Semi-Blind, Hardcore Log

[Quickslip]

Eh. I don't think its that crazy. I mean, worse comes to worse, I just end up needing to catch and train some other Pokemon.
I can easily believe that Gengar would outspeed everything though. I wasn't even sure Zebstrika was going to outspeed it before I tried.
Also, this one is gonna be another short one, sorry. Real life says I need to pay greater attention to it.

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So we go off to find Cain. Beneath the bridge, we find not Cain, but Victoria. She mentions that the Strength TM is off on a Gym in another coast somewhere and that we need the Badge from the Poison Gym Leader to use it. Ouch, both of those sound really far off. In any case, we go after Cain who has a head start on us. There, we see him riding his Muk over to the coast, asking that we believe in him. Stuck, we eventually run into Amaria again, who suggests checking out the mysterious industrial plant that appears to be pumping out a majority of the sewage. We sneak in and discover Team Meteor, to no one's great surprise. We -are- somewhat surprised at just how strong this particular gym leader is though...


Eventually, we split up. Amaria takes on the majority of Meteor by herself to give us time to do w/e we can do to shut down the plant. We, however, immediately get caught in a trap.


We work out the puzzle, get a Ditto, break out, find some fancy new grunts, and make our way to the center of the plant.

There, we confront mysterious man again and Amaria saves us from being another specter on Shade's monitors. Ultimately, Amaria gets Mr. Mysterious to spill the beans, and we learn he wants to run everyone out of town for reasons he doesn't care to share. He's very interested in Amaria's Sapphire bracelet, however, and decides he will take it. Amaria tells us to stop the machine while she holds him off, but ZEL stands in our way.

Pulse Muk and Jolteon ended up being problems here with the field increasing the power of electric attacks, Jolteon being really fast, and Muk just being generally kind of tanky. Took some largish number of tries, but...




Growlithe is still Growlithe right now, so we have Silk go against Glaceon. Headbutt hax are not with us this round, and Silk falls.


Next, we send in Growlithe. This prompts ZEL to spend the next 2 rounds trying to Potion Glaceon back into fighting health and Growlithe just Flamethrowering it back down in the same turn. After this, ZEL switches to Espeon. Espeon outspeeds Growlithe and 2 Psychics is enough to KO Growlithe, though she gets in some decent damage with a Flamethrower and Crunch. Zebstrika comes in for the revenge KO.


Flareon comes out next, so we send in Pride with another Rawst Berry. Pride Feather Dances and Roosts, then slowly KOs it when its damage is tiny.


Zebstrika comes out to fight Jolteon. One Flame Charge causes Zebstrika to outspeed Jolteon, so we use that first, don't get one-hit, Stomp, cause a flinch, and Stomp again for the KO. Thank you AI for not wanting to Thunderbolt an Electric type. Would hate to have to use an Ability Capsule for this. xD


Muk is next, so we send out Mega first and set up Light Screen. It chooses to Discharge first, so we also hit it with a Grass Pledge. After that, it uses a Sludge Wave, so we switch in Atom, who resists a second Sludge Wave. We only get in 2 Paybacks beneath the Light Screen since Muk crits once, but Zebstrika cleans up with Spark and the help of the same Light Screen. Thank you Light Clay.


Zebstrika also finishes off the Glaceon before ZEL sends out Umbreon. Zebstrika almost overpowers Umbreon as well, but its not quite enough. Mega comes in for the finish.

Now outnumbered, Solaris(mysterious man) mocks out efforts, claiming it is all too late as the waters are already too poisoned. He then assault Amaria directly with Tyranitar, then retreats. Hurt, Amaria offerus us the key to her warehouse and boat to chase after Cain.
We take the boat and find ourselves on a beach. There, we find many trainers who like martial arts, a few interesting caves, and a gym. We come across both a meditite and a heatmor. After a bit of exploring, we find both Kiki and Victoria. Due to reasons, we must prove ourselves worthy of the Machine by climbing to the top of the nearby volcano and beat the trainer there in a battle while Victoria must also pass some other unspecified test.
So...we climb the volcano, defeat the nefarious puzzle, and find Cal. He's apparently trying to cool off his anger by meditating up here. He also apparently knows Shelly; they had a bad fight before he left and this plays a large part in my she's so timid now. With that off his chest, he feels content to battle us.

Cal's first pokemon is Infernape. Arcanine is first, and Intimdate causes Swords Dance + Close Combat to not be strong enough to one-hit Arcanine. Outrage Ko's it in response.


Cal sends in Mega Charizard X, so we send in Zebstrika. The first time I did this, it was assuming that it was just a Charizard, but the 2nd time was to paralyze it and slow it down. After Mega Charizard KOs Zebstrika, we send in Pride. Now faster than Mega Charizard, we do the Feather Dance + Roost thing, then send Arcanine back out, Morning Sun back to full health, then Outrage ftw.


Magmortar is scary, so we just have Atom use Explosion on it, then finish it with Arcanine.


Delphox loses to Arcanine's Crunch


We Feather Dance + Roost the Blaziken, switch in Mega to set Reflect, switch back in Pride to Feather dance some more since Blaizken likes to Swords Dance occasionally, then Morning Sun back to fullish again, then send out Pride again to KO the Blaziken, since Arcanine would probably level.


Typhlosion is last, so I send out Arcanine again. It sets up Sunny Day, I Outrage and then...it uses Hidden Power? That is softened by Sunny Day? That is not very effective vs. Arcanine. Weird. Crunch finishes the fight through the confusion.


This was the second fight btw. The first fight went alot like this, except I didn't think to heal up Arcanine, so Silk + Typhlosion swept with Sunny Day + Flamethrower. It didn't use Hidden Power that time though.

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Wasn't that hard at this particular point, but I didn't realize the whole "the next gym doesn't actually increase your level cap" thing until right after Cal, so some of them are kinda strong comparatively. xD

Next section still within 3 days probably.

[Quickslip]

Battles, battles, battles. Lots of battles here.

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We head back down the volcano and make out way back to the hym. There, we discover that Kiki is actually sick and Victoria doesn't feel comfortable letting us battle her. We decide to discuss this the usual way.

Victoria leads with Scrafty, I lead with Pride and do the now typical Feather Dance + Roost thing. Eventually, we get around to Wing Attacking it enough to KO it. We burn Victoria's healing, but a crit keeps us from topping off with Roost before KOing Scrafty.


Feather Dance + Roost is too strong for Emboar as well, even with Pride down a little health.


Heracross is overwhelmed by Heat Wave


No Feather Dances here, since Hariyama probably still has Belly Drum. Pride listens even though I didn't give him any common candy before the fight and 2 shots it with Wing Attack


Against Gallade we just stay on the safe side and Explosion with Atom then finish with Silk's Double Edge.

Victoria doesn't like it, but is willing to let the battle stand. Thankfully, the Center is right down the hall, so we heal up and get ready for the gym battle.

No Gurd Dynamic Punch...my goodness. That caused so many losses. xD Mega Medicham also swept a couple times with Drain Punch. Eventually though:

Kiki leads with Machamp, I lead with Pride. Pride Feather Dances once and Machamp uses Dynamic Punch. The berry cures the confusion, but It follows up with Strength while Pride Wing Attacks. We both heal up our pokemon with items, then we Feather Dance again while it Strengths again. We wing attack, it Dynamic Punches. We hurt ourselves, it Dynamic Punches again. Next turn we break the confusion and crit though, so that KOs it.


Roost + Wing Attack proves strong enough to outdo Toxicroak since we dodged the Poisoned debilitation.


Scrafty is next so we Feather Dance + Roost to lower its attack to nothing-ish then send in Mega to Grass Pledge it to death while setting up Reflect.


Mega deals major damage to Hitmonlee before falling to Poison Jabs and the condition. Silk comes in to finish up.


Lucario uses Psychic on Arcanine, but Arcanine one-shots it with Heat wave.


Medicham comes out, so we send out Zebstrika to Thunder Wave it. We manage to para-flinch it a couple of times before it finishes Zebstrika. Pride finishes the fight with Wing Attack.

But...after that she collapses. Depressed and angry, she tells everyone to leave. Victoria waits outside of her room anyway, and wonders where Cain is, since he said he was coming and all. There an island between here and the City, so we stop there to see if we can find anything. Mostly, it turns out to just be full of wild pokemon, but after exploring the place, we come across a house in the wilderness. We meet the Meteor duo again who claim to have captured Cain and now would be more than happy to capture me as well.

We lead with Mega and Atom, they have Solrock and Lunatone. Mega sets up Light Screen while Atom Paybacks. The psychic rocks make the mistake of focusing Atom through this, and even Psychic doesn't do much to him. Next turn we focus both of them down as they continue to try and take down Atom.


They send out Magmortar and Rhyperior, so we switch out Mega for Arcanine and have Atom Explosion, since he won't last long one way or another. Next turn, we send Mega back in and start Outraging with Arcanine while Mega takes care of Rhyperior. Magmortar misses.


