“…”

“There are certain things a human is not meant to do.

And now, as far as this world cares, I no longer exist.

Please, young one… be careful.

There are things out there that would eat you alive.”

…

LANCE is no longer available for questions.

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READ THE STORY IN ORDER ON AO3

WARNING: FLASHING/GLITCHING IMAGE UNDER THE CUT.

This also contains descriptions of gore and body horror.

[ @pkmn-monochrome - Previously… ]

Red narrows his eyes as he stares down at Cody, shutting up and listening as they explain. The corners of his lips twitch as they finish, the shadow cast over his eyes falling ever so slightly heavier.

“… So, that’s how it is, hm?”

“Barely… any different…”

“… Exactly what I…”

“…”

“I’ve gotta say, you’ve really got a way with words! You’re so articulate when you’re scared, Cody.”

He snickers to himself, hopping off the grave and pacing around, looking between the other and the Ghosts.

“Observant, too~! You’re right, I really couldn’t be bothered to care what you think of me. I’m not exactly here to make friends. I’m sure that’d the last thing you’d want, anyways! See, I’m just here to satiate some curiosity.”

He leans in front of Blastoise, tilting his head.

“I would like to formally apologize to the oversized Sobble-in-a-shell for my language. I’m not exactly used to being around others… Twenty-six years of imprisonment wouldn’t really teach a guy to have a filter, heh.”

He waves a hand nonchalantly, completing the circle.

“And as for your marketable figurine of a rat, well… I’m not interested in being a snotty kid forever. Unfortunately, I don’t need any hacking done to screw up my game badly enough to change some things around.

But, hey… I’m not here to make chit-chat with a couple of one-note monsters. It’s all about you, the most REAL one in this room. Cody, Cody, Cody, star of the show~! Let’s get back to the point. I know you don’t exactly think highly of… things like me. What was it you told that one poor girl- ‘You’ve had more than a decade to get over yourself,’ right?”

He throws his head back, cackling as if the old remark is the funniest thing he’s heard in his life.

“I meant it when I said that I don’t CARE. But I AM nosy, and your vitriol towards REDs in particular is just so interesting… Even seein’ the face clearly strikes a nerve. So honestly, I’d LOVE to hear EXACTLY what you’re thinking…”

“If only you were willing to spit out any fighting words, that is! But you’ve been so much more polite than I expected, after all the reading I’ve done…”

He passes by in front of the other, looking off into the distance.

In that moment- a moment of passing footsteps, of the blink of an eye, of a lack of care… something heavy fills the air.

A damning presence looks down on Cody with a dozen eyes, countless mouths, gnashing teeth and twitching claws, two hundred and fifty-five whispering voices. It’s a disgusting and shambling creature, a sick and unholy patchwork of amalgamated hearts and yellowed blood, wrapped up in tattered flesh and backwards fur, mismatched feathers and scales and blubber and skin. Writhing, wheezing, bleeding, rotting, every misplaced piece existing out of sync.

Something impossible. Unknowable. Invalid.

The feeling it imposes upon them is suffocating. Like not breathing for years, like something vile filling their lungs, a sickness that is rising, thrashing, tearing, desperate for a taste of “fresh meat” if one could even call a dead trainer that anymore.

“It almost seems like there’s something you’re worried about,” the voices from within it hiss, layered countless times under the casual and teasing tone of Red’s own that is lost under the madness…

… Yet the instant the words spill from his lips, that awful sensation is gone as quickly as it arrived. Everything is as it should be. Despite how intense it was… It was little more than two seconds of some sick kind of illusion.

Was it even real? Was that pain all false? Red hasn’t lifted a finger, no less even looked Cody’s way.

It’s as if nothing even happened.

“I wonder, I wonder, what it could be~?” the man babbles on as he walks away, feigning ignorance- because he must be, he must be screwing around with them at this point, right? How could he NOT be?

And now he’s laughing- giggling to himself under his breath, like this whole ordeal is some joke that only he’s in on.

“After all, I’m just some harmless little video game character. I’m not even real, right?” he chides, “Certainly nothing like one of your big bad players who could crush your shoddy little cartridge cause you decided to be a little bi…”

He trails off, managing to catch himself.

“… Decided to misbehave. What, you don’t think I hold any real power over this place, do you~? I can’t cause…”

“… Permanent damage.”

He slows to a stop several paces away from the monochromatic trainer, spinning on his heel to look at them with a smile that could be described as warm, but…

From heart, to flesh, to grin- there’s not a single warm thing about this man in this moment. Only proven further by a final remark, laced with a threatening kind of curiosity.

