Who is Hyper? Excuse me, who was Hyper.... I suppose I should start at the beginning.

Well, ok, I got a Gameboy and Pokémon Silver in... Christmas 2000 if I remember right. So I played it, and loved it. My character's name was Silver. I had a Raticate. His name was Hyper.

Well, I loved that Raticate, and I still do. I trained him all the way to level 96. He would have been my first level 100 Pokémon. What happened? Well....

I had this friend who was also into Pokémon. He got a lot of "cheats" from his friend. We spent hours on the bus ride home from school combing through the gyms for a key that would supposedly unlock a bookshelf and send you to the moon, where you could find Mews and Mewtwos. We never found it.

Well... he told me one day about level 100 Pokémon. He said that when a Pokémon reached level 100, the next time they grew a level, they would go back to level 1. I don't know if he heard this from his friend, if he honestly believed it, or if he was messing with me, but either way I believed him. Gosh, why was I so gullible?

So you know what I did? I restarted my game. I didn't save any of my Pokémon; I didn't have a way to. So I lost Hyper. I don't remember any of my other Pokémon; just Hyper. (Edit: Now that I think about it, I had a Bayleef, a Dragonair, and a Suicune.) It was such a stupid thing to do.

I have a Raticate named Hyper in pretty much all of my Pokémon games now. I keep saying that I'll train it to level 96, just like the other one. But it never works. It'll be one of those little projects that I never get around to, just keep pushing back.

Recently I restarted my Silver version. And now I have a level 4 Rattata. Hyper. A permanent part of my team. I'm not going to ignore this one. It's going to be trained. All the way to level 96.

I'll always miss Hyper. My prized Pokémon.... I'll love him forever. I'll always have a way to remember him. New possibilities are here.