Milotic is up next, so hope Arcanine focuses the one we want. She doesn't, so our damage gets split between the opposing Pokemon, and Arcanine becomes confused. Its ok though since they don't deal much damage to either of mine either, choosing instead to heal up Magmortar. Next turn, we manage to finish off Milotic, but they deal heavy damage to both Arcanine and Mega and Arcanine hits herself instead of Magmortar.


Electivire is up their last pokemon. Their's outspeed mine, so they KO both Mega and Arcanine. We send in Pride and Silk. With focus, they KO Magmortar, but it hits Silk pretty hard and flame body burns Pride. Electivire doesn't quite one-shot Pride that turn. Next turn, it finishes Silk, but Pride's Facade crits so its a forgone conclusion when I send out Zebstrika last.

There's a handy dandy healing station deeper in the hideout, so we use that before heading on. Turns out, there's not much heading on to do as the hallway leads to a deadend with Cain in a cage along with Taka, some grunts, and a Camelrupt. We get some of the details of the plan to PULSE up the Camelrupt to cause that volcano we were just at to explode before taking trying our hand against Taka again.

We see the Klefki lead and immediately just soft reset and set Arcanine as our lead. We see Thunderwave and soft reset again for the appropriate berry. Next round, we ignore the thunderwave and one shot klefki with heat wave.


Taka goes with Floatzel, so we send out Zebstrika. Taka hits Zebstrika once before going into a healing loop that burns all his items. Then, Zebstriaka just KOs it.


Gliscor is next, so we send out Pride. It has nothing that hits Pride all that hard, so we just Feather Dance + Roost till it has no damage and Wing Attack it to death, since it apparently can't poison Pride with Cross Poison for really powerful Facades.


Which is just as well, since Pride levels anyway. :/ We leave out Pride when Taka sends out Aerodactyl and get off one Feather Dance before Pride is KO'd. This is more than enough for Atom to tank it and KO it with Paybacks.


Chatot is sent out next. Chatter proves to be extremely obnoxious to the pokemon it didn't just one-shot with Boomburst. All-in-all, Chatot KOs Arcanine, Zebstrika, and Silk like this without getting hit once. Seeing how this was going, I heal Atom before Silk is KO'd, then send it out and hope to get off Explosion through confusion. Thankfully, Chatot also has Heat Wave, so it uses that instead of Chatter and Atom one-shots it with Explosion.


Cradily is last, but Mega out-tanks it with Light Screen and stronger attacks.

With that, Taka retreats, but he takes Camelrupt with him. Quickly opening the cage Cain was in, we head after him.

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Mostly, this section just reminds me that I absolutely hate confusion >.> That Machamp was sooooo annoying with its confusion, bulk, good damage, and healing backup. Still, if I had anything that could two-shot it(and I know there are more than a few things in my box I could have just trained up to do that) or just used a ghost I don't think there'd have been any problem, so its probably fine and I'm just overreacting. I do kinda feel like there's alot of experience in this section and the last one if I'm not getting a badge to increase the level caps any time soon, but I'm not sure whether you could do anything about that with so many story battles in this part while still keeping the difficulty up.
Next section within 3 days probably.

[Commander]

Kiki's original Machamp only had Guts iirc. It's nowhere near as powerful as Hardcore and gets taken down rather easily. Kiki you're supposed to be in the 40-43 range, but for the next leader...you'll want to have all your Pokemon near cap especially for some of the upcoming fights. A lot of the fights in this area are kind of warning signs you may want to rethink your team if your really struggling because after a certain point, the amount of experience really starts to thin a bit more.

There's an optional fight coming up and if you want to try and win it, make sure you are really close to the cap because you need all the power you can get to even stand a chance.

[Hiroki Tatsumi]

i still cant make my mind about passing that with Meganium x) That's crazy x)

GL on the big boss

[Quickslip]

Before I forget, I'm just going to say...I LOVE the Apophyll area background music.

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We head back down to Volcano land and notice the inner rooms for the first time. >_> There, we move a TV and get a sticker before heading to the Volcano about to kill us all. Victoria meats us there and tag teams with us all the way up the mountain. After beating all the Meteor people, we make it to the top. Cain and Cal have been defeated already, so Victoria and I step up and face Taka and Solaris individually and end this.

Solaris is kinda ridiculous, but since that's kinda the point its ok. So, eventually we did this:
Solaris leads with Scizor. Thankfully, Scizor is almost the best thing in the world for my team to set up against, so we lead with Pride. Pride Feather Dances alot, then Roosts and Wing Attacks away Solaris' 3 Full Restores. Aftwer, we switch to Mega and set Reflect, then switch to Silk. Behind Reflect and 3 Feather Dances, even Superpower only does ~20 damage to Silk, so we Belly Drum, then heal her. Afterward, we one shot the Scizor.


Solaris sends out Tyranitar after Scizor, but it falls to Pin MIssle.


Garchomp is next. It outspeeds, but Silk survives the Dragon Rush from behind Reflect. We then suicide Double Edge it and one-shot it too.


We send out Arcanine next which prompts Solaris to send out Gyrados. Arcanine's Intimidate cuts Gyarados' attack and we immeditely switch in Mega to eat the Waterfall. We set up Reflect and get a couple of Grass Pledges off before Mega is KO'd by Outrage. Zebstrika cleans up with Spark.


Excadrill is next, and we send in Arcanine again for Intimidate before switching out for Atom. Atom tanks Excadrill fairly well and gets a good amount of damage in before life orbed-Sword Dance-earthquakes KO it. Excadrill also KOs Arcanine and Pride, but after that it falls to its own Life Orb.


Last is Mandibuzz, but Zebstrika is still around and easily KOs it through its Air Slashes.

Regardless of this battle, Garchomp still stands in our way. Kiki comes along from behind and attempts to destroy the PULSE while everything is going on with her Medicham, but Cal stops it, since he's actually working with Meteor. While Kiki is defenseless Solaris does what Solaris does, but this angers Cal enough that he blows up the PULSE himself. After shoving more derision down our throats, Solaris and Taka retreat. Victoria is incredibly angry at Cal for his treachery and Cal leaves in face of her rage. We head back to the gym where Victoria gives us the Strength machine. She has to stay behind now though, as the academy has passed to her.

We head back to the door to the wasteland, where Cain challenges us once more before allowing us passage.

Venemoth goes against Pride. It decides to try Giga Draining Pride alot, which doesn't work. Cain burns all his Ice Creams here while I just Wing Attack


Nidoking comes out, I send out Atom. It uses....Superpwer? Wait, wasn't it a SpAer in the last fight? xD In any case, that makes it really, really easy for Atom to fight since it spams Superpower while Atom spams Payback. Even the Life Orb isn't enough.


Cain sends in Weezing next. Fearing a Flamethrower, we send in Acanine to battle it. Arcanine Heat Waves and burns it while it Sludge Waves and Poisons Arcanine. Arcanine is faster though, so she hits first next round and KOs it.


Cain goes for Samurott here to take care of Arcanine, so we switch in Mega, who still one-shots it.


Muk is next, and it uses Acid Armor. We don't like that, so we heal Arcanine before Muk KOs Mega. Heat Wave looks like it will make short work of Muk, but it misses twice in a row which gives Muk the space to KO Arcanine. We notice all the Physical attacks though, so we send in Pride. We get off two Feather Dances, but then it crits with an Ice Punch. -.- We send in Atom and hope for crits with Payback. We are not lucky enough, and eventually just use Explosion to KO Muk.

Cain's last Pokemon is Gengar and I totally forgot about the ghost. We happened to be exp. sharing a random sixth pokemon at the time and all I have left that can fight is Silk, so that's a loss.

So yeah, we do that again. It starts the same, but Cain switches in Gengar right at the start while Pride's Wing Attacking the Venemoth, so it KOs Pride, but Arcanine comes out with the revenge Crunch. Samurott comes out and Mega one-shots it. Muk comes out and Arcanine doesn't miss this time. Nidoking comes out and shows moves besides Superpower, but it still isn't enough to fight Atom. Venemoth and Weezing fall to Silk's Headbutt and Double Edges.

With that, Cain opens the door to one of the stranger areas I've seen in this game. Random fences, vines, broken builds, graves and signposts litter the area and make it difficult to progress. There doesn't seem to be any pokemon in the area that aren't Poison type other than the one level 50 Unown that was in a headbutt-able tree for some reason.In any case, we eventually make it to Aya's house, which may very well be the only actual residence in the place. Aya is just finishing her battle with Fern, who is being his typical self. We also meet a new gym leader named Hardy who is here to try and ease Aya into the whole gym leader thing. She goes off to heal her pokemon, and Fern challenges us again while she's gone. Of course we oblige.

Fern leads with Ferrothorn, and once again we don't even feel like dealing with it and soft reset to lead with Arcanine. Heat Wave deals with it well.


Fern attempts to counter with Krookodile, so we send in Mega. We set Reflect and KO it with Grass Pledges. Fern burns his Ice Creams here.


Scizor is next, so we send in Arcanine again. Focus Sash keeps Heat Wave from one-shotting it, but all it does is Double Team, so Crunch KOs it next turn.


Mega Sceptile is next, but it has nothing one Feather Dance + Roost. Pride's Wing Attacks KO it.