“So would you like to stop trying to play nice and tell me what you really think of me… Or are you gonna let me get bored?”

That question seems to strike the figure- it looks back at you, seeming almost saddened by the question.

“I… I hadn’t realized how… unrecognizable, I had become,” it mutters, staring down at itself, words trailed by a somber melody…

“I suppose it’s fair karma, though. I didn’t know you, so it’s a bit silly to expect you’d know me… especially like this.”

The corruption surrounding the ghost’s face seems to clear slightly, if only for a short moment. It offers you a warm smile as it properly introduces itself…

Though the words he speaks sound almost robotic- as if the figure were reading off a script.

ALT

…

For a brief moment, not unlike an instance during the time you’d met a ghost of Hazel, you feel as though you’re watching yourself from the third person.

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[ @pkmn-monochrome - interaction thing i can’t send as an ask bc long and images]

The dark of the Pokemon tower is never something that has bothered Red. Never something that would, certainly not after seeing much worse and being much older.

At this point, really, it’s a kind of eeriness he’d come to miss. It reminds him of simpler times- days when a young boy only had to fear things like ghost stories, and shadows that lurked in the dark.

He knows very well that this place is not the Pokemon Tower he knew, of course. He’s not stupid. This place was only built in its image, the miserable ending of a game dyed in grey and built out of spite.

He runs a hand along the wall of the staircase he descends, feeling the cold stone, yet also the intangible data, dull static and code under the fingertips. Watches in quiet fascination as the textures distort and corrupt under deliberate contact, the broken foundations of Generation 1 reacting to him, (same as always,) but a touch more stable from the fusion of the bastard remakes keeping it grounded.

Any damage caused is meaningless, the existence of it debatable as a whole, as he passes through a loading zone. Half of him watches everything fade to black, the other half just continues down the steps that are as tangible as anything else here is to someone within the game. Everything is right- just as it should be.

Either way, it’s not like it’s his game to break. That would be plain rude, especially with the risk of killing someone!

Intrigue in this world, curious as it may be, isn’t why he’s here.

Nah. He’s more interested in something else.

Or, someone, to be more precise.

Having finally found who he’d looking for, Red steps off the stairs and into another layer of this endless graveyard, whistling as he finally lays eyes on a certain monochromatic individual.

“Y'know…” he chides from across the room, “A graveyard’s a pretty cliche place to spend eternity, don’t you think?”

He snorts at his own remark. “Course, I guess it’s not like you had a choice. The sadsack that made this game could’ve picked something a little more outside the box, is all I’m saying. Do you think they’d bury bodies in the Viridian Forest, maybe? Or swimming offa Route 20, try a little watery grave… Oh, Champion’s Road could be pretty morbid!”

He sighs and folds his arms, shaking his head at himself.

“… Nah, I’m joking. I can see the vision. I could give less of a shit about this place, anyways…”

His eyes gleam, and a menacing smile spreads across his face.

“I’m more interested in you. A glorified reskin of Pokemon Tower ain’t shit compared to you. A little bug told me about some sentient Red-Leaf kinda amalgamation with the memories of a real person, and I just had to look into it and come to see for myself. Lo and behold…”

He spreads his arms out in some kind of almost-mocking grand gesture.

“Here you are! Cody, right? In the flesh, or… I suppose your problem is the lack thereof, heh.”

He begins to approach, moving slowly and never once looking away. He stalks forward, every step careful and deliberate, teeth bared in a grin that holds no happiness but oozes with amusement.

“I’ve got so many questions, I don’t even know where to begin. You’re really something special… One of a kind, fully aware of everything. Knowing what life both here, and out there, is really like. I’ve seen players that would kill to even get a chance to stand where we do, but… You want out more than anything.”

Scratching his chin, the man walks around them at a slight distance. Red gets the thought that Cody wouldn’t want something like him anywhere near them. At least he can respect that.

“Suppose the courteous thing would be to ask a question- that’s the tradition around these parts, right? Constantly interrogating you so you don’t have to sit here, alone with your…”

His eyes flicker to the two GHOSTs at Cody’s side.

“… Thoughts. And the like.”

He hops onto a grave nearby, sitting with his ankles crossed. Respect towards the dead be damned, every tomb in places like this were about as sacred as Halloween decorations.

“Here’s what I’d like to know, Cody.”

His smile widens further- for a brief moment, the glitches on his body seem to spread to the air around him, cutting through the gray with burning streaks of red, white, and yellow.

