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The snow is coming down harder.
Red sits at the edge of the cave, looking out onto the world of white. He doesn't usually leave his home base if he knows a storm is coming in, but he's quickly learning that Mount Silver is completely, entirely unpredictable. One second the day can be fine, and the next, thick clouds shroud the mountain and fill it to the brim with a lethal cold. It's not the most hospitable place in the world, he has to admit. It's the kind of place that leaves most travelers shivering, wheezing through the winds and desperately hoping for shelter, dreaming of the warmth of their homes down below the impossible arctic.
Red, however, lives here.
He left shortly after the incident at Cinnabar, as the master ball in his pocket quietly reminds him. He had wondered if he should go home on a few occasions by now, but that's never come to fruition. In some part, he does miss home. He misses his bed, his mom, his best friend; he doesn't miss much else, though. The solace of the mountain is more tempting than the comforts of Pallet Town, so unfortunately for everyone involved, he's stuck here. Well, he's not entirely stuck, per say - well, actually, he is, at least for now. There's no way he's getting home in this snow.
Tentatively, Red pulls the master ball out of his pocket, running his fingers over the smooth metal. It's... Sometimes it's tempting, somehow. It's odd, uncanny, that he knows exactly what kind of creature lives in here, and yet he's still called to the void, compelled to release it again and let it do god knows what. Honestly, if he tried anything with it, he's pretty sure Pikachu or Venusaur would first save him, and then knock him over the head for doing something that stupid.
The scars on his hands have just barely faded. He wonders if they would come back if...
Red suddenly realizes how quiet everything has become. He looks outside to see wind has died down, and now only a dusting of snow is falling. Maybe he should head home now before it gets any worse. The last time he got stuck away from his mountaintop home, he was lost in some random cave system for two days. This is not a very friendly place for a twelve year old.
Walking through the landscape is... it feels hazy, like a dream or maybe a nightmare. It feels like another world, or maybe the world below was something else, and all there is to reality is this blank canvas that he fills in with his own thoughts and dreams and fears. In a way, he's not wrong; the world is what one makes of it, and now his world is nothing more than snow and ice and isolation. It could be more. It should be more. He hasn't dared to step foot below the permafrost, though. He wonders if he ever will.
With a sort of whomping sound, the snow cracks under his feet, sending long, snaking fissures through the white canvas.
That's... odd. That's never happened before. He didn't think he was heavy enough to break the ice.
Red takes another step, and another shockwave shudders through the area. Is this - should he -
Oh god no -
The snow falls, and so does he: he doesn't even fully realize until the cold hits him hard, sharper and more unbearable than the lingering breeze and slight heat of the sun. It goes dark, but not too dark, a kind of darkness that comes with being covered by a pure white sheet, like a Halloween costume - but this isn't Halloween, this is a reality, and once Red feels the weight of the snow settle on him, everything feels so, so much more horrific than campfire stories and haunted houses. This is life or death.
This is death.
Now the realization hits him.
Red desperately tries to scream: as to why, he's not sure, but it sounds like there's cotton in his ears and he wonders if he even has a voice right now. Even if he does, no one can hear him up here; it's a blessing and a curse in the same breath, but soon he won't be able to take another breath. The weight of the snow is piling up on him, his psyche, he feels himself falling but - but no, no, it's like a nightmare, like he's already landed and the whole earth is moving around him, falling, falling, I'm falling again -
Everything stops again at last. He's landed. He's not falling anymore.
He's freezing to death already.
Red panics, and he tries to think of a way out of the snow, but he has no idea what to do. He's barely able to breathe, let alone think. All he can feel is the piercing cold and his racing heart and the snow threatening to suffocate him. Thrashing against the packed cold as best he can does nothing but makes more snow fall on him - falling down from the surface, but - but which way is up? How much snow is he buried under? He can't tell, he's not sure, he's going to freeze to death up here but at least he's alone but he's lonely but he's alone but Green help me please please please -
A digital noise travels through the snow, muffled, but he can almost tell that its the sound of a pokéball. From behind his eyelids, he can tell the flash of red light is near, very near, almost too near, way too close to be anyone else but - oh god, if one of his Pokémon got released, they're going to drown on this mountain too, and he'll never forgive himself (if he lives, that is).
But no; death is sudden, unpredictable, and now he realizes it's upon him.
