hey. i noticed you were collecting stories; coincidentally i was a “side character” in both of them.

ill make things short: there’s a third part. three’s always a nice, good number to end things with. i was a little creeped out by how you had collected what is essentially my internet history (I was xshadowbanex and lillithinshadows- well i still am the latter) entirely coincidentally but i also knew i had collected screenshots of what happened before it was wiped for a reason.

so, uh. fuck. i guess i’m submitting my own “final chapter”. well, here it is. enjoy.

-lily

i tried to put down the game, i really did. but i was feeling weird and jumpy and like i had to see this through. so i took a look at my new party member. i wish i had screenshots of this part because lyla was... well, you had to see it to believe it. it sounds so fake but she was absolutely COVERED in blood especially around her mouth. (probably from killing all my pokemon, that asshole)

hardy nature, terrible ivs, level 100... but um. the OT gave me pause.

“STAR”

i felt like i had suddenly gotten very very cold. you might recognize that name (as well as the espeons name) from that disappeared gamefaqs user. i was friends with her, but the sort of friends where you’re a shitty teenager who makes fun of them behind their back because of how “cringey” they were and it just feels kind of miserable because they always assumed you had good intentions.

uh, yeah. i was kind of an asshole in my forum-days and i deeply regret that. we’ve all been 15 at some point i think we all get it.

anyway: that was HER espeon, and i was beginning to remember our wifi battles and her team and her drawings she used to post on the forum even though it wasn’t really a place for uploading art, even if it was all distant... so there was this huge pit in my stomach

because if the espeon was here for some kind of revenge- even going as far as killing my pokemon... WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO STAR????? like what demanded such a retribution? perhaps i was right to feel so guilty

despite my usual curiosity for the broken immersion of games, i kept to using meowscarada for a while. i even fought a couple more gyms and bases! and i tried to deposit the espeon into my boxes, but nothing seemed to stick. it was always there, lingering in my party. but it didn't do anything, yet. until i headed into the snowscapes of the northern province.

and while i headed up glaseado mountain, my character stopped abruptly and the espeon- lyla- emerged from its pokeball without any prompting. it wasn't even in the lead of my party.

i stared at the screen incredulously while my character remained still (or rather, as still as she could with the slight drift on my joycons.) the espeon trilled and jumped around in a circle around me, flecks of blood spilling like particles off of its open wounds. it found revelry in its cruelty.

it then turned to me and became very still.

“LYLA would like you to try making a sandwich.”

ah. a picnic. i laughed really hard admittedly. something about the idea of this ghost(?) in the game calmly requesting a delicious sandwich was hilarious.

in response to my laughter, it glared a little, its expression oddly stern.

well, might as well sate its hunger, i thought, and selected picnic from the main menu. lyla sat beside my character obediently, though i had the distinct sense that i was the one who was obeying...

meowscarada wouldn’t look at me, and kept its distance. koraidon was still missing.

so, i started up a sandwich. the cheery accordian music felt awfully dissonant. as i went to select my recipe- i hadn’t bought ingredients in a while so a simple ham sandwich would have to do, i thought- i was interrupted.

“LYLA has selected the recipe. Please wait...”

a grotesque display awaited me, bloodied chunks of pokemon organized neatly into the little ingredient boxes. the usual timer was absent. the camera was tilted a little so i could see across the table and it slightly obscured my view of the ingredients. still, i could tell exactly how morbid my task would be.

this had to be a joke.

i usually think of myself as pretty tough and desensitized considering i grew up on the early internet (with all that entails) but sometimes even drawn gore does squick me the hell out, if it was detailed enough. well, i was pretty damn squicked.

lyla stared at me from across the table, with a serious expression. i didn’t want to pick up those disgusting gibs but it seems there was no way to back out of the espeon’s game.

i moved my pointer to the first box. focusing on the ingredients moved the camera so i could get a better look at them, so i sort of wish i hadn’t.

