CHAR1

Author's Note
This is my first ever creepypasta, so please let me know what I could do to improve it!

CHAR1
Hi there! My name's Mikey. I LOVE playing older fighting games, from classics such as Kung Fu on the NES, to just obscure titles like Kensei on the Playstation.

One fighting game I've been playing a lot recently is the game Project Justice: Rival Schools 2 on the Dreamcast. It has one of my favourite casts of characters in a fighter, and it has a lot of personality.

I remembered playing a demo for the game's predecessor, Rival Schools, on the Playstation as a kid. Since I lost the demo disk I originally had, and all I could find on eBay were t-shirts and CDs for some dumb band by the same name, I decided to go down the ROM road.

I googled "Rival Schools" at first, totally forgetting to type in the ROM part, and I saw one link in the Ads section that read, "Rival Schools Enhanced! Dreamcast game! Play the original with better graphics and sound!" This peaked my interest, so I checked it out.

Apparently, a team of really dedicated fans rebuilt the original Rival Schools from the ground up using the Project Justice engine, compiling the whole thing as a Dreamcast ROM. The screenshots were impressive. The feel of the original was perfectly recaptured in this remake.

I hastily clicked the download button and started to download the ROM. The ROM was called RivalSchoolsV2.dci - It was around about the same size as a normal ROM, nothing unusual, so I decided to simply click away and do other things for a while.

Half an hour later the ROM downloaded, and I burned it to a CD-R. I was getting excited to play this game again. It'd been a LONG time. I placed the disk into the disk-tray of my Dreamcast and turned it on.

The ROM booted up, starting with a screen showing who was behind the game. I thought it was pretty cute, as it was essentially their own version of the Dreamcast boot screen, with the little dot painting the Dreamcast logo, but they replaced the dot with a small picture of the smiling face of the main protagonist, Batsu. Seemed innocent enough.

There was no intro sequence, it just cut to the title screen after the developer logos, with a blue-to-white gradient background and the Rival Schools logo. Underneath the logo flashed the message "Press Start".

Upon pressing start I was greeted with the main menu, this time with an orange gradient background, and some plain-text options. The list was "CHARACTER SIM.", "ARCADE", "VS", "OPTIONS", and a final option that I couldn't make out due to it being in Japanese.

I was intrigued by the Character Sim option, which is an option that was originally in the Japanese versions of both Rival Schools and Project Justice, but was removed in the overseas releases of both games. It basically allowed you to create your own character, which was something I always enjoyed doing in fighting games.

I played with the options in the character creator and made two characters, a male and a female. The male was called Matt, had black hair and tanned skin, looked like a jock and wielded a kenpo stick.

The female was called Ibuki, and was quite pretty - You know, for a video game character. She had long blonde hair, pail skin, wore the standard schoolgirl outfit and practiced hand-to-hand fighting.

The next mode I decided to play was Arcade. I didn't really feel like jumping into options and fiddling around, I just wanted to play. The game dumped me into the character select screen, and it looked exactly like the original Rival Schools select screen. All the original characters were there, excluding some unlockables such as Hyo, one of the bosses of the game.

For my team I chose my two created characters, and proceeded to play the game. The versus screen started up, showing my two characters were about to fight Vatsu. I found this a bit odd, considering that Vatsu wasn't in the first game.. At least not from what I'd seen. Vatsu was a fake Batsu, a disguise donned by the villain of Project Justice to frame him for causing havoc across the country.

I would've shrugged it off then and there, but I noticed the portraits of my two characters.. They actually looked like someone had drawn portraits of my characters and put them into the game, which I found odd.. Surely they wouldn't put portraits in for every possible created character.. That would take too long. Even the pre-made custom characters in my version of Project Justice had blank portraits.

Before I had time to question it, I was thrown into the fight, which was preceded by pre-fight banter. This was different to the banter that preceded a fight in Project Justice, where usually the main character from each team would spout off a line of dialogue in Japanese. Here, the characters didn't speak, but their dialogue was in text boxes that would appear on the screen. Here's a transcript of the scene that took place before the fight started.

---

Vatsu: You kids have crossed me for the last time! Now you will die!

CHAR1: What are you talking about? Do I know you?

Vatsu: Quiet! You are not permitted to speak! I will make quick work of you!