“You have your hacker’s memories. Some of them. ANY of them. It’s enough. You’d know what it was like to be them. You know what it was like to be human. You know both worlds.”

“What is it like? To be real? To be something more than code. How different is it from this?”

“What was it like to be HUMAN?”

He jabs a finger forward, pointing at them as the static that flared up around him quickly subsides, clearing the air back into the typical oppressive atmosphere of the endless graveyard.

“I want to hear it from you,” he finishes cooly, “someone who has been on both sides of the screen. You could tell me better than anyone.”

creatively-cosmic:

creatively-cosmic:

Updated looks and references for Blue, Leaf, Fire, and Glitchy will be uploaded over the next few days.

This ended up being more of an undertaking than I’d expected it to be, as this had started with the idea of just redoing their lineup- it ended up spiraling into a bigger thing, though. Not all details and information will be able to be posted yet due to spoilers, but I hope you’ll enjoy what’s there regardless. I put a lot of work into this and the improvement compared to their old references is really satisfying to me to see.

Being started as a lineup, by the way, their heights and proportions next to each other are accurate, arranged from shortest to tallest. Once the individual ones go up, I’ll probably put the unblocked lineup here for reference as well.

I’m not trying to blow smoke up my own ass hyping up a series of references- this was just a weeks worth of hard work that I’m really, really proud of, and I hope you’ll enjoy em.

with the last of the refs posted as of Just Now heres the original formats (of what i Can post) of the lineups. obviously theres a fair bit i cant show but the actual Refs are the more definitive versions and those’ll be rolled out as time goes on- this is more for the heights and side by sides as it was Originally Intended

“GLITCHY” RED TAJIRI

Height: 6'2
Pronouns: He/It
Home Region: Kanto
Team: ????????, ??????, ?????????, ??????, ???????, ?????????

A disheveled man in a twisted realm who claims to be Red- yes, THE Red, despite bearing no resemblance in appearance or personality. He somehow seems to possess knowledge of things he shouldn’t know, and an unnerving ability to do that which should be impossible. His body appears unstable, and though the same could be said of his behaviors… the odd man acts and talks as if he’s an old friend of yours, and always seems relaxed around you- showing off his loud and passionate personality, and always bearing a Cheshire grin.

[Transcription of design notes and color hex values under the cut.]

Hair: #181418

Skin: #fbf3ef (main) + #c6b7d2 (veins/eyebags, multiply) + #76658c (blush) + #4291fe (airbrush overlay)

Neck bruised and veiny.

Eyes: #ffffff (sclera) + #ffffff, #ff0d00 (iris, red and SMALL amount of white)

NO SHADING. Don’t outline iris!

Bluish mouth natural. (#605173, #3b3049)

Alt: red (#ff0d00)

Glitches (red/yellow/white) always visible on body, NOT CLOTHES. (Hidden for body ref)

How I do his glitches:

1. Use any method to make basic glitch effects of any color.
2. New clipping layer over glitches, set color layer effect. (Fill: #ff0d00)
3. Merge.
4. New clipping layer again, layer effect Hard Mix OR Color Burn Layer. Whichever looks best. (Fill: #ff0d00)
5. (If there’s no #ffffff or #fff800, manually add lines and boxes to base layer of these colors.)
6. This should result in his distinct glitch colors of red/white/yellow/black.
7. Merge again
8. Clip onto glitched area (optional)
9. Set glitch layer as Glow Dodge– or whatever gives the best looking effect. Pick with your heart!

Note for outfits:

If details like the back of a shirt or underside of shoes aren’t specified, they’re plain and colored like the front/top.

Shirt: #3c3942

Belt: #0e0e10 + #ecedf1

Pants: #687998, #9fabc2 (airbrush for fade)

Shoes: #8e4a4f + #ffffff, #ebecf0, #d1d2d6, #8a8b90

Shoes are in AWFUL condition. In the image RED is where holes are- you’d normally see through them, done like this for contrast in reference.

Shirt, jacket: #3c3942, #25222b

Belt: #0e0e10 + #ecedf1

Vest, shoes, gloves: #8e4a4f + #ffffff, #ebecf0, #d1d2d6, #8a8b90

Stains: #634145 (multiply, 60%)

Back of Jacket + Patches: #e5e5a2 + #ffffff, #25222b + #8e4a4f, #521d21 + #d1d2d6, #8a8b90

ALT PALETTE (only for this outfit)

Yo.

