game as soon as it was gone, turned my gameboy off and finally curled up under the covers, closing my eyes. For some reason, it took a long time for me to fall asleep, and when I did, I was plagued by nightmares of running away from a crying Pokemon.