Serperior is next, but its Dragon Pulses aren't enough to stop Arcanine from Heat Wave + Crunching it to death.


A pair of Roserade's Extrasensories is almost enough to finish off Arcanine, but she's too tanky and KOs it with Heat Wave and Crunch.

Hehehe. Anyway, Aya makes her way back, Fern goes up into the stands to watch the battle, and we heal our pokemon and come back to fight Aya. Who seems rather vocally reluctant about the whole thing. And maybe about living too.

This one took a couple of tries too. Double battles though.

We lead with Zebstrika and Atom, Aya leads with Nidoqueen and Tentacruel. Atom and Zebstrika focus down the Tentacruel, but not before it gets off a Muddy Water. Nidoqueen finishes Zebstrika on the same turn.


We send out Mega and Aya goes for Gengar. Gengar Shadow Balls, but its not too damaging, considering Mega gets off Light Screen right afterward. Nidoqueen tries to Blizzard, but it misses Mega and Atom doesn't much care. Payback deals heavy damage to Gengar.


Aya burns a healing item on Gengar and uses Sludge Wave. This doesn't KO Mega due to Light Screen and Atom is unfazed. We Grass Pledge and Payback the Gengar, but its not enough to KO through the healing. Next turn, we focus down the Gengar and Nidoqueen KOs Mega.


I send out Silk and Aya goes for Dragalge. Silk Headbutts Dragalge but it doesn't flinch and Hydro Pumps Atom. Nidoquen does....something to Atom as well, but it doesn't quite KO her. Atom tries to Payback Dragalge, but misses.


We heal up Atom and try the Headbutt against Dragalge again, but it doesn't flinch. It misses it's Hydro Pump this time, though Nidoqueen hits.


We hit with Payback and Headbutt this time and Dragalge flinches. Nidoqueen continues trying to KO Atom.


We heal Atom again and Aya heals Dragalge. Silk headbutts Dragalge some more and Nidoqueen continues focusing Atom. Next turn, one of the opposing pokemon used Sludge Wave and the other hit Atom while Silk and Atom focus Dragalge. After that, Silk Double Edges Dragalge to KO it, but gets KO'd by Nidoqueen's Crunch. Atom uses Payback on Nidoqueen.


Drapion is next for Aya, Pride is up for me. Pride is quickly KO'd by something Drapion did and Blizzard, but gets some damage on Nidoqueen beforehand. Atom also Paybacks the Nidoqueen. We send in Arcanine, heal Atom once more(gotta love that berri ice cream) and use Heat Wave. Drapion uses something on Atom that Atom largely ignores. Aya sends out the Mega Venasaur next.


We then spam Heat Wave and Bug Bite on Venusaur. Drapion dodges the first Heatwave, but Venusaur gets burned. Power Whips are used on Atom, but they do little. Aqua Tails are used on Arcanine and they do more. Doesn't matter though, since Venusaur falls first due to the burn and Arcanine Outrages for the finish.

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Solaris seems fair as a kind of puzzle boss. I don't trust myself to talk about double battles, especially since I forgot about what Spikes does on the Wasteland field for the entirety of that fight. :/ Still, it felt fine at the time since it seemed like I could have just done the fight better. Fern just seems mostly countered by fire types at this point, but his team is explained as being based around fighting Aya at this point, so eh.

Now to go and show all those rocks whose boss...

Next section within 3 days.

[Quickslip]

Gaaah I want to use Misdreavus, but Destiny Bond feels like cheating, I don't have a TM for Will O Wisp yet, and I can't get a decent one with Nasty Plot. :0

qq xD

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Aya tells us how she -really- doesn't want to be the gym leader; the job was supposed to be Cain's. He left all his pokemon behind and just left without saying goodbye to anyone. And for some reason, Aya is convinced she's a failure or something. Hardy stays behind to try to cheer her up and we head out again.
We head out, defeat Mr. Bigglesworth and pick up Misdreavus, then head back to the bridge. We meet up with Cain there and we get something like an explanation for his running away. Accepting that for now, we make it out tof the underground and end up in the old abandoned Yureyu building. Its infested with Meteor grunts so we team up with Cain for a bunch of double battles. What's with all the factory/short circuit fields. xD We learn that Meteor is actually behind all the "earthquakes" and just spread the lie that it was all due to natural disasters. Arcanine and Nidoking solo this whole place, but the exp share gives that helioptile I mentioned a few episodes ago enough experience to learn Thunderbolt, so we go ahead and use a Sun Stone. We eventually find and release all the kids besides Anna and Heather, who are way high up in the tower. Sigmund turns out to be guarding them and refuses to release them.

Sigmund sends out Raichu and Luxray, Arcanine and Nidoking lead for us. We Heat Wave and Nidoking Icy Winds while one of them Discharges and the other Agilities. Next turn Nidoking Sludge Bombs the Raichu, KOing it, while Sigmund heals up Luxray. We Heatwave the Luxray again.


Sigmund sends out Eelektross. Nidoking finishes the Luxray with Sludge Bomb while Arcanine is fully paralyzed. Eeletross attacks Nidoking.


Sigmund goes for Electivire next, which Low Kicks Arcanine, Koing her. Nidoking counters with Shadow Ball, but it does minimal damage. Eelektross hits with Crush Claw.


I send out Mega next to set a screen, but Electivire one-shots him with a critical Fire Punch. Nidoking uses Icy Wind again for a little damage and Eelektross Crush Claws again.


I send out Atom here and just try for Explosion since Nidoking is almost KO'd. Electivre Fire Punches Nidoking and Eelektross only uses Crunch Claw again, so we get that Explosion. Its not quite enough, though.


We go for Silk and Samurottt next. Sigmund heals Eelektross. We KO Electivire, but not before it gets off an Ice Punch. Samurott does minor damage with X-Scissor.


We get some minor damage in with Headbutt, but Discharge KOs Silk and Samurott.


We get Heliolisk and Muk into the fight. We focus down the Eelektross, but Muk takes a bit of damage. Sigmund sends out Lanturn...and the discharge spam begins. Muk poisons Lanturn but it heals alot from the discharges from Rotom. Heliolisk does minor damage to Rotom, but knows only Electric type moves right now. Eventually, Muk falls.


Cain goes for Venemoth here and I switch out Heliolisk just in case he'd be useful later to outspeed and finish something. The only thing left in my party is the Rock Smash/Strength Donphan, so in he goes. Rotom Shadow Balls Venemoth and Lanturn Confuse Rays Donphan, but Venemoth Buzzes Rotom for the KO.


Venemoth Bug Buzzes again and gets the SpD drop, Donphan hits himself, and Lanturn discharges. Next round, Venemoth Bug Buzzes again, Lanturn Discharges again and Donphan breaks from confusion and I have him use Magnitude for some reason. This KOs Venemoth. xD Gengar's got this with Sludge Bomb though.

Then, lots of stuff happens.

Sigmund retreats. Heather is still not talking sadly. We leave her with the rest of those already broken free and head further upstairs. There we find the other important Meteor person whose name is apparently Sirius. He gloats about finding Amethyst and Ruby, and heads off, taking the Doctor with him. Anna is extremely distraught at the loss of her pendant and soon seems sick as we head out to Charlotte's place. Shelly comes along too for fear of what's going on with Heather. Just how old is Shelly anyway? Is someone going to start looking for her?
We head deeper into the railnet, break a few walls, save a guy stuck behind a rock, find Flash, and eventually make it through to...omg there's like grass and trees. And its not PULSE grass with weird moving vines or weird looking corrupted grass with slime everywhere. What is this.
Anyway, Heather calls out Salamance and immediately flies away as soon as we exit the railway, much to the dismay and annoyance of Shelly. Cain runs off alone after her and everyone else leaves him to it since Anna is not looking any better. We head into a different underground tunnel which leads to what looks like a giant garden with a decent sized lake in the middle. At the opposite end of the garden is a house with Laura inside. Laura is Charlotte's sister, and she's fine with us staying for a while. Anna, exhausted, falls asleep, but there's no medicine in the house, so we head out to a nearby town to find some.
Before we head into the forest, we head back into the city and give the House Key to the Move relearner. We give Pride Hurricane and Silk Play Rough, then head back to the forest.
Ah, but we can't just have a normal forest. This one has teleporting trees in it, blocking the path forward at times. Huh. We make it through, and find that the town is actually in a similar state, and that this is not normal for them, which is a relief. Sadly, the PokeMart decides to vanish right before we enter...


Oh wait.

Well then.

Since we can't actually get to the PokeMart, we decide to go ahead and challenge the gym leader here, whose house/gym the mart currently rests on top of. Bennet(the leader's son) asks if we've come across someone named Luna. He's disappointing that we haven't, but a traveling visitor named El affiliated with the church of Arceus or something comes by, also interested in her.


Bennett unconvincingly says he doesn't know where she might be, but Serra(the leader) invites El to spectate our match. Bennett takes him to the waiting area and we work towards Serra's area. Partway there, we are waylaid by Bennett who asks for a battle. With no reason not to, we oblige.

