"I want to take the time to honor Nicholas Cleves, one of the 8 people murdered in the New York City terrorist attack on Halloween. He was an avid gamer and Pokémaniac. His favorite Alolan Pokémon was Tapu Koko."

Hi, I've never had anything like this happen to me before, but I wanted to honor my friend, Nicholas Francis Cleves. Nicholas and I attended Little Red School for elementary. We both loved Pokémon. When my parents got divorced and I moved away, I got invited to a classmate's birthday. Everyone treated me incredibly weirdly, but for Nicholas, nothing had changed. We were still friends.Middle school, high school, and college rolled around. He reached out to me on Instagram shortly after graduation because he saw me post about having Sun and Moon. We chatted about teams and strategy and of course, our favorite Pokémon.His favorite was Tapu Koko and mine was Tapu Lele. For months and months we planned to have a battle with each other. We swapped ev spreads and traded mothers and Dittos. We caught Pokémon in special balls for each other.We decided that when we finally would have that battle between us, it would be in person.The last time I saw him was for my annual Chinese New Year party earlier this year. There were too many people from different friend groups for us to just play each other that day.It breaks my heart to say that we never got to have that battle, but I wanted to take the time to honor my childhood friend today.I'm thankful that we had Pokémon Sun and Moon to bring us together, despite not being in close touch for almost 15 years. That type of love and friendship is what the games are all about, and I feel lucky to have had that. I'm going to think of Nicholas fondly and use Tapu Koko on my team, whenever I can.Rest in peace, my friend.Thank you all for taking the time to read this. via /r/pokemon http://ift.tt/2A4FnJr