“BLU’s loyalty”, the text helpfully informed me. the ingredient was bleeding blue scales ripped away from what was clearly once a feraligatr, on closer inspection, with remains of torn-away viscera and flesh beneath its armor. the music gradually faded away into a low droning sound.

hadn’t star picked totodile?

i picked up one chunk of the skin and immediately dropped it, not quite accustomed to the controls and how you had to keep holding down A. lyla’s ravaged, torn ear flicked impatiently.

i picked up another one and carefully laid them all out on the bread. there was something hilarious, almost camp, about the framing of a sandwich minigame so the horror was beginning to wear off a little.

next, bloody brown feathers and piles and piles of unrecognizable meat and innards. a fearow’s beak was stuck through what looked like a stomach or some other organ.

“KENYA’s message.”

huh, the gift spearow. it probably never got to deliver its letter, then.

i picked up the pieces bit by pit and laid it on top of the bloody scales on the bread. then, only the stabbed organ remained. i picked it up by the detatched beak stabbed through its center.

“You’ll use that later.” the beak disappeared. i forgot to keep holding the organ so it fell down onto the tablecloth and promptly disappeared, though not without leaving streaks of blood on its surface.

chilling implications, there.

next ingredient, the cracked exoskeleton of a scizor, including bits of its “skull” (how lovely!)

“ANGELA’s armor.”

“that’s an awfully crunchy sandwich,” i said under my breath, moving them onto the. lyla then let out a shrill cry at me, slamming its bloody paws onto the tablecloth.

i didn’t know exactly what it wanted from me, but i bit my tongue and figured i ought not to make any more jokes.

i carefully brought over the brittle exoskeleton, bits crackling and flaking away if i took too long or brought it over too forcefully. this part was admittedly a bit of a reprieve. it didn’t bother me as much as the blood- i had never been too scared of bugs. i finished quickly.

it was back to guts and organs, next. a long, twisted spine and piles of intestines and clumps of brown fur.

“KAWAII’s agony.”

these were definitely star’s pokemon. that’s the kind of name only a 12 year old pokemon fan with a certain kind of innocence could use unironically.

i remembered this team. i had battled it, once or twice. i think kawaii was her furret.

i had to keep going. it was the only thing i knew to do.

so, i placed the spine across the top of the sandwich. ingredients were starting to feebly fall off; i don’t think performing well at the game was the point here. the intestines made comically awful squelching noises as i picked them up and laid them on the pile of bloody bits.

i was starting to get grossed out again so i hastened my pace through the gory minigame. everything bounced out of balance and off of the sandwich and into the ether, of course.

i moused over to the second-to-last ingredient, more of a mush than anything with tufts of dull yellow among the sea of sickly pink. a red gemstone floated in the middle.

“SPARKS’s martyrdom.”

an electric type, definitely. i can’t remember which. the viscera slipped through my digital fingers even as i perfectly performed the task. gingerly i placed the gemstone in the center of the sandwich. the camera panned up to lyla again, its stare colder than ever. i didn’t get it. these pokemon were surely its friends and team-mates once.

what happened?

what happened to star?

the final box of “tasty ingredients” loomed.

“LYLA’s heart.”

i recognized all the parts that were missing from the espeon across the table. a bloody ruby from its forehead, a tattered eartip, the torn off end of its tail. and in the middle, a heart. a still-beating, shuddering heart.

the beat was perfectly in sync with my own.

i continued the dreadful task. the ear, the tail, the gemstone, and then all that remained was the heart.

i moved the cursor over the heart, but my joycon drift must have been acting up because i couldn’t get close to it without being moved shakily back.

“YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN YOUR HEART,” the text beneath the ingredient read now. “YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HER.”

“i remember now,” i said. finally the game let me grab the heart. i couldn’t move it onto the sandwich so i had to just keep holding the pulsating organ.

“IF YOU REMEMBER THEN SAY HER NAME”

the phrase repeated over and over and over again, scrolling across the screen. not only in the text box, but pure text overwriting the horrors being displayed until the screen were painted over with white with the sheer volume of it.

“her name was star,” i said, finally, my mouth dry. “manaphystar98, i think.”

the switch turned black. it must have shut down. as i moved to wake it, it displayed the indicator for low battery.

