The Truth behind Lake Valor

The Truth behind Lake Valor

Disclaimer: None of the work posted here is true. This story is purely fictional.​

Do you have a moment to spare? If so, good. Have a seat, what I'm about to tell you must never leave your mouth. If the staff were to ever catch wind of what I've done, every member on the Lake could be put into danger.

Lake Valor. You know the name. It's the site you're on right now. A hub for people from all across the globe, sharing one interest — An interest in Pokémon. Of course, this isn't just a place for talk of Pokémon. Practically any subject is available to talk about on one of the many subforums.

But there is one Subforum you may never have known about... One hidden to normal members. If you think I'm talking about the donator thread, oh no, you're very wrong.
No, I'm talking about the staff thread.

Of course, we all knew there was a staff thread. It would be mentioned from time to time. Inside, we could only assume that there were a handful of topics on the subject of certain members of interest, job application reviews, and of course, Ben's memes.

But I'm afraid that by no fault of my own, I have seen the truth within it.

See, I was just coming home from school one day. I was looking forward to being able to get onto my computer and back onto Lake Valor. Unfortunately, when I finally arrived, it turned out the site was down for maintenance.

After several moments of sadness, I snapped Firefox onto my left monitor — My secondary one — And turned on the Auto-refresher tool so I could see when LV came back up as soon as it did.

Then, while I was playing various random games to pass time, my second monitor changed from a 404 Error to LV's homepage: It would seem the site was back up! Eager to check my notifications, I instantly closed my game and clicked onto Lake Valor!

...But something was wrong... I couldn't tell what for several seconds. That's when I looked up to the login field... It said I was logged in as someone else... The name consisted only of jumbled text, and the image was a mess of random pixels. Had I broken the site...?

At this point I did what most Valorians would do — I took a screenshot of the site, ready to post it into the Bug thread.

...Or at least, I was going to. I decided that before I did that, I would just have a little look around... What's the worst that could happen?

The first thing I checked was the profile page. Surely enough, the whole page was nothing but random letters, numbers, and symbols strewn across the page. I managed to piece together a couple of words, as if I was playing a crossword. I giggled slightly at my own immaturity. The friends list only seemed to have all of the other staff members as friends... Including one Developer who I'd never seen before. I shrugged it off, and returned to the homepage. I then wondered what my nameglow would look like on this account. I scrolled to the bottom of the page, and saw all the currently active members. It seemed that I was the only one... Though my name was still the same mess of letters. However, for some reason, my nameglow was Red, rather than the usual blue I would expect to see... It was then that I decided to check my group. It should have been "Contributor+", just like always. But for some reason, it wasn't. It too, was a seemingly random mess of letters, once again.

Things were starting to scare me, so I decided to go and sign off, then sign back in on my normal account, so I could post this screenshot into the Bug thread...

...But not before I noticed one of the threads I scrolled past. It was right above the Donators subforum...

...The Staff Area...

I was mesmerized. For my whole time on the Lake, I had wondered what was there... Just what the staff really did get up to in the private threads...

There were three subforums altogether... One just seemed to be a place where all the staff could discuss idly... Nothing particularly interesting... The next was member discussion. And boy, looking through these, I already knew of a few people who were not on the best of terms with the staff... But I'll keep that one to myself.

The last one was the rarest of them all. The Admin-only subforum. I felt like I was being shown a room full of gold, and being handed the key. My hand shook slightly as I hovered over it. Several thoughts shot through my mind. "Should I really be doing this? What if they Ban me? Do I really want to know what's in there so badly...?"

I jumped in shock as my shaking finger struck the left mouse button. I'd done it. The page was already loading. There was no turning back now...

When the page appeared, I was greeted with a strange sight. Firstly, the few forums at the top were created by Achromatic, and consisted solely of memes. I chuckled to myself lightly as I saw he truly did live up to his reputation. But no, these were not what worried me.

Firstly, there was a thread pinned to the top. It was labelled "Objective list." Odd. I clicked it, curious to see the contents of it.

It seemed to contain a list of members on LV... The first hundred or so names had little X's next to their name... But as I got further down the X's stopped... Curiosity striking once again, I decided to look at the profile of one of the people with an X next to their name...

It was just a banned account. It had only a handful of posts, and they'd joined quite a while ago — 2 years ago. Still, with nothing interesting there, I went back to the list.

I then saw a name there that caught my eye: "Pixil". It had an X next to it, just like the last one, but this time... This time it was red. I visited the profile... And sure enough, she was still inactive.
The thread started to make less and less sense, so I just left it, returning to the root of the forum.

Another thread that caught my eye was titled "Discretion alert." It contained something about Ryan complaining to Janna... Something about "Not being discreet enough" or some such. But... Discreet about what?

That was when I reached the bottom. There was only one thread left. It was titled "Goals."

I regret ever opening that thread. In fact, I regret ever going into the subforum altogether. But... Somebody needs to know. Somebody needs to let the world know before it's too late.
The forum took a while to load. I found it a bit strange, but then I jumped in horror when it finally did.

The entire colour scheme had turned from a cheery sea blue colour... To a dark shade of red... It almost looked like it was blood... But, I was being silly. It was probably just my monitor acting up.

...At least, I thought so. But when I focused on the background completely... I realized I couldn't have been more wrong.

There was no Gyarados present as in the other pictures. No Pokémon were at all. Save for one... Azelf. Right in the centre, just as always. But this time... It was turned to face me. It felt thought it were staring into my very soul. Its eyes were completely blank... I had no idea what to think.

...But then I read the contents of the first post on this page.

Lake Valor... It was... It was a test by the government. Make a set of staff that are as friendly as possible, make everyone feel welcome, then study the emotional output when they are stripped of their right to visit the site.

It was terribly complicated. They had special programs that would run on your computer, tapping in to all of the sensors on it. They could watch your every move, hear your every word.

...And I had fallen into the trap. It all became clear to me. The Objective list I saw before... It was a list of members that they were experimenting on.

...And Ryan was the mastermind behind it all.

A PM appeared on the screen, interrupting my train of thought. I shuddered in fear as I realized — It was from the mastermind himself - Ryan. It had simply one single, bone-chilling sentence.
"You'll regret that."

As soon as I saw that, my computer began to whirr loudly, and the system clock turned into a countdown timer.

They had somehow rigged my computer to be a bomb.

Of course they had. I had discovered their plan. When they were performing the maintenance, I must have slipped in just before the security programs were on. That was why I could access the subforums I couldn't before. It was all clear now.

This is where I plead to you. Yes, you, the reader! You need to close this page as soon as you can! Delete everything. Throw away the entire computer! It's the only way you can stop this from happening to you!

I don't have long left. It is imperative you link all the other members to this thread! They must know the truth! The fate of every member on Lake Valor is in your hands! I'm counting on you!
I've only got a few seconds left... Whatever you do, you must remember to NEVER, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, tr-