He's fading; he's not breathing, or maybe the shallow breaths he's taking are lulling him into unconsciousness. The cold is strangling him, and he's been in here for minutes or centuries, he's not sure. Everything just feels wrong, though. Of course it does, but how else is he supposed to describe his dying moments? It feels wrong. He's twelve years old and he's going to die. His mom won't even get to see him again - hell, he never gave her a proper goodbye. He never gave anyone a proper goodbye before he ran away. The last time he saw Green was during an argument. The world is silent under the weight of the snow, nothing feels right, his mind is reeling and blank and I can't breathe -
A huge, ear-piercing blast of static fills his ears, so loud that it seems like the noise is coming from within his own head, as if oh no that hurts that hurts -
The snow is gone.
Red is dead. He's definitely dead. He's not even going to try opening his eyes. He doesn't want to see where he is or what death is like. He just wants to go back to his cave and fall asleep and wake up and hug Pikachu, but he's dead, and now - now - what is there to do now? All he can do is take in deep, panicked breaths of fresh air, air that feels... warm? But it smells odd. He feels solid rock under one hand and grass under another - not mountain moss, but grass, like a field outside Pallet Town. He doesn't want to see. He doesn't want to know.
He doesn't... feel dead, though.
Another burst of static pulls him out of his thoughts. Again - and he doesn't fully register what the pain is for a moment - his hands and leg ache, a similar searing burn from the coast of Cinnabar and - no, no, that doesn't make sense, this doesn't make sense. What is this? Why is this happening again? What is this?
Red opens his eyes at last.
And there it is.
The creature from the coast of Cinnabar Island broke out of its pokéball somehow, which would be more concerning if it didn't just seemingly save his life. It seems to have shaped itself into a skeleton of a Kabutops, but the clumps of orange and purple... stuff, whatever those pixels actually are, they float around the creature and cover parts of its bones. Red sees little clusters of pixels peeking through his gloves.
Red tries to gather himself this time, taking in his surroundings. He's finally breathing evenly, though his heart is still racing. In front of him, the creature remains still. His hands are still aching. Under his left hand, there's a smooth grey stone. Under his right, the short grass he felt earlier. A perfect square around him is void of snow. It's a patchwork of grass and rock and a single square of water.
Nothing is moving, though. It's as if this little piece of the world froze to death.
He looks up. Above him, he sees a huge cube of water.
Red almost (almost) shouts and scuttles away from the ocean above him, and when he crosses the perfect threshold between snow and grass, the cold hits him again. Instinctively, his body lurches back into the warmth, already overwhelmed by being nearly buried alive in an avalanche. He... okay, this is fine. Maybe. He can live with this for now. He'll just - he'll warm up for a few minutes, then run back to the cave, and everything will be fine. Everything will be fine, right?
Settled slightly, Red finally checks his pokéballs, finding all of them a little battered and chilled to the touch, but unbroken. Even Venusaur and Pikachu's pokéballs, both older than the rest, are in good shape.
Okay. Okay, everything will be fine.
The creature seems to chirp at him, a digital yet somehow organic sound. Red tentatively scoots closer to the beast.
"He-llo?" His voice really isn't working. He hasn't even spoken to his Pokémon in almost... what, a month? He's been in a bad place - but still, he can easily say the avalanche was the worse experience in his life. Oddly, he almost feels more emotionally stable after all that. It's either the adrenaline or a newfound appreciation for life.
The creature seems to answer with a digital chirr, but he can't understand what it means to say, so that was a pointless endeavor. Red reaches for the master ball in his bag to recall the -
Uh.
There's... a lot of master balls in here. Like, a lot a lot. Red had one when this ordeal started, and now there's at least a hundred in there. He has no idea how or why - well, it has to do with his eldritch friend here, but he doesn't understand how. More bewildering is what he's supposed to do with all of these. It's not like he'll need over a hundred master balls. He only needed one to save him from the thing that just saved him. Maybe he'll just hand some out or something, give them to his friends - er, friend, his only friend, if Green even still wants to be his friend.
He feels a bony scythe-like claw touch his cheek, and he immediately recoils. A quarter of a scream escapes his mouth.
"D - Don't -" don't do that, but a syllable is all he can get out. Oddly, his cheek doesn't hurt from the touch. Maybe it's because the pixelated substance didn't touch him...? Probably. Is it some kind of toxin, then?
