#Red aside the amount of energy drinks and caffeine he was consuming were already traumatic enough | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

purefandomonium · 1 year

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Glitchy Red Oneshot

This is NOT canon to Connection, I just got carried away with the writing again and this became its own thing. It might as well be an AU for my AU. I was writing little oneshots to figure out some characterization and while I really like this it doesn't fit the version of Red I'm working with at all. So here we are. It reads more in-line with OG Glitchy Red from the pokepasta in terms of the way he torments the player, except he's not as direct here. Couple warnings: psychological torture, mild suggestion of suicide (it doesn't actually happen but because it's technically mentioned I'd like to let people know), trauma

This was inspired by my recent fascination with glitches and how they work on the OG games. I LOVE learning about how old games run and handle the programming and all that. Don't understand a lick of it but fascinating nonetheless. I sorta fell down the rabbit hole watching different YouTube vids on the subject and that got me wondering: holy fuck that shit must be traumatic for someone in Red's shoes. I kept imagining a scenario where a player was exploiting the game to that degree and this was born.

Writing below the cut

This particular player was very infuriating. It appeared that he was deliberately trying to get as many glitches as possible. Not just Missingno or ZZAZZ—but any and every error that would cause the game to grind to a halt. Crashing it and corrupting text boxes wasn’t helping; this particular player seemed to enjoy it even more when that happened. He even had the audacity to tell RED he was a joke when asked.

Fine. If he wanted to test limits, so be it.

After a long day of monitoring and recording Pokémon Red’s many faults, Sebastian was hungry, tired and stiff as a board. A quick trip to the microwave followed by a shower was all it took to fix two of his issues. Last on his list was to get ready for bed. He dozed off thinking about how impressive it was that the developers were able to make something so complex work, despite the multiple setbacks their methods introduced. The game may be old and an obvious first-step for people unfamiliar with computers, but it held up surprisingly well given the broken nature of the code. It was fascinating.

Before he knew it, he was out cold.

Sebastian jolted awake and shot up in his bed, shirt and hair damp and clinging to him. It took him several seconds to orient himself and realize that he was still in his bed, in his room, away from… whatever that was. He couldn’t for the life of him recall what he’d seen that scared him awake like that. In a way, that fact brought a strange comfort to him. He reached for his phone to check the time. His eyes strained to make out the smaller-than-usual numbers.

That was odd… He couldn’t read the time. He recognized the symbols as numbers and a part of his brain knew what they were but… it just wasn’t registering. Ah, well. The darkness that filled his room was a good indicator that it was still nighttime. Some cold water and a quick trip to the bathroom would clear his head enough to fall back asleep.

As his feet touched the floor he felt an unusual sensation. The normal coolness of the floor was still present but it felt different somehow, shifting beneath him. Almost unstable. Like he was walking on sand or something. It was enough to put him on edge.

He was morbidly aware of how thick the darkness felt and, despite the coolness beneath his feet, his lungs began feeling warm and heavy. Something akin to a sudden burst of extreme humidity.

He shook his head and took even steps out of his room, refusing to let some childish nighttime fear get to him. The heaviness in his lungs didn’t leave him as he trekked to the bathroom. By the time he reached his destination, it felt like there was something inside his chest that was pulling the air out of him as soon as he sucked it in. His breaths were heavy and labored yet he felt like he wasn’t even breathing. He reached for the light switch.

The bathroom was bathed in an ugly shade of orange. Sebastian wasn’t worried about the abnormal lighting, instead focused solely on what should have been his reflection.

The face that peered back at him wasn’t his own, nor did it look like anyone that he knew. In fact, it could hardly be called a face. If it weren’t for the vague appearance of hair on its head and the pair of eyes that was wrong, wrong, wrong he would’ve thought it some kind of prank. But who would break into someone’s apartment just to—paint?—some messed up abstract of a human face on their mirror? The eyes suddenly blinked and he realized he hadn’t taken a breath since turning on the light. He tried to gasp but no air reached him.

It felt like his lungs were pulled out by a powerful force.

He tossed the covers aside and made his way to the bathroom. He flinched at the blinding light and had to wait a minute as his eyes adjusted. He half-assed his matted hair, did his business and reached for the sink to wash his hands—

Only for an eardrum-shattering screech to send him stumbling into the tub. He hit the back of his head on the way down, but the only pain he was capable of registering was the horrid high-pitched shriek that continued to pierce his ears and echo in his mind. His hands couldn’t block the noise and he was in so much agony he couldn’t think, let alone will his body to go turn the damned thing off. Even opening his eyes caused immense pain, the sound somehow registering as massive, discolored distortion where the water was starting to overflow.