We start out fighting his Larvesta with Arcanine, but it quickly becomes apparent it doesn't have very damaging attacks, so we reset and lead with Pride. We feather dance away the damage from bug bite and flame charge and burn Bennett's healing, but before we start switching pokemon to set up Silk, he switches the Larvesta out for Venemoth. Well, that's fine too I guess. We Hurricane it to death.


His Heracross is next, so we switch in Arcanine and use Heat Wave. It doesn't one-shot it, but its close. He then switches the Heracross out for Larvesta, which eats the next Heat Wave without fainting. We Morning Sun back the health from the Megahorn, then KO the Larvesta.


Bennett sends the Heracross back out. We leave Arcanine in thinking all is well, but the Heracross crits with Megahorn and KOs her. Not wanting to deal with the Moxie, we just send Heliolisk out to finish it.


Bennett's last 3 pokemon are all Bug/Flying, so we just leave Heliolisk out and one shot them all with Thunderbolt.

With that, El speaks of how impressive the battle was, and offers assistance to Bennett as he believes that he shows much promise. That aside, we head back to the center, heal our pokemon, and challenge Serra.

We lead with Arcanine, Serra starts with Mega Abomisnow. The Hail starts, but Arcanine one-shots the abomasnow.


Mamoswine throws me into overthinking things for 2 or 3 resets until I realize that Arcanine survives Earth Power, should do so even on a crit, and one shots it with Heat Wave in response, so we ultimately just do that. On this particular run it didn't crit, so Arcanine survived the hail as well.


Focus Sash Cloyster is next, so we send in Heliolisk and immediately Volt Switch out for Pride. Cloyster Shell Smashes, then attempts to Rock Blast Pride, but Pride's Tangled Feet(yeah, I -still- haven't bothered to actually use any Ability Capsules yet >_>) and the innate miss chance of Rock Blast cause a miss and Pride KOs it.


Vanilluxe is next, so we send out Atom. We Payback twice, each hit triggering Weak Armor. After the second hit, Serra uses an Ultra Potion, but we use Explosion and KO the ice cream anyway.


We send out Mega next and Serra goes for Glaceon. The idea was to just set Light Screen for the rest of the party, but the Light Screen causes Glaceon to miss Frost Breath...3 times. Serra heals it with the other Hyper Potion to save it from Petal Dance, but then Petal Dance comes into focus and crits on the same turn. Mega eventually misses, and Glaceon one-shots it. Silk finishes Glaceon with Double Edge.


Froslass is last in for Serra. Silk misses her Double Edge and Froslass KOs her with a focused attack. Now that the evasion is gone, we send in Heliolisk, who decides to use the focus of Sand Veil to crit with Thunderbolt after we thunderwave it.

Wait really? That's it? No hoops to jump through? That's actually kinda surprsing. xD
Time to farm the trainers more efficiently.

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Sigmund was strong on his field, but Cain having so many pokemon made up for that pretty well. Bennett was easy, but since he has 3 bug/fliers on a team that is already largely weak to fire, I suspect he isn't supposed to be a challenge right now. Serra could be obnoxious sometimes purely due to the field's evasion mechanics but it sometimes works against her just as badly. It felt like I was battling the field more than her Pokemon at times, but the field can be changed so not sure how I feel about it. Eh.
Next section within 3 days probably.

[Commander]

Am I the only one in the world who has trouble with Bennett? And yeah, I agree and disagree with the whole Serra situation. Her field is purely designed for a double edged sword. I'm not really touching it as it seems to work and her true fight aka doubles would just be way too much for most people.

And yeah, Sigmund is the hard of the two fights in Yuriev, but you actually get to fight the other a little bit down the line. I love Sigmunds team though as it works so well in doubles and can hold its ground in singes. Bennett is a necessary disappointment unfortunately, but there's not much I want to do to him right now.

[Dragon116]

Why did you have Silk use Double-Edge on Froslass? It' sa ghost type, so Double Edge wouldn't impact it.

[Quickslip]

Because I'm dumb and probably didn't.

So sometimes I actually write what's happening in the battle as I'm doing the battle, but I don't usually do that if a battle takes me more than 3 or so attempts. Then what I usually do is just look at the bazillion pictures I took of the battle, use them to reinforce what I remember of the battle, then choose a few that I actually put in the post. If something is unimportant or obvious to me at the time I'm doing the battle(or if I'm just too surprised by something >_>) I don't take a screenshot. In this case, when I recreated the battle I saw this

and remembered that the entire reason I left Silk out was to eat Froslass's evasion boosts, and that it looked like I missed and hit a mirror. So, I just assumed that I had used Double Edge, since I didn't care about Silk taking a little damage and it has the highest accuracy, forgetting that Froslass was a ghost. What probably actually happened was I used Play Rough and didn't bother to take a screenshot of it since the result of the hit was likely irrelevant and Play Rough would be the only logical choice to use in that situation anyway.

[Quickslip]

After the battle the Mart disappears again and Bennett runs off with El to see the Elite 4 or something after telling El what he actually knew about Luna's whereabouts. Serra is very sad about all this, but seems to accept it as normal. We catch up to the Mart finally and pick up some medicine. We give it to Anna, who promptly gives it to her doll Nostra...and feels better somehow. Mmmk. After this, Anna suggests we go ahead and battle Noel now, saying its really important to get it done soon. Uh. Wait, what? The next badge raises the cap to 60. There's no chance I'm actually going to get this battle right? >_>


Uhhh....oh wait! An attack by Meteor and the Doctor! There we go. We meat Saphira, who is related to Charlotte and Laura somehow. Laura and I to split up to defend everyone and wait for anyone who arrives while Saphira goes out to stop the Meteor grunts from overwhelming us from the lake. The Doctor and a pair of orderlies gets here first. The orderlies team up to stop me from confronting the Doctor, who goes upstairs, which is fine since Laura's there. We beat them, but then Sirius enters and tries to force his way through...wait, are my pokemon still hurt? >_>

Ok, thankfully they aren't still hurt, but Mega is still leading since I really don't want to soft reset and do that whole fight again. Sirius leads with Chandelure, so we switch for Arcanine. She eats a pair of Heat Waves and gets in a Crunch. Sirius uses his Ultra Potion and we Morning Sun. We get off another Crunch and burn another Ultra Potion/Morning Sun. Sirius decides against using another and Chandelure falls.


He sends out Hitmontop and we go with Pride. Hitmontop is as weak offensively as I hoped, and Feather Dance takes away most of its damage. We roost back our health until it misses with something, leaving Pride at full. Then we switch back to Arcanine and Morning Sun her health back. Hitmontop misses a Hi Jump Kick and Arcanine Heat Waves. This prompts Sirius to use his last Ultra Potion, but Heat Wave and another Hi Jump Crash takes out Hitmontop.


Sirius goes for Seviper next, so we send in Atom. Turn out Seviper has Auqa Tail and can do neutral damage to Atom, but its still not that impressive. We get off 3 layers of Spikes, then use Explosion. Heliolisk finishes with Thunderbolt.


Mega Manectric is next, so we send in Mega. We get both Reflect and Light Screen off before Mega goes down, then send in Arcanine to Heat Wave and Crunch through the Thunderbolts.


Probopass comes out, so we send in Heliolisk again. He's fairly safe behind Reflect and Light Screen, so the non-crit Stone Edge and Thunder do little. It does take 3 Thunderbolts to KO it though.


Last in is Honchkrow which fairs as well as you might expect against Heliolisk.

Not long after the battle, we hear a scream from upstairs. To stay or go huh? ...well, I don't seriously think the Doctor can beat all of Laura, and Elite 4 person, Noel, a gym leader who is probably stronger than I am, and Anna who is....something by himself. Besides, they aren't calling for help. We keep them away until Saphira returns, but learn that the Doctor just ran in and assaulted Laura with electricity before she actually got to battle, then took the twins. Well crap. Saphira is only angry at Meteor thankfully, so she and I head off after them.


We split up while in the base. Many, many Meteors later, we find the kids locked up again and then later the controls for the lock that the Doctor and his key are hiding behind. We learn that Saphira was quite brutal in her fight against the Meteors on the lake and that the earthquakes are considered weird even by the Meteors. We eventually find the center of the base...where there is another PULSE machine along with an Abra. The abra teleports us away after the Meteors explain that they just want Abra to teleport them somewhere in particular and that the Abra is having none of that. The situation in Spinel Town is apparently just a side-effect.

Rather lost, we wander out eventually and come out into some tunnels. These are rather large tunnels however. We come across Saphira who is trapped deeper down...somehow. Doesn't she fly around on her Dragonite? Anyway, we eventually make it to the source of the tunnels...

Not really much to say here. Pride got off 3 Feather Dances since Steelix missed it's first attack, then got off 2 Hurricanes before it managed to crit. We send in Mega to set Reflect, but Mega gets crit immediately. Arcanine lives through an Earthquake, so she gets 2 Heat Waves off. Silk finishes it off with Double Edge.