The creature tilts its head at him. Curious (and almost forgetting about the whole avalanche at this point), Red pulls out his Pokédex.
MI͠S͞SI͝NGN͢O.̷
҉̴̢҉͢
?͜??
HT͟ 1.̧0m
W̕T ̷1̢0 ̡kg͟
n ͘ o ̵̶ ͜ . ͞ ͏ ͠ 0 ̵̶ 0 ̶̡͟ 0 ̷
コメ
̶
ン
̶̢
ト
͡
͘ ̡̨
さ
̷
く
̶
せ̨
̕
いち
̧͟
ゅ
͝
う
That's all he can make out of the gibberish on the screen this time. That's hardly better than before, but... Well, Missingno it is. That's as good a name as any.
Red takes its master ball and - wait, no, this one is missing the sticker. He placed a little C for Cinnabar on the one Missingno is registered in. That has to be in here somewhere... Shoot, is it under the snow? He's never going to find it if - no, the snow is gone, so...
Missingno beeps at him again. He doesn't even want to know what it wants.
Finally, he finds the more battered master ball with the sticker half-faded. His voice catches twice before he gets a word out.
"Return."
It avoids the beam from the master ball, and then it starts to walk away.
"Wait!" The squeak is as good of a yell as he can muster right now. He doesn't have a chance to think, to consider the weight of the creature avoiding the master ball, so he just hops up with the hundred-some other master balls in his bag and chases after it. The wind bites hard once again, coming out of what felt like a spring day. Nothing could be as cold as suffocating in snow, though. Nothing can be that bad.
"Missingno!" The shout comes on the second try. Missingno seems to understand that this is what Red is going to call it, so it stops and waits for him to catch up.
For just a second, Red looks back at the mess they've left behind. It looks like a broken video game.
Something about that makes him feel sick.
"...let's go."
For now, Red walks next to the incomprehensible creature, and he feels as at ease as he can for someone who just barely escaped death.
He tries to process everything that just happened, but it's all a scattering of a fever dream. The avalanche, the pixels, Missingno... none of it makes sense. Is this some kind of legendary Pokémon? Who ever heard of a Pokémon capable of distorting reality? Even the myths of a reality-bending creature from the Sinnoh region are just myths, right? Maybe it's not even a Pokémon... but if it's not a Pokémon, then what is it?
The snow is coming down again. He just needs to focus on getting home for now. Left here, right there, left again - no, not yet, or maybe he missed his turn - no, here, good, he's on the right path now. He'd better be going the right way, at least. He's still freezing cold, even with the brief ephemeral warmth he got from that broken chunk of the world.
The snow crackles again under his feet and he freezes. He doesn't think it's safe to move, but it isn't safe to stand here, either. It's an icy stalemate.
He looks over at Missingno, which... he thinks it's looking back at him, now having shifted back to its original mess of a form. It floats silently across the ice, like a ghost, as if it isn't even really here.
Then it grabs him, burns him, and it pulls him across the snow - above the snow, so they're both floating an inch up, and in a flash he's on the ground in his own cave system.
He looks back at Missingno. The burning sensation continues.
"Return," but again, it avoids the beam. "R-Return!" Again.
It wraps around him now, a blur of purple and orange, and a scream he tries to let out never comes. If this is how he's going to die now, he should've just stayed under the snow.
He feels a buzz come from Missingno, but the burn subsides. It isn't actually touching him, now, only emanating a sort of soft static, like the fuzz from the screen of the CRT television in his room after playing hours of video games with Green. It's soothing, in a way, nostalgic and yet a little bit dangerous when he again realizes what this thing is.
He looks at it in awe and fear. He almost wonders if the shifting series of pixels is a smile.
"I'm okay," he says, partially to himself and partially to Missingno. It tries to cling to him, but he jumps back, waving his hands to try and say no no no that ended badly last time, and it... understands, somehow.
Pokémon are known to be highly empathetic, though. Maybe it does understand.
"I'm just... tired," he tries to reason. "Can you return so we can both rest?"
He holds the master ball in his hand, and it remains still. Finally, it disappears in a beam of red light.
Red manages to stumble back to his little cave, numb and exhausted, before he passes out from this dream and slips into another.