Random

My Quest for the Legendary

Capturing a legendary Pokémon is supposed to be pretty difficult. Over the years, I've caught enough of them to know. I remember catching Fire Red's Mewtwo in an Ultra ball: watching the legendary faint member after member of my party as I carefully used only the weakest of attacks, letting out a groan of frustration after Recover undid all of my hard work once again, throwing an Ultra ball that broke open almost instantly and reaching into my bag for another, restarting the game when I ran out, restarting the game when Mewtwo ran out of moves to use and fainted itself by thrashing around, restarting the game when I accidentally landed a critical hit or did more damage than I had intended and caused the legendary to faint. You could call that a challenge, and I was only doing it in the first place because I was keeping my Masterball on reserve for a legendary that would have been even more difficult to catch.

By contrast, getting a free Pokémon just handed to you seems so easy that it's almost like cheating. Except that it's not. Actually, I would rather spend a solid week of Mewtwo-in-an-Ultraball style trying, failing and restarting than go through what I did to get my latest legendary Pokémon.

I've never gotten a Pokémon from an event before. Why? Well, for one thing, I would have had to talk my parents into it when I was younger. For another, we probably would have had to drive a ways. Besides that, I was hardly ever playing the game that the event Pokémon were available for anyways. Fire Red was my jam long after the days when the DS was introduced.

And now? Well, I didn't want to walk into a store and ask for one. I heard Sheldon (SGMijumaru) talking about the giveaway of Mew. I realized that they actually are available at all the GameStops in the country and that I actually live close to one now. I knew it would be just perfect for my team in Pokémon X. I knew that I love Mew and have always wanted to be able to catch one.

"But," I thought, "as soon as I walk into that store and ask for one, people are going to look at me and think that I am too old to be playing Pokémon."

I know that people have often told me that I look younger than I am. I was even confused for a high schooler less than a year ago. But reminding myself of that didn't help much. Even without the fact of my age, walking into a store and asking for something has always been surprisingly difficult for me. I don't like talking to people, especially strangers. Asking for things is difficult as well, since I always have a lingering feeling that I don't deserve it, which is compounded when the other person doesn't know me and probably has no desire whatsoever to give it to me. I even hate interacting with cashiers so much that I take the self-checkout line at the grocery store whenever I can.

If I was going to get this Pokémon, it would be a real legendary quest. A quest in which the game developers were forcing me to step out from behind the screen and do something real to earn my legendary Pokémon. It couldn't be my character this time. The pressure was all on me.

I took days to work up to it. Finally, Friday rolled around. I had nothing planned for after work that day, no excuses left. I definitely needed to go to the grocery store, and this would be a perfect stop along the way.

"You need to practice courage," I told myself, and I packed my 3DS away inside my purse.

I knew I wouldn't need it. I had looked up all the information very carefully online. There was a code that they would hand to you; you could redeem it any time before the 31st of May. I knew this, and yet I worried that the internet might have been mistaken. Perhaps I would have to prove that I had a 3DS and a Pokémon game for it, I thought. As is true with most people, my thoughts can grow rather wild when I'm nervous to a high enough degree. I brought the 3DS along. Just in case.