I suppose…it’s been a good life. I fought in the Great War, and that means I’ll get a fancy ceremony when I finally kick it, get buried in a big field alongside people I once knew.

I met a girl when I got back. Younger then me, and knowing her took the edge off the memories and nightmares the war left me with. I settled down with her, raised a family. I’d become a grandfather just a few years back.

My kids brought their kids to see me today. I sat up and played the tough soldier for them, so none of them would walk away knowing just what war does to men. They shouldn’t know. Nobody should. Besides, today would be the last time I’d see them. I know I’m going tonight, because they told me.

Haven’t seen them in nigh on fifty years, and then they pop up and let me know that tonight’s my last night on earth. Jerks.

I can feel them gathering around the bed. Just appearing, or walking through the walls easy as you please. They seem sad. I didn’t think they could get sad. Most people don’t even believe they exist, and those that do go on about ‘semi-solid weird matter’ or ‘compacted energy bundles.’ Rubbish. Just tell it like it is.

They’re ghosts, and I know them all. Hell, I’d given them names one day because it seemed like a good way to keep from going nuts at the time. My friend, the first one to give me his name, is floating at my feet. Waiting. That weird little face showing all the grief it can. He’s a little bigger then I remember.

I raise my hand. Salute them one last time. They helped me, and the allies, more then anyone can know.

They hit the attending nurses with hypnosis on the way in. No one notices the alarm as my vitals flat-line. No one hears my hand fall. ‘Cept for them, of course.

“Gengar…”

A Ghastly floats over, lifting the lifeless arm hanging over the side of the bed and folding it gently over the man’s chest. Another shuts off the obnoxious mechanical beeping.

Then there is only a chill in the air, and the room is empty.

As I mentioned, this was oringinally posted on the /tg/ board of 4chan. (If you don't know, be warned, wretched hive of scum, villainy, monstergirl porn, etc) But during a particularly epic thread, a hypothetical WW2 setting was developed where pokemon fought in the war. The thread ended with a crack team of allied commandos storming hitler's bunker with specially-trained dark- and psychic-type pokemon, in order to defeat the german's last ditch effort at victory, the creation of a pokemon superweapon, Mewtwo.

The thread may still be in the archives, if you're interested.