...was it over?

it was but a moment before i heard the all-too-familiar ping of a discord message.

of course it wasn't.

i didn’t write anything in discord for this part either so ill try and recall everything myslef

i felt a distinct sense of dread as i walked through the ruins of alph and awaited the cutscene to take me to sinjoh. what ever awaited me there was exactly whatever had killed or taken or done SOMETHING to the friend i only half-remembered having, a lifetime ago.

as the unown began stirring around me (like normal, id reccomend looking up the cutscene yourself), the NPC accompanying me only provided a pensive “...” instead of the shock and awe of the game’s script. there was a distinct finality. he knew what I was here for, or perhaps the game itself did. or maybe it was lyla...

cynthia and the hiker were too silent. instead of the usual cutscenes, I was able to progress into the mystri stage on my own accord.

the door... the nonexistent door star went through loomed in the back. i wouldnt dare. i couldnt.

at the center of the ritualistic room, an espeon lay in tatters. long-dried blood.

a cutscene began, finally, as I approached it with my player character. “ethan” or “gold” or whatever hadn’t felt like a representation of me in a long, long time and i remember feeling particularly disquieted by this. the camera panned up to the espeon and it began to breath, its chest heaving.

the provided arceus appeared from its pokeball. but i had a feeling we weren’t going to be making any level 1 giratinas/dialgas/palkias (i was right)

“ARCEUS is bowing its head to the martyred one.”
“LYLA is awaiting the final blow.”
“...”
“She is awaiting your mercy.”

“i don’t know what im supposed to do.”

i waited and waited for something to happen for what felt like forever. pressing a did nothing

but finally! a text box appeared.

“LYLA misses the stars.”

“please talk to me. i don’t understand.”

“LYLA wonders if you understand how SHE felt now. To be so lost... To make so terrible a choice...”
“It’s an uncomfortable situation, right?”
“Perhaps you should just leave instead.”

the espeon shuddered, reaching a paw towards the player character.

another quiet eternity.

“LYLA has been left here a long time.”
“Didn’t it annoy you and torment you? Break all your toys?”
“Wouldn’t you love the story to be over?”
“If you martyr LYLA you will bring peace.”
“It will be over.”
“It will be normal.”
“The ORIGINAL ONE will come. And release HER.”
“...Do you really believe that?”
“Better finish the job and see!”

the options on the bottom screen were replaced with one button, a menu button with the icon for the “sharp beak” item haphazardly placed over it- almost eagerly- was bouncing up and down, beckoning me to use the handy touch screen UI. there was a strange deliberateness to it.

kenya. the fearow. the beak that would “be used later”. i had an inkling what it was for.

this felt wrong. see i think i know what the choice was now... sacrificing lyla to see the “real arceus” was... well it was terribly unoriginal. star already did that. i don’t think that would have saved her, at least not without putting me in her place instead

i hope to god i didnt make a selfish choice by not wanting to make myself the next “prophetess”.

“is this a test? did i fail? i can’t do it.”

i waited in front of the bedraggled thing for as long as I could, just waiting for anything to happen.

“EITHER KILL IT OR LEAVE”

“i cant.” i was at least adamant about that even if i didnt really understand what was going on.

after an eon, the music stopped, slowly fading out. i let out the breath i had been holding, but that turned into an awkward choking gasp when i heard the sound effect of something walking through a door

the female player character appeared in the hole in the back, and silently walked on to the stage. my heart stopped.

it couldn’t be. it wasnt...

she knelt before the bloodied espeon and wept. the following dialogue blurred the line between narration and speech. i can't tell who spoke it.

“LYLA has died in peace...”
“No ritual, no martyr...”
“No God.”
“Just death, and you by her side.”
“Steadfast in your last moments.”
“It is what it wanted.”
“And it will remain with you, in a way.”

she wept silently for a solid minute. then the girl disappeared, spinning away like another user exiting the union room.

“All this for me...” “You really were my best friend after all.”

(did she say that to lyla... or to me?)

the screen flashed repeatedly while playing the surf animation. beside myself, i set my DS down, and my racing heart finally settled.

i saved and quit once i had reawakened in the ruins of alph. true to her word, all traces of lyla’s conversation were gone from my DMs... as well as everything I had documented of my scarlet playthrough. (im glad i had the foresight to screenshot them... i had an inkling that id be making a scarlet review and wanted to save my notes on it. that, uh, obviously didnt happen.)

i checked the time on my computer’s clock, and realized that it was still the same day i had purchased the game. it was odd... i could have sworn more time had passed. i still can’t explain that one. i guess i was just sleepy

and then i finally let myself cry over what happened in 2010, and the girl whos ascension had haunted me so long.