Sing Meloetta

"Hear the song of PAIN...!!"

An attempt at spriting S♪ren

This is a warning.

If I had known that day what was going to happen, I would have turned back. But I did not know, and for me, that day started off happy. It was the day my action replay arrived.

I had spent months soft resetting on my Pokémon White for a shiny Kyurem, and had finally caved in to the pressure and brought an Action Replay Code from a seller on Trademe. It arrived in a box covered with badly drawn and incorrectly coloured Pokémon. Thankfully, it had most of the major cheats already on it, so I didn't have to enter them by hand.

After finally pinning down Kyurem, I found that the AR also came with codes to generate legendaries. I caught shiny Victini, Keldeo, Genesect, and Reshiram with no problem. But after catching a shiny Meloetta, the game glitched at the capture screen, so the top half of the sprite was in shiny aria form and the bottom half was in its normal Pirouette form. Irritated at having to re-catch all my shiny legendaries again since I kept forgetting to save, I had to restart the game.

That's when things got really weird. When the game restarted, I was back on the same route I started on before the glitch. My party was also exactly the same prior to the glitch.

Well, except for one small difference.

The shiny Meloetta was now the first in my party, and it appeared to have a nickname: S♪REN. I didn't think much of it. I spent a few minutes after the glitch furiously button-mashing hoping for an outcome, so it was possible I entered something. But the real problem began when I first sent S♪REN out to battle.

First of all, Meloetta's cry seemed to distort and stretch, running for longer, until the sparkles that showed it was shiny made no sound. Then, before I even pressed an action, S♪REN used Sing.

After the wild Woobat fell into its slumber, the dialogue box came up and said, "The wild Woobat has been snared. The wild Woobat has joined the party!" After that, the game played the fainting animation.

A bit disturbed, I quickly flew to a different city and went to the Poké Center to deposit S♪REN. Going to my box where I keep my legendaries, I deposited S♪REN and replaced it with the Pawniard I was going to evolve into a Bisharp, only to find when I checked my party that S♪REN was still in the front. I checked the Pokémon data for the first time only to see that instead of my trainer ID, it said, in upside down letters, "Ulysses".

I freaked out. This must have been some Pokesav cheat that messed up and broke the entire game. I reset and, when the game loaded, I was back in the Giant Chasm, but in battle with Kyurem.

Confused, I watch as S♪REN went into battle, her normal cry somehow merging with the tune of Sing. The message box came up again: "The wild Kyurem has been snared. The wild Kyurem is following!" then the screen blacked out. After a pause of a few seconds, the screen reloaded to show the Giant chasm with a shiny Meloetta sprite following behind my trainer, just like in SoulSilver. I reset the game one last time.

This time, it reloaded back in N's castle during the start of the battle. The N sprite appeared on the screen and started to move back to send out Reshiram when the sprite suddenly froze. My trainer sprite appeared on the screen, sending out a pokéball that I instantly knew contained S♪REN. This time her cry was longer and deeper and seemed painfully drawn out, ending with the first few notes of sing. The message showed up, "The wild N has been snared. The wild N will follow."

Desperately, I restarted the game again and completely deleted the save file to start a new game. After lazily skipping through the tutorial, it loaded, as the little Black trainer sprite was alone in his room. The box containing the three starter Pokémon was gone. A message came up on the bottom of the screen: "Why won't you love me?"

I brought up the party screen to find it contained Woobat, Shiny Kyurem, and a blurry overworld sprite of N.

Another dialogue box came up.

"See? All of your friends like me."

I tried to turn off the game but the screen flickered back on.

"Why are you trying to run?" the box now said. "I love you."

Suddenly, the screen began to flash, and the battle sequence started.

The shiny Meloetta sprite appeared, but strangely twisted. Its face was horribly blank; it had smoothed over skin with the merest dents for eyes, and a red lipstick-lined mouth in a wide grin. In place of the gemstone around the middle was a gaping hole straight through to the other side. The bottom of the dress curled upwards in Pirouette form past the teal of Aria form's hair. S♪REN's mouth opened wide, wider then possible, showing red stained teeth, even as it bobbed and swayed with the motions of a normal Meloetta sprite.

The black trainer sprite appeared on the screen, then froze. A message box appeared: "S♪REN used sing!"

The lullaby-like notes of Sing began to play from the speakers, a full tune instead of the simple first bar it normally is. Despite myself, I began to feel sleepy. A last dialogue box showed up on the screen, flickering on and off with the letters blurring and unblurring.

"TRAINER has been snared. Will TRAINER follow?"

I was scared and I wanted out, so I quickly hit "No".

The screen shook.

"S♪REN is angry!"

The trainer sprite fell away like it had fainted.

"S♪REN used Hyper Voice! S♪REN wants you to follow!"

Out of the blue, a violent sound burst from the speakers, a mixture of metal sounds and screeching. I dropped the DS, but the sound continued, the screen zooming in on S♪REN's eyeless face until its skin split and its eyes were glaring directly at me, one red, one green, with pupils like black holes, drawing me in.

I think I must have blacked out then, because the next thing I remember, I was asleep on my bed with my DS on, running low on charge next to my face. Everything seemed like my old save file, all my old Pokémon safe in their PC Box. There was a sprite of a Shiny Meloetta on the screen with a simple message: "S♪REN has been released! Thank you, TRAINER."

That should have been the end of it. There was no trace on my game that S♪REN had ever existed. Meloetta wasn't even registered on my Pokedex. But still, I feel strange. In school, I found myself humming an unfamiliar tune. I don't remember sleeping, and when I turn my head, I can see a flash of black and green, like some reflected light in the corner of my eye. I'm scared.

S♪REN was released…right?