Before he knew it, he was drowning.

Somehow that terrified him.

Ever since that horrible night, every subsequent attempt to sleep was met with the same fate. He’d end up in a never-ending nightmare, each one worse than the last as some unknown force taunted him. To keep his mind off the time he focused on things that would keep him awake. Watching loud, obnoxious action movies at a volume just below what would be considered respectful for his neighbors. Doing random jumping jacks. Watching internet videos that irritated him. He only took freezing cold showers, well-aware that anything remotely warm would lull him to sleep, right into the hands of his unknown demons.

Last but in no way least, he continued to play Pokemon Red. If he was going to stay awake for ungodly amounts of time, why not spend it doing at least one thing he actually enjoyed? Despite having knowledge of the game’s code and knowing way too much about the intricacies of the Game Boy, there were just so many ways the Red cart could glitch out. Some of the things he’d never even heard of happening. He was making—an admittedly small and niche—history!

The first time he witnessed the unusual ‘glitches’ he assumed he’d been scammed and given a hacked version. After all, who had ever heard of the game ‘screaming’ that something hurt? It wasn’t just the text that told him it was suffering; the demonic cries and crackles it made during every crash only aided in proving its point. The corrupted tiles of the background seemed to show pleas of agony that he could almost make out if he had more time before the game crashed.

If the extent of the corruption was anything to go by after he’d managed to force the old man glitch, this was no mere hack. On the Red version, Missingno didn’t normally wipe the entire save and permanently corrupt the intro cutscene.

It didn’t briefly show what appeared to be a face, frozen in pure agony. Or perhaps anger.

He simply had to keep going, he had to learn more. So he played and played and played, trying all sorts of ‘experiments’ as the hours ticked by and he fought off sleep. Anything else felt like such a chore. Work, eating, even hanging out with friends and family left him watching his phone until the minute he was allowed to leave.

He simply had to keep playing. All he wanted to do was worry about the damn game but people had to constantly badger him, question what he was doing, pester him to get out of the apartment. He just wanted to play his game.

The days and weeks that followed—maybe it was more than that, he couldn’t keep track anymore—were not getting easier. He was exhausted all the time, irrationally short-tempered, and something somewhere was always aching a solid seven out of ten. His social life suffered immensely—he’d lost pretty much everyone, save for a few ride or die friends—his work ethic suffered to the point of losing his job, his physical and mental health were in the dumps. Things were not good.

The only thing he had to do with his spare time these days, weeks, months, was continue to test the limits of Pokémon Red’s code. See how far he could push it before the game stopped running. The answer was pretty far.

Sleep no longer came to him. The few times he’d tried, he’d wake up in a panic over some horrid night terror, just to experience another. It was somehow far worse than it had been in the beginning. Now they were vivid and unforgettable, burning images into his mind and leaving lingering sensations in his nerves. Again and again and again and again he’d ‘awaken’ until he found himself sprawled on his bedroom floor sometime in the afternoon, tears staining his cheeks and sweat sticking his clothes to him like glue. Sometimes there was blood, but he didn’t like to acknowledge that. If he didn’t think about them, it was as though the scars didn’t even exist.

Energy drinks and stupid amounts of coffee were his new best friends. He needed something to replace the fakers who’d left him, after all. If he wasn’t poring over the old game’s glitches, he was chugging can after can and cup after cup. He never ran out. Despite his second addiction always being available, he couldn’t recall a single time where he’d gone out and bought more. He couldn’t recall doing much of anything besides play the game, really. But he had to be buying it. Every time he’d gone to grab another the cabinets were always stocked. He was still the only one in the apartment.

Despite the fact he could feel a heavy presence in the air that radiated anger.

Sebastian snapped to, grabbed a can of Red Bull, and went back to his room to continue the game. He never even registered having stopped.

His eyes burned. When he finally managed to tear his weary gaze from the tiny screen of the Game Boy, his phone had stopped buzzing from its place in the opposite corner of the room, on the floor. He, too, sat on the floor, hunched over and legs stretched out, the Game Boy heavy in his hands. His back hurt. His eyelids felt like sandpaper. He couldn’t remember how long he’d been sitting there, playing the little game as the world around him faded into nothingness. Was he still in his room?

For the first time in a long while, he thought about checking his phone. He wondered how all his old friends were doing, his former coworkers. He never had spoken to his parents much since telling them off… Maybe he should call them. When was the last time he even checked his front door?

A familiar chime pulled his attention back to the game. At some point in his pondering, the screen had gone dark. A simple text box stood out against the blackness and his mind struggled to comprehend it.

Tired?