Saphira and I catch a ride on the ginormous Steelix and dig our way out. Saphira stays on the Steelix to break out the kids and generally wreak havok on the Meteor base while I go in to distract them and take out the PULSE if I can. This turns out to be exceedingly easy, since the Meteors can't get Abra to do what they want and really would rather shut the project down, but can't as Abra teleports them away when they get close. The Abra fight is straightforward: Mega survives a Dark Pulse and sets up Light Screen, then survives a 2nd with the help of the screen and hits with Petal Dance. He's then KO'd. Abra is fast, so we send in Heliolisk and Thunderwave it. Light Screen cuts the damage from Psychic tremendously, so we get in 2 Thunderbolts before Abra KOs Heliolisk, which is actually enough.


Big scary Lin arrives, and we hide amoung the Meteors. Lin seems to suspect that Sirius's story about what happened with the Abra is fake, but doesn't elaborate as to why. Before she can do anything, Saphira and the Steelix start wreaking things and she goes out to deal with it. Sirius tells us to get away before she comes back to save face. However


When we make it back to Charlotte's, no one knows what happened to Saphira. Sensitive subjects are spoken of, so Charlotte leaves. Laura runs after her and Anna suggests we finish that battle from earlier.

Noel leads with Cinccino so I lead with Mega. We all know what Cinccino does, so I have Mega set Reflect. Cinccino uses Hidden Power however. It might have done a fair bit more if it weren't still raining, but as it is, it does only decent damage. Cinccino goes for Tail Slap but it doesn't do much with Reflect up. Mega hits heavily with Petal Dance, but Noel heals it up. After the second, Mega is confused, so we switch him out for Heliolisk while Noel heals again. Cinccino gets a hit with Tail Slap in, but it doesn't do too much with Reflect up, and he burn the last potion then KO it with Thunderbolts.


For some reason, Noel thinks its a good idea to send in Staraptor next, so Heliolisk just one shots it.


Next in is Sawsbuck, but its raining so Arcanine seems less than optimal. We send in Atom instead and Bug Bite it to death. Sawsbuck does decent damage with Jump Kick but its not enough.


Porygon-Z is threatening, so we send Mega back out. This causes Porygon to Download an upgrade to its SpA, but we get Light Screen up before Porygon finishes Mega. We send in Heliolisk next who is able to tank a Tri-Attack behind the Light Screen and 2 shots it with Thunderbolts.


Mega Pidgeot is next, but its base form is still slower than Heliolisk, so it gets one-shot. Thankfully. Hurricanes during the rain: Do Not Want.


Last in is Clefable. We keep Heliolisk out, but Light Screen isn't enough to tank Moonblast at that health. We get one Thunderbolt in though. We send in Pride next and take advantage of the Rain to spam Hurricane. We get in two, but it doesn't confuse Clefable so Pride gets 2 shot.
Silk finishes the fight with 2 Double Edges.

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Didn't have much trouble in this section, but that's largely just due to how ridiculously fast Heliolisk is while also being an Electric type, which most of the fast-ish sweepers here are weak against. Super Effectiveness ftw. Also, because Reflect and Light Screen are just extremely good. I also don't know just how much the Rain mattered. The game said the ground beneath Mega caught fire, but I assume that actually got cancelled by the Rain. If the field had actually caught fire and changed that could have caused some issues. The passive healing may have actually saved Heliolisk against the Porygon. Then again, if it weren't raining Arcanine would have been much stronger. Eh. Maybe somewhat on the weak side, but the fight felt fine though.
Next section within 3 days probably.

[Dragon116]

Very well done. Flinchinno and Porygon-Z are the absoute terrors of Noel's team, so you did well getting past them! On my run, Mach Punch saved me.

[Quickslip]

So alot of tiny little problems happened irl. They are still around, but I think I have a handle on it all now. That said though, these probably won't be put up as fast as before. Sorry for not saying anything before now. :/

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After the battle, Noel expresses concerns about Saphira, so we set out to look for her...and then the mountain blew up. Fun. So we head back into the Steelix den and find alot of items, but no Saphira. Searching the main cave system more thoroughly leads us down another path where we see Saphira breaking open bits of the mountain to escape. She hands us the ring and pendant Meteor is after, tells us to keep them safe, then goes to move the kids away from the house. We head out of the mountain into a big huge forest. There, we find Fern bragging again and challenging us to another battle.

Fern leads with Ludicolo, so we go with Heliolisk. A pair of Thunderbolts is more than enough to KO it.


Krookodile is next and it seems easy enough to set up against. We Do the Feather Dance + Roost thing, set up Reflect with Mega, Belly Drum, Ice Cream, and one-shot it with Play Rough.


Mega Sceptile is next. It surprises me when it outspeeds Silk, but it wasn't quite strong enough so Silk still KOs it with Play Rough.


Scizor is next and we go to Double Edge it, but it has Bullet Punch and KOs Silk. Arcanine takes her revenge with Heat Wave.


Serperior tries for a Leaf Strom, but within the blaze it does little and is one-shot in return.


Roserade causes flinch hax with 2 Extrasensories and KOs Arcanine. Fern tries to keep Roserade alive with some healing, but Pride one-shots it with Hurricane. Good-guy Pride also puts out the fire to save the forest.

Afterward, we explore the forest. Actually, I kinda hate this place, since the Taruos only respawn when you enter certain places and everything looks the same to me unless I pay alot of attention. >_> We find a bunch of things like an Itemfinder, the creator of this region's PC Boxes, and some Oddishweed before finally making it to the gym. There we find the Luna person that Bennett was asking about, who has made herself at home at this gym now. Also, the gossip gardevoir is actually a gardevoir, so yeah. xD The leader greats us, but Cain is fast behind and challenges us to see who will challenge the leader first.

Oh my goodness, Cain's Nidoking in this battle...xD
Cain leads with Zoroark, I lead with Mega. We set up Light Screen for Cain's Nidoking and then KO the Zoroark with Petal Dance. Sadly, Cain decides not to use any healing here.


Behind Light Screen, Arcanine manages to 2 shot Nidoking, since it decided to use something besides Earth Power for its second attack.


Mega Beedrill is next, and it turns out Pride cannot one-shot it with Hurricane. It mega evoles and Swords-Dances. Cain uses Milk next turn while I Facade hoping for him not to do that and unwilling to trust to Hurrican's accuracy. Next turn it KOs Pride with Poison Jab. I decide to Explode Atom here.


Cain goes for Muk next and I send out Heliolisk. We get off a Thunderbolt, but Muk uses Dig. We switch out Helioliks for Mega, who tanks the Dig. We then set Reflect before getting KO'd with a Poison Jab. I send out Silk, but without some sort of super effective attack she's not enough to beat Muk even behind Reflect. Heliolisk comes in to finish it off. Cain wastes another Milk trying to save it, but Thunderbolt is too strong.


Samurott comes out and immediately falls to Heliolisk.


Gengar is last. Not trusting Heliolisk to outspeed, we use thunderwave, but heliolisk is actually faster and gets it off before Gengar's attack. Gengar is fully paralyzed, and we get 2 Thunderbolts vs. Gengar's 1 Psychic and win the match.

After the fight, we look around and realize Gardevoir is gone. A ransom note demands Luna in exchange for Gardevoir. Radomus is entirely unwilling to do that, but sees no need to follow after the kidnapper either. Cain is not willing to let that stand, nad heads off without him, so Radomus and I follow. Falling down a few holes near the front of the Grand Stairway leads us down to a new area with lots of Unown floating about. We meet with a white-haired person and Gardevoir, who now says that she actually hates Radomus. It takes the Ameythst Pendant somehow, and heads off into the Aerie.


Using the power of the Ruby Ring, we climb the Aerie after it and confront Gardevoir and El. As everyone seems confused about whose words they should be trusting, we just side with Radomus, since we already know El is quite likely not trustworthy at all. When put to the question, Radomus points out that the Gardevoir everyone's talking to isn't actually the real one. El lets the ditto that was impersonating Gardevoir reveal itself and then goes on a rant about Arceus being entombed down here. Its all very roll-eye-y until he has ditto transfrom and it actually turns into an Arceus.

Arceus is fairly straightforward. We teach Heliolisk Flash real quick and send out Mega first. We set up Light Screen befoer getting two shot, then send out Heliolisk. Arceus predictably hits the Focus Blast, but it's not enough to KO through the Light Screen, so we get to Thunderwave it. We do this twice more, since El has Full Heals, then Flash it twice before it actually KOs Heliolisk. We send in Pride and start Hurricaning. Through a combination of confusion, parahax, misses, and not-very-effective Judgements, Prides gets in good damage before falling. Arcanine finishes it off with a few Heatwaves.

While we deal with the ditto, Radomus calls out to the real Gardevoir who immediately teleports next to him in grandiose fashion. They put El to sleep with Hypnosis, and then we all leave the underground. When we reach the surface, Adrienn(the white haired person) is confused, since everything looks different. Further, the Grand Gates have opened for the first time in forever. Adrienn heads to the broken down gym in Coral Ward and everyone decides that Xe must have been stuck in some sort of temporal stasis that was broken due to the power of the Ruby Ring and Amethyst Pendant. Adrienn vows to make the city a better place and heads off.

We head back to the gym, and meet a new butler named Elias. Luna seems put off by his appearance and wanders off. We head through the puzzles and ultimately challenge Radomus. The greeter dude from the normal pokemon games tells us that there are actually two battles for him, so we go ahead and do both.


