5 Years, Reborn

[Feng Lei]

Just a little vanity post, I guess you could call it, though more like memorial for me. My niece and nephew just finished our Reborn roleplay larp game. It was a ton of fun. They played from 2017 August to 2021 this year. . .

 

It was quite the ride. We had some incredible stuff happen, like the adventure through the sewers after Team Meteor, which ended in being threatened by a pack of pikachu with knives, a giant pair of Muk playing catch with a massive Electrode... ah, I could go on.

 

They suffered quite a bit during the last fazes of the game, right around entering Agate. In a way, their lives mirror now the Reborn characters. But it still ended grandly.

 

So, in the end, Giratina was destroying Reborn. And after defeating an OC antagonist (an evil Pachirisu, of all things), we faced Lin within the last room of the Citadel de Astrae, floating in the darkened sky around an encirclement of millions of glowing gold and white Unknowns.

 

The children really went all out with their theories regarding who, or what, Lin truly was. And upon watching her hook up the meteor to the Pulse Arceus, the whole finale seemed to come together really well for them. So we advanced to the last room. Elias' Mega Regigiggas was ripping the temple open to snatch us. His Supreme Dynamaxed shiny Ditto had already taken out all of our pokemon. Then Luna appeared and fought him so we could advance.

 

There, in the last room, we found Lin lying broken upon the ground. And to our surprise, we found the Emerald broach, the Amethyst Pendant, the Ruby and Sapphire Rings (changed from the game to match a sapphire ring formed of a Dragonair), all placed upon the Final Door. Lin, upon closer inspection, was nothing but a puppet filled with metal wires... empty.

 

Then, Luna appeared to reveal she was already working with the true master-mind of all this, and bids us adue and steps off into the advancing darkness as the world ended.

 

At the other end of the door, stood none other than a certain familiar girl. Anna!

 

"I'm sorry for deceiving you," she said, and then explained how the previous time, Giratina had stopped her before Arceus could be born, and thus destroyed everything. So she wished upon Nostra for three heroes to come to save the day in a new world. That world was now ending, and her plan was a success! My niece, nephew and me succeeded in, inadvertently, helping Team Meteor awaken Arceus in time. And then, at the last, she ordered Arceus to use its Judgement, and the world ended, to be Reborn.

 

We woke up as three Ditto! In a new world inhabited only by pokemon.

 

The last scene was my niece's infamous Gothitelle, which always knew our true fate, and would wink at us often throughout the game and, finger to lips, utter "shhh", walks by and winks a last time.

 

We went through all our pokemon while listening to the Johto ending theme... it was so.., bittersweet. But also satisfying. I really didn't think we'd finish. A pair of two certain gym leaders had struck my niece very hard with their broken romance. And she lost all desire to finish the game. But now she's glad she did.

 

Wow. 5 whole years. A momentous occasion. That's our second and probably final pokemon game we'll play. And I know when I do play the video game, I won't ever be able to separate it from the memories we made these past half decade.