His mouth didn’t work so he nodded numbly.

What’s the matter?

I thought you liked seeing how far broken things could go.

Don’t tell me you’re giving up already?

He was too mentally depleted to process that this was no glitch, that it had never been glitches. He felt his head fall forward and he jolted it up, trying to stay awake.

Do you even know how long you’ve been playing?

“…ile…” He blinked hard once, twice, and shook his head. “A while,” he managed, words slurring. His jaw felt like it was held on by string that couldn’t support its weight. Everything looked hazy. Like a cloud of static hung in the air. He felt empty, like he was so light he’d drift away. The only thing grounding him was how heavy his head felt.

Y’know, most people would’ve learned their lesson pretty early on.

But you just had to keep on breaking the game.

The words echoed in his mind, prickling the edges of his consciousness like they were the only things keeping him awake.

I guess some people never learn.

You thought it was funny, didn’t you?

The game presented him with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ option. Despite the bizarre situation, his battered psyche had him choose ‘yes.’ Somewhere deep in his subconscious he recalled that honesty was the best policy.

It didn’t remind him that being honest was what had gotten him into this mess.

Not laughing anymore, are we?

I can only hope the next poor sap isn’t as idiotic as you.

He squinted, the rectangular form of the Game Boy distorting into incoherent shapes. The game… The game had done all this to… punish him? For what? What did he do?

You know what you did.

“Wh… What… are you…? Why…?” He forced his eyes to focus on the screen, the first time in far too long he’d ever needed to be deliberate about it.

I’m done with you.

Move on with whatever is left of your pathetic life.

Just make sure you forget about me.

Feeling began creeping its way back into his limbs, constant pricks of blood flow like his entire body had fallen asleep. He was uncomfortably aware of how fast his heart was beating despite his sluggish state. He gasped.

The Game Boy clattered to the floor as his arms uselessly fumbled about, trying relearn movement.

He didn’t see the text box that simply displayed ellipses. All he could see was the room shifting and spinning as his body struggled to adjust to having free will again. He tried to get up or at least change positions but his limbs felt heavy and before he knew it he was face-first on the floor.

His vomit burned and tasted like acid and cherry-flavored medicine.

Sebastian couldn’t remember calling an ambulance, he couldn’t even remember being in the ambulance. He just woke up in the hospital room in a panic before everything caught up with him all at once and he fell back onto the bed with a tired groan.

He was made aware of the other presence in the room when a hand reached out to him. His voice left him as he tried to scream.

It was Mark, one of his longtime friends and the last one to keep trying to reach out to him until Sebastian simply refused to answer. Even in the state he was in, it was clear to see that Mark was deeply troubled by what had transpired. He wanted answers, and Sebastian didn’t know how to tell him he had none.

How does one explain that a stupid kid’s game made them throw away their life, chase away their friends and family? Who would believe him when he said the scars weren’t self-inflicted?

After an excruciatingly long road to recovery, Sebastian soon found himself living some semblance of normalcy. As much as could be had with a newfound heart condition and when everyone close to him thought him suicidal. His parents hadn’t coddled him this much since he was a kid. It would have been nice if they weren’t so concerned he’d ‘do it again.’

The only hiccup was when someone brought up the cause of the whole ordeal, that damned Pokémon Red cart he’d gotten for cheap off of eBay. His only response was that he didn’t care what they did with it, so long as he never saw it, the Game Boy, or energy drinks ever again.

He loathed coffee.

I hope y'all liked it! In a way I really like expanding on the darker version of Red where he's far more dangerous than you'd think. I mean, the bastard could enter dreams in the OG story so I like to think as the years wore on, he got much more creative with his abilities. What else does he have to do when he's stuck in a game and the only interaction he gets are wannabe hackers? This is probably not the last alternate version I'll make either. I've got a ton more ideas that I'm not using for Connection and it'd be a real shame to let them go to waste... ;)

Also, fun fact: I like to think of this as an endurance test for the both of them. Red really gave the guy the chance to not fuck around and find out, but the SOB wouldn't quit. He was really hoping the guy would figure it out and try to stop interacting but then got ornery when he wouldn't quit glitching the game. So Red's just over there enduring shit just to torment this guy until one of them breaks. So... technically... Red caved first from how obsessive Sebastian was at breaking the game despite the torture. Win, I guess?

#my writing #glitchy red #pokepasta #use your imagination for how long you think this went on before Sebastian was let go #I wanted to keep it vague to stress how much red was fucking with him #poor guy lost all semblance of time and is definitely an insomniac now #Red aside the amount of energy drinks and caffeine he was consuming were already traumatic enough

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