Look, I’m not here to dick around with a buncha cryptic bullshit. I’d like to think I’m a pretty open book, yknow-

I just think that hiding this one would be really fucking funny. Trust me- you’ll find out soon.

A lot sooner than you’d think.

General Note:

Details of these forms can vary based on circumstance. This is more like examples and a style guides than a concrete reference- I’ve tried to note every key part for each.

Hue over Red’s body, not over amalgam: #ff0d00

Skin: #fbf3ef (main) + #c6b7d2 (veins/eyebags, multiply) + #76658c (blush) + #4291fe (airbrush overlay)

Hair: #181418

Eyes: #ffffff, #ff0d00

NO Shading!

Don’t outline iris! “Animalistic” look in eyes.

Blood stains, multiply #900700

Mouth: #ff0d00

Amalgamated parts can be parts of anything summonable with the Old Man Glitch, use one of these palettes:

1: #76658c, #181418, #c6b7d2, #c8afa3

2: #ff0d00, #181418, #ffffff, #ffff00

Glitching is far more extreme in this form.

Unobscured gore for reference:

Bones, Flesh: #ffffff, #ff0d00, #a50800
Heart: #bd1a2a
Liver: #5c1612
Spleen: #942f53
Intestines: #C6a88f, #d4ac96, #dabdac
Pancreas: #c8b26c
Diaphragm: #efdcdc
Throat: #efdcdc, #c2a5b0
Lungs: #dc9ea3, #b16c72
Stomach: #d4ac96

Hey. That’s private. :/

[This post contains a rapidly flashing/glitching image.]

“… The circumstances in which I aquired the egg are not something that I want to talk about, but as an academic, transparency is important to me, so… I’m willing to explain.”

“You are right. It is important to me. This BAD EGG… This was the very first anomaly that fell into my possession- honestly, perhaps the first I ever encountered.”

“… It was not originally my Pokemon. It was the sole partner of a dear friend of mine. An Absol. It always kept her safe- she was far more adventurous than me, hah…”

“The phenomenon of what this is, and why it occurs, isn’t something well understood by the scientific community. It certainly wasn’t when I first… acquired this.”

“I desperately wanted to learn why it had happened. How I could undo it. I- I needed to. But there was no information, other than the few recounts of other trainers out there who had fallen victim to this exact same phenomenon. None of us knew what was happening, nobody knew what to do- the only advice was to quarentine it, as many found keeping it near other Pokemon caused it to spread.”

“… I was a budding academic, at the time. I’d always had interest in the field of Pokemon research and was beginning a path to become a Professor, at the time. I- I can’t even remember what I’d originally planned to study, but…”

“As I searched desperately for information on this that just didn’t exist, I stumbled on recounts of more and more similarly inexplicable oddities. They piled up, with not a single one understood, answered, or fixed.”

“They consumed my attention, and… Finally, I made a decision.”

“Nobody else had given these anomalies the light of day. All of them, simply passed off as urban legends, or the ramblings of madmen gone off the deep end. So I decided- I wanted to be the one to understand. I wanted to approach this properly, academically, so I could be the one to give hundreds- perhaps thousands- of unheard cries for help the answers that they needed.”

“… Including my own.”

“Years later, well… Here we are. I’ve a lab, and hundreds- thousands, perhaps- of notes, essays, papers full of analysis and theory, and an entire lab’s worth of hard proof on the existence of these in my possession.”

“… I understand the BAD EGG much better, now. But despite everything, the way to undo it still evades me. At the very least… I’ve procured a lot more knowledge in the meantime. I hope that’s worth something, at least.”

BEGINNING | EXPLORATION || PREV | NEXT

(WARNING: EYESTRAIN)

The Dex whirrs, scanning the paused frame before spitting out a result.

…Huh.

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“… there’s… simply no reason to. how many times have i said that the cold is no concern? i’m fine here. i’m home.”

Red looks down at his hands as he speaks. They’ve remained firmly by his side the whole time….

ALT

“…”

“whatever you want to try, i suppose.”

BEGINNING | EXPLORATION || PREV | NEXT

ALT

You click on to Cam 01, and it opens up in a split-screen type of view next to the Mount Silver feed. Seems to work just fine for multitasking! 

Still, the view doesn't… Help much. 

Ace wasn’t lying- this is kind of… Hopeless. Nothing legible can be made out of the garbage that’s flooding the screen. And the audio is nothing but ear-grating static, cuts of music, and distorted Pokemon cries. 

But, before you completely tune out, there's…

…?

“??????H???????????E????????L?????????????????L??????????????????O????”

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