Singles

Radomus leads with Girafarig and I go with Heliolisk. Heliolisk outspeeds, so 2 Thunderbolts beat s out 1 Psychic.


Gallade is next. Its a set up target if ever I saw one, so we send in Pride. We Roost and Feather Dance through Close Combat and random crits, then send in Mega to set Reflect and Light Screen. We send in Silk last, Belly Drum, Berri Ice Cream, then one shot it with Shadow Claw.


Metagross falls to Shadow Claw as well. The crit probably mattered. Yay Hi-crit moves!


Starmie outspeeds and gets off a Scald. It doesn't burn though, so it gets one-shot as well.


I don't trust Shadow Claw to one-hit Reuniclus and Silk's down a good bit of HP, so we suicide Double Edge it for the 4th KO.


Mega Garevoir is all that's left, so we send in Heliolisk again. We thunderwave it before getting Psychic'd. We send in Mega next and re-set Light Screen. This lets Mega -barely- survive the Psychic and we get a Petal Dance off.


We send in Arcanine and start Crunching. Through a Focus Blast miss, Calm Mind, and general parahax, Arcanine KOs Gardevoir with Crunches through 2 Hyper Potions without getting hit.

Infinitely harder Doubles

We lead with Pride and Arcanine, Radomus uses Reuniclus and Exeggutor. We Hurricane and Heat Wave to KO Exeggutor before it Trick Rooms. On this occasion, Reuniclus decides to Focus Blast Pride instead of one-shotting one of my leads with Psychic.


Metagross gets sent out next. We Go for Hurricane and Heat Wave again. Hurricane and Heat Wave both hit Reuniclus, but its not confused and Heat Wave misses Metagross. Metagross KOs Pride with Ice Punch and Reuniclus Psychics Arcanine for the double KO.


We send in Atom and Silk next. Silk's turn is forfeitted for a Max Revive on Arcanine and Atom Bug Bites the Reuniclus, KOing it before it gets a turn. Metagross hits Silk with something, but it isn't quite enough for a KO.


Malamar comes out next, so we Double Edge + Bug Bite it to hopefully KO it before Trick Room. This proves to be not quite enough, but it uses Superpower instead of Trick Room on this occasion. Metagross does some damage with Zen Headbutt.


Radomus Hyper Potions Malamar, and we Heat Wave + Bug Bite it. Heat Wave hits both and Malamar's back to being just barely not KO'd while Metagross misses a Hammer Arm.


Radomus Hyper Potions again while we Heat Wave and Bug Bite once more. Malamar lives once again, but gets burned which KOs it at end of turn. Metagross Meteor Mashes for some damage.


Slowking is next for Radomus. We Heat Wave and Bug Bite again, but Heat Wave misses Metagross and Bug Bite is not enough to KO Slowking. Metagross deals almost lethal damage to Atom and Slowking Scalds Arcanine for the KO instead of setting up Trick Room.(which would have been helpful against Gardevoir :/)


We send in Heliolisk next. Thunderbolt is enough to KO Metagross, but Slowking has just enough health to survive Bug Bite. It responds with a Scald to KO Atom.


Last in is Mega Gardevoir. We send in Mega and have him Grass Pledge the Slowking while Heliolisk Thunderwaves the Gardevoir, because scary. Gardevoir KOs Heliolisk with a Focus Blast.


Not willing to risk getting one-shot through Light Screen, I instead Max Revive Arcanine again and hope for parahax. It is not meant to be, as Gardevoir Psychics Mega for a KO. So we use a normal revive, this time on Heliolisk. We finally get a paralysis turn, so next turn we Thunderbolt + Crunch Gardevoir to which it responds with Hyper Voice, which KOs Heliolisk but does less than half of Arcanine's health. Arcanine finishes the fight with another Crunch.

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I was so not prepared for the Radomus Doubles fight. xD I'm not entirely sure if my pokemon were at the normal level for that fight, or if I just missed an entire event somewhere. I feel like the level gap isn't as big a deal in singles as it is in double battles and that Radomus's pokemon shouldn't be as high as they are in the doubles battle to compensate, but I could be wrong about that. It does bear mentioning again that my team is just pretty bad at doubles in general, and that half the power of Silk is in Pickup-item-advantage anyway. I still have more Max Revives. >_>

Next section probably in 4 days or so.

[Dragon116]

Hyper voice is a mean move. I watched it wipe Hiroki's side of the field out in one shot, so G.G is by far the most dangerous. Good job beating both versions!

[Commander]

You either have two wars against Radomus in doubles, his Trick Room team or his Mega Gardevoir, but not both. Leveling is a pain here just due to how things work, but 58 is the recommended level which is pretty much 4 levels above Noel. I'm not really inclined to lower it as that'd make Radomus a joke then. If it's too much of an issue there are trainers you can fight in the grand hall with your handy dandy lucky egg.

As for Trick Room, that's a really complicated headache of a subject, but he didn't use it because Metagross was on the field otherwise he would've. I expect that in E16 or 17 it'll be better made so Radomus will be stronger then, but trust me when I say I did a lot of math for buffing and adjusting that fight. The Singles fight was more for people complaining Radomus was too easy.

Anyways, the road does not get any easier from here, but I have a feeling you can do it with that team (though I might advise a team adjustment soon as...a certain leader coming up could probably wreck your team).

[Quickslip]

Backstory: So, after 4999 screenshots, the game actually stops saving them and I didn't notice until waaaay late. So, for this section, I don't actually have all that many of them. Sorry about that. We will return to your regularly scheduled picture overload on the next post, unless you all just like this format better.

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As the fight ends, the lights go out for nor apparent reason. We all decide to leave, when Elias decides to finish double-crossing us. He tries to capture with us while our pokemon are still mostly KO'd from Radomus, but Cain delays him long enough for us to escape. He charges us to find and rescue Luna, who was apparently captured as well. Radomus meets us outside and tells us that they probably took Luna to 7th street, and that for undisclosed reasons, he cannot come with us. Shady.
Then...lots of stuff happened without any important battles coming in between. I picked up a Ponyta and Amaura and got another department store sticker, but other than that we mostly had alot of story:

Little happens for a while as Radomus's hint wasn't particularly helpful until I looked online had a flash of inspiration and remembered the gangs waaay far back that I never did. We go in and smash the Magma Gang and discover that the bike voucher was all the way back here. And there's a ponyta. I would totally have used Ponyta over Arcanine if I'd found ponyta that long ago(Rapidash is faaaar cooler than Arcanine), but now...meh. Oh wait it's shiny and has decent IVs. Guess its fate then. Hope something comes up that makes dragon types easier then, since Arcanine is the one with Outrage. >_>


It'll take a while to train up in any case though. We finish up the gang warfare and get to 7th street. We find the not quite legal psychiatrist and are greatly tempted to give Pride a different, non-speed-reducing nature but don't actually bother, since it took so long to give Ponyta a nature that actually reduced SpA. After checking with most of the populace here, we track down a robed man, who actually turns out to be Bennett. He invites us down into his and Elias's hideout and we are predictably captured.
Thankfully, another prisoner has the keys to the cells,, but isn't interested in leaving. We lets us out and stays behind for more free food. We duck and weave our way through the monks of the hideout so they don't throw us back into the cell. Eventually, most of the monks are called away and we fight our way through the rest of them. We make out way to the center of the area and find Luna chained to an altar of some kind. Elias brings out Cain and threatens to kill him if we interfere, but Radomus uses the distraction of our appearance to have Gardevoir teleport all the guards away. We uncahin Luna and teleport away, but not before Elias grabs the Emerald Pendant from Luna's Neck. Radomus leaves to check out another lead of some sort, Cain goes to Agate City to see why the guards are so sleepy, and Luna leaves to wait for us at her gym.
We head out and talk with the Cult of the Helix Fossil. Its all very odd, but we do have the Farfetched they want, so we give them one and recieve the sail fossil, which eventually leads to one of the coolest Pokemon in existence. We revive the Amaura and use the excuse of needing to train it and Ponyta to finish the honey puzzle back in the forest. This leads to both of them being in the mid 40s and nets us another department store sticker. Also, the new shiny Rapidash is awesome looking.

After that, we head after Luna with her key. We bump into Bennett multiple times around the valley, eventually culminating in a battle, since Bennett is unable to turn the stalker creepiness down. Quite possible something Elias did to him maybe?

This is actually the second fight, since the first time I got wiped by Heracross being significantly faster than I thought. Probably a choice item or something.
Volcarona leads for Bennett and we lead with Pride. Pride hits with Hurricane and Volcarona responds with a Fire Gem-charged Heat Wave. Pride barely lives and goes for another Hurricane, but Bennett switches out Volcarona for Venemoth. It lives through the Hurricane and Bennett heals it with Milk. This isn't enough to survive Prides next Hurricane though. Yay Wide Lens! Pinsir is sent out next, but Pride misses the last Hurricane and is KO'd by the Mega. We send in Heliolisk and it one-shots the Pinsir with Thunderbolt. Not sure if the crit mattered here or not. Heracross is next, so we send in Arcanine. This lowers Heracross's attack and locks it into Stone Edge. Heliolisk is strong enough to tank 2 of these non-crits under this condition and KOs it with a pair of Thunderbolts. Volcarona comes out again, but Heliolisk takes care of what remains of it's HP easily. Durant is next and it one-shots Mega before he sets Reflect. Without that, Atom only manages to take ~50% of its HP away before fainting. Silk takes Durant to really low values before being KO'd, so we send in Heliolisk again and KO the Durant with Charge Beam, getting the SpA increase. With that, Heliolisk outspeeds and easily one-shots the Vivillon.

Bennett walks away muttering about how stupid everything is, vowing to make us all see one day and making Luna regret turning away from his love. We move on and lock the rocks behind us. Luna greets us and accepts our challenge.

Pic
Greninja leads for Luna and we lead with Heliolisk. Greninja is fast, so we Thunder Wave it while it uses Extrasensory. Heliolisk has lots of SpD so it doesn't hit the halfway point for Heliolisk's HP. We use Thunderbolt and eat an Ice Beam. Luna uses 2 potions here on Greninja before choosing to let it fall the followup Thunderbolt. Next is Luna's powerhouse as far as my team is concerned: the Mega Tyranitar. I send in Pride and get of 2 Feather Dances before he is KO'd from the Stone Edges. We send in Mega next and set Reflect. Tyranitar uses a turn to Hone Claws, but we Grass Pledge it. Instead of staying and fighting here, Luna switches out Tyranitar for Sableye. We set Light Screen which causes its Dark Pulses to do minimal damage, then Petal Dance for 2 turns for the KO. Mega is confused, so when Luna threatens to send in Mandibuzz, we switch in Heliolisk. Mandibuzz's bulk is too much for a single Thunderbolt, so it KOs what's left of Heliolisk's HP. We send in Atom next and tank hits from Mandibuzz while using revive on Heliolisk and Pride and then heal Mega. Afterward, we use Explosion since Atom is getting low and Mandibuzz is getting high from its leftovers. We send in Heliolisk again and finish the Mandibuzz with another Thunderbolt. Luna sends in Tyranitar again so we go with Pride again. Pride only gets off 1 Feather Dance this time, but we send out Mega again and set Reflect once more. Mega proves to not be quite tanky enough to outdamage Tyranitar while the Sandstorm boosts its SpD, but does enough damage that Heliolisk can enter again and KO Tyranitar. Spiritomb is next, but its Dark Pulses aren't enough to outdamage Arcanine. Luna's last pokemon is the super stalling Umbreon. Heat Wave deals a small chunk of damage while Umbreon 's Dark Pulse does a little as well. Our next Heat Wave burns the Umbreon, but it responds with Toxic. After I Heat Wave it again, it Moonlights. Ugh. We use a Full Restore because Pickup and eat another Dark Pulse. We trade Heat Waves for Dark Pulses and a Toxic until it looks like it will have to Moonlight or else fall to a respond attack. It decides to Dark Pulse anyway for the KO, so I think I win with Heliolisk coming in. Luna has another potion though, so we end up trading 2 more Thunderbolts for a Dark Pulse and KO the Umbreon.

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Not sure how I feel about how I'm winning some of these battles. On the one hand, it's partially just using the ability that Silk has. On the other, spamming items is starting to feel like cheating, even if I have tons and really aught to use them. >_> Hmm.

In any case, Luna felt fine. Not controller-breaking hard, but not easy either.

Did not know about that trainer in the Grand Hall, but that will certainly make leveling Rapidash and Amaura the rest of the way easier.

Next section in 4 days probably.

[Dragon116]

I gotta say, I did not expect Pride and Silk to last on your team this long. Feather Dance and Double Edge are nice tools to have though.

[Quickslip]

I actually hoped Pride would be able to make it all the way, but I wasn't too sure on Silk.

Ok, this is a really short section. I blame doing all of the honey forest around Route 1 last time. After fiddling with the Crustle puzzle a bit, I just was not willing to do it for the longest time...it just seemed so tedious. It wasn't even hard. But I do hope that there isn't another lengthy puzzle immediately after these fights. >_>

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After leaving Luna's, we head out in search of Cain. We find him really quick and he gives the the final-portal-there's-no-coming-back-from speech. Sooooo, we go get our affairs in order...

So we go back, find Oddishweed lady and get an egg. We use the magic rock keys to get into the wasteland again and find the Yureyu key. This leads us back to the power plant eventually, and we get a magnet and Rotom. We find Simon in the graveyard and then track him down again, there to have a heart-to-heart that sounds like its pointing to use Dive in a particular lake to give him closure. We train up Amaura so he learns Blizzard then go back to the move reminder to give him Freeze-dry before we lose access to her. We find that techie and get our sweet, sweet revenge. Ahhhh...feels good.

Everything I can think of done, we head into Agate and find the whole town asleep. We quickly find Aya and Hardy knocked out in the middle of the town. Cain starts falling asleep as well when a girl with a giant hammer arrives and almost smashes him. She introduces herself as Terra then knocks Aya and Hardy away...somewhere. With her giant hammer. So I guess they're dead.


Terra takes us down to the Circus below and explains that the city is dangerous and puts people to sleep somehow. She says that Aya and Hardy should be around here somehere, then chacha's away. So we head around the circus, fight all the scary strong clown pokemon and give in to all the thiny child's demands, netting another department store sticker. Afterward, the circusmaster tells us that they found Aya and that Samson will take us to her.

We enter the big tent and meat Ciel and Aya again. Aya is just waking up and is worried about Hardy, who was apparently thrown far further than her. And may like him, but w/e. We pick up a Powder Vial and head out...and why can we only take 1?
We make it through the crustle puzzle and make it to Amy and Titania's house. Titania seems somewhat apathetic towards the whole Metoer situation, but perhaps its just concern for Amy, who has some broken ribs right now. We confirm that Hardy's fine and get him to go to the circus. Titania gives us a pass to fight one of the circus gym leaders and offers us the Surf machine if we can win.

We get back to the circus, have an interesting series of conversations with Terra involved, and challenge Samson.

We lead with Flying Gem Rapidash, Samson leads with Hariyama. He misses the Earthquake due to Bounce. On this occasion he decides to switch in to Mienshao, which gets 1 shot.


Samson goes for Hariyama again and without the Flying Gem Rapidash can't one-shot it. We send in Pride and do the Feather Dance + Roost thing. We Huricane, then Feather Dance away the Weakness Policy boost. When we try to use Hurricane again, it gets switched out for Heracross. Pride isn't quite strong enough to one shot Heracross with Hurricane, so we use another as Samson tries to heal Heracross. Back to the wall, Heracross Earthquakes Pride I think(Pride was hit with Smack Down a coupe of times) but doesn't manage to KO and Pride finishes with Facade.


Mega Blaziken is next. We send in Rapidash again and juke the High Jump with Bounce and finish on the next turn with Blaziken's halved HP.


Hariyama gets sent out again, so we decide to try and reduce it's health with Bounce so something else can one-shot it. We miss and are KO'd by Earthquake.


We send in Silk as sacrifice and Hyper Potion Pride back into health. We do the Roost + Feather Dance thing again and get in a Hurricane, but Samson switches out for Hawlucha. Hurricane hits it on the switch in, but is not enough for the KO. It uses it's Flying Gem Acrobatics on Pride, but it's also lacking in KO potential so Pride finishes with Facade.


Remembering Samson's last pokemon, we send in Auroros against Hariyama to absorb a hit while we Ultra Potion Pride. Not sure whether or not Facade or Grass Pledge would KO from its current HP, we send in Heliolisk to KO Hariyama though this levels him to 66.


Conkeldurr is last. We get 2 Feather Dances off before falling to Ice Punches, then switch in Mega. Mega sets Reflect and looks to be fine just fighting from there, but Conkeldurr gets a crit. Thankfully, it doesn't crit Heliolisk so it can't really damage him. In the end, Heliolisk eventually deigns to Thunderbolt it twice for the finish.

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Hawlucha actually outspeeds my entire team, so I was actually banking on having to use the super-effective-reducing berries just to set Reflect and let Heliolisk Thunderbolt it, but Pride turned out to be tankier than I thought and Samson decided to hard switch it in, so that was nice. Fight feels fine regardless. Not sure if I hate or love Terra yet. >_>



pleasenolongpuzzlesinthenextsection...

[Dragon116]

Hawlucha is one of the fastest pokemon in the game with 122 base speed, and unburden ability to double that absurd speed. Unless you brought Jolteon with you, there wasn't any hope of outspeeding.

[Commander]

Hawlucha is definitely one of Samson's most threatening Pokemon alongside that Blaziken. The thing I like about Hariyama though is that it's going to KO something with Weakness Policy activated combined with the 2x multiplier. That's like getting hit by an attack 4 times, but it balances out because Hariyama is slow. Samson has a really good team, but the levels are kind of needed outside of Hawlucha just due to how easy it is to beat fighting types nowadays. Heracross is his least threatening Pokemon IMO, but it's better than regular Lucario as it does way more damage (you learn that Samson may be slow, but he's one of the strongest hitting leaders in Reborn). The next leader is a bit of hell though...hehehe.

[Quickslip]

Crouching hidden Eevee. Sadness.
Also, this update was totally not because I felt slightly guilty for taking so long on the other one. Not even a little bit. Still short though.

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Our battle done, the leaders and I decide that our next stop should be Calcenon City, which we had already decided earlier, but now we know there is also a PULSE machine up there to blow up. We head down to collect the Surf machine. Amaria's out for a walk, so Titania goes to collect it for us. While she's gone, for some unkown reason, we decide that the -best- thing we could do is to go read the diary that she was writing in.(I mean seriously...what. -.-) She gets understandably furious at us and tells us not to tell Amy what we read...who walks in at that moment and gets a look at what's inside. Amy runs away in tears and Titania runs after her. We leave to follow and meat our good friend Absol along the way.

Devestated, Amy jumps off a waterfall and Titania jumps after her, telling us to figure out how to get them out. We use our new Surf machine to search around the nearby tunnels and waterways, but don't see any other way down. We eventually catch up to Aya, Cain, and Hardy, but the way to Ametrine is frozen under a giant block of ice. Oh, and the Waterfall machine is up in Ametrine. Stuck, we continue on to Calcenon.


But a destructive blast destroys the road in. Saphira hovers down on her Dragonite to explain that Meteor is bombarding Calcenon with a PULSE machine. She's busy deflecting the blasts, but she can't help that its causing some collatoral damage around the outskirts of the city. She flies back up and we try to go around the wreckage. Cain and Hardy quickly get split off from us as the bombardment continues. Aya and I team up and try to make it through the mountain instead, since the bridge got blown up with us on the wrong side. Not far along at all, and we discover Meteor grunts in the mountain. This doesn't bode too well, and Absol agrees.


We wander some more and eventually make it to the center of the operation. Aster and Eclipse are here once more, though Eclipse doesn't seem that into it. They both battle us, but its comparitely easier than usual, despite their promotions. After the battle, Eclipse turns off the PULSE machine and explains that she's had a change of heart due to personal reasons. Aster is speechless, so Eclipse decides to try to give us some insight into what Meteor is doing, but Sirius enters and isn't having any of that.


Still weakened from that battle I assume(though it really wasn't that hard...why aren't we fighting back? >_>) Sirius grabs Aya for a hostage and retreats. They blow up their escape route behind them, leaving us to continue to Calcenon by ourselves. We meet with Hardy at the gates and tell him the bad news. This sends him running off somewhere.

We explore the city a bit, trying to see who's where. We find Anne and the others with Cain in a house here. We explain the situation with the iceberg and Anne and Noel suggest getting Dive to go underneath it. Shelly really wants to go too, since Heather is apparently there as well. We have to beat Charlotte first to get the machine to work though. Good thing her gym is here. Going further, we find Hardy and Saphira trying to find some way to get through the Mr. Mime wall blocking off Meteor. Fern comes down to taunt everyone as is his way, but he's decided to side with Meteor besides. Not making any friends at all.


We go to talk to Charlotte and find her trying to talk to Laura. Laura's been fired from the Elite 4 and is incredibly frusterated with herself. As we enter, she runs off and Charlotte goes after her. We search everywhere for them, even going back to the Circus(I need the machine for Dive anyway) and eventually just talk with Saphira again. While we do so, Sirius comes down and offers Aya's life for the Ruby Ring. Hardy gets angry at Saphira when she says we shouldn't do it, as its far too important. Charlotte approaches during all of this and takes the ring when we refuse to give it up.(Not sure what I would -actually- do if thrust in that situation, but really. Lets just give the bad guys the keys to God that also happen to be able to control time somehow. >_>) Sirius leaves with Aya and says he'll send someone down to trade with her.

We go after Charlotte, and she hands the ring back to us. She commends the choice to not give it up, but wanted to give Meteor a show that will slow them down and confuse them. She heads back to her gym so that we can battle for the Dive enabling badge, and we make our way up to her through her gym trainers and challenge her.

For this fight, we subbed in Arcanine for one last hurrah(or not. Silk is really bad in double battles). This fight was doable with Silk in her place as well, but it looks really, really cheap with me using, like, 4 revives and a Full Restore. >_>

Charlotte leads with Darmanitan and Typhlosion. We go with Earth Plate Rapidash and Pride. Darmanitan Flare Blitz's Pride for the one shot, but Rapidash gets revenge with Drill Run. Typhlosion Eruptions, but Rapidash has Flash Fire.


Mega Houndoom is up next, so we send in Heliolisk. Typhlosion Power Herb-Solarbeams Heliolisk instead of Eruptioning this time while Houndoom uses a semi-typical Dark Pulse on Rapidash. This leaves both alive, so Rapidash Drill Runs Houndoom and then Heliolisk wipes the field with Surf.


Charlotte goes for Talonflame and Rotom next, so we send in Aurorus. We aim for Talonflame, but it U-turns and Ninetails is sent out. I also missclick Surf instead of Thunderbolt, but it does take away Rotom's White Herb at least. It does little damage and Rotom responds with Overheat, KOing Heliolisk. Aurorus misses Ancient Power due to Surf.


We send in Arcanine here. Ninetails misses it's Solarbeam due to Surf. Arcanine's Outrage hits Rotom instead of Ninetails sadly, but our berry prevents confusion. Overheat still does decent damage to Aurorus and Ancient Power deals alot of damage to Ninetails.


Charlotte uses her potions and heals up both of her pokemon and I heal up Aurorus similarly. Arcanine Crunches Ninetails for a little damage.


Charlotte hard switches Rotom because of the -4 SpA and sends in Talonflame. Ninetails uses Heat Wave but Arcanine has Flash Fire now and Aurorus is tanky enough to remain. Ancient Power and Crunch KO Ninetails.


Charlotte sends in Rotom again. I think everything is in the bag, so I don't do anything with Aurorus's turn, and he's taken out with a Flare Blitz from Talonflame. Arcanine's Flash Fire is procced, the field is ablaze, and Drought is still in effect, so we use Heat Wave. Talonflame dodges and makes me sad. It deals decent damage to Rotom, and Rotom uses the Overheat it was aiming at Aurorus on Arcanine.


Mega is last. Seeing how this is going to go, I use a revive on Rapidash just in case Talonflame decides to deal damage to Arcanine instead of one-shotting Mega. Sure enough, Talonflame Brave Birds Arcanine instead of Mega. Arcanine responds with Heat Wave, hitting both Pokemon this time. Rotom KOs Mega with Overheat.


We send in the newly revived Rapidash and go with Heat Wave and Flare Blitz. Talonflame suicides into Arcanine with Brave Bird and Rapidash finishes off Rotom.

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Charlotte is certainly different. Almost everything on her team is some sort of speedy powerhouse, assuming they only use their really, really strong attacks. Double Flash Fire was awesome here, though I suspect a decently powerful Rock type would have worked as well, since Solarbeam isn't that scary when the field is aflame. Seems fine mostly. That lead is scary strong and scary fast, but I'd assume people have ways of dealing with it at this point.

Next section in 4 days probably.

.

[Commander]

Believe or not I got a lot of people bothering me about giving her a Mega Charizard and yeah that ended up being a no because she can just hit so hard and you want to give her an additional multiplier. And my strategy was rain dance trick room which talonflame helps mess with a little bit (seriously, people think that thing is stronger than it really is with that 84 attack stat). I don't get why people want her to basically be Uber strong like in the pre-nerf days. Her current team is stronger than that pre-nerf, but balanced out when compared to the rest of the leaders.

[Dragon116]

I agree with Commander's choices here. This team has a lot of counters, and Typlosion and Darmanian are an excellent starting wall, akin to Aya's defensive start of Tentacool and Nidoqueen.

[Quickslip]

With our fancy new Dive badge, we head back into the mountains, because we're really just leaving Aya behind for now. Wouldn't have called that. We meet a scary PULSE Avalugg, and learn that the field effects page is wrong; Heat Wave actually terminates the field, it doesn't make it a Water Surface field. Still, Aurorus is ridiculously powerful on this field and after some feather dances, is really unconcerned about the PULSE's damage output.

After the fight, the glacier melts quickly and Shelly approaches. She wonders about why the machine is here, but we set it aside, since we have no real idea what's going on. People are starving and stuff.


She and I make it to the city...

and find that they aren't starving. Someone they're just calling the Guardian Angel is actually finding food somewhere and giving it to them. We search around town and no one is willing to tell us who it is. We do find a weird computer lab with some glitched Pokemon, but we beat them back and get another department store sticker. Eventually, after meeting a blue-haired guy in a suspicious abandoned house, a child tells us that that was Blake and that he's looking after the Guardian Angel. She doesn't want him to know about the food she's giving away for some reason, but he should know where she is.

We head there and try to talk to him. He offers to tell us in exhchange for the Ruby Ring. Since he even knows what that is, we can guess that he's with Meteor, so we refuse. However...


We are the worst person in this world to give something to to keep safe. I mean really.
Blake takes the time to mock us at least, telling us that he has Heather locked up somewhere. Also has a pretty terrible outlook on life. Possibly a friend for Fern there. Shelly and I chase him