---

The fight then began, and Vatsu immediately started moving without the announcer even saying anything like he normally does. I was a bit freaked out by the "CHAR1" that came before my character's speech, as I knew his name was Matt, and even on his life-bar it said Matt. However I decided that this was just a programming bug. As I played, I found that as I tried to move, Matt moved incredibly slowly. Usually characters moved at a standard sort of speed, and Matt just felt.. Sluggish.

Vatsu quickly came at me with a super attack. I tried to retaliate but found that Matt wasn't doing anything. I pressed start to see if I could check the options, but all I got was another textbox that said..

---

CHAR1: I've given up.. Please just let me die.

---

Every time I pressed start to try and pause the game, that same message appeared. After it happened a few times, I noticed that Matt's stance stance had changed. Previously he was confidently standing, holding his stick. Now he was slumped forward, looking depressed. Vatsu became faster and faster, until he eventually defeated Matt, knocking him out with a kick to the face. There was no announcement of a knocout or a bright flashing background to accompany Vatsu's victory. Instead, it cut to another scene, this time between Vatsu and Ibuki.

---

Vatsu: You've seen what I've done to your friend? I'm going to do it to you now!

CHAR1: ###? ###! WAKE UP!

Vatsu: Ha ha ha, you can't escape your fate! Let me show you just who you're dealing with!

---

A flash crossed the screen, and the next thing I knew I saw Kurow, the villain of Project Justice, grinning viciously, directly at the camera.

---

Kurow: I am going to kill both of you. You'll regret ever being born.

---

The screen immediately cut to black, and some white text in a plain-looking font appeared in the middle of the screen. It said, "GAME OVER - RETURNING TO MENU". The game stayed at this screen for around ten seconds before the menu screen appeared again. Frustrated, I growled and decided to try and play Arcade mode again, not wanting to let the game get to me.

I was greeted with the character select screen again, and everything appeared normal. The only difference now was that I got a grating buzzing sound effect when I tried to select the custom character option. This irritated me a little bit.. Was my game wiped by this encounter? Or was it just another issue of poor programming? I quickly decided to select Edge and Akira as my two characters, not dwelling on the question running through my mind.

I was greeted by the versus screen again, this time Edge and Akira were fighting against Vatsu, and another character. This character's portrait was blank, and the name of the character was CHAR1. I raised an eyebrow, more intrigued than anything else. As the versus screen faded to the fight scene, once again going through some dialogue before the fight.

---

Edge: Batsu! What's going on, man? We heard screaming!

Vatsu: Oh, not much.. I just met a new friend..

---

Vatsu's partner character stepped into view, and I was little creeped out by what I saw. It was a frankenstein of my two created characters.. All bloody and mangled, with Ibuki's head, left arm and right leg, and Matt's body, right arm and left leg. The character's head was tilted off to the side. It was bloody, the eyes being distorted black voids and the mouth put into an extremely downturned position. The camera turned back to Edge, who looked visibly mortified.

---

Edge: WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!

Vatsu: Your end.

---

The game shifted into a first person perspective - Edge's - kind of like Project Justice does on the leaderboard screen. There were no life bars, no heads up display, nothing. Just Vatsu and CHAR1, who was slowly moving towards Edge. Panicking, I tried to hit start to quit the game, but what I got in response was CHAR1 sprinting up to Edge, pushing him over and pinning him to the ground, its grotesque face squaring right up to his. Edge looked over to the side and saw Vatsu holding an unconscious Akira up by the neck, grinning at him.

---

Vatsu: I told you before. You cannot escape your fate.

---

CHAR1 got back into my face once more, and then the screen cut to darkness, a faint image of CHAR1's face in the background. The plain text again read, "GAME OVER". But it didn't return me to the menu. It was stuck there.. I groaned and took the game out and placed it back in. As soon as it booted up, no logos or anything, just that same screen again. I tried taking out my VMU and resetting.. Same thing happened again. I gave up at that point. I laid my controller down and reached for the Dreamcast.

Suddenly, a loud screech burst from the TV's speakers. CHAR1's face was in full view, its mouth now upturned into a disgusting, evil, twisted smile, its teeth covered in blood. It was kinda pixelated, but was still eerie. That damn text box appeared again, simply saying "YOU CANNOT ESCAPE YOUR FATE". The game stayed on this screen for around ten seconds before the orange light on the Dreamcast went out, and the TV cut to a blue screen, as it normally does when there is no signal.

I sat alone, disturbed for a good long while, before I picked up the VMU I had taken out of my controller. I turned it on and checked through my save files, and I was unnerved by what I saw.

Every file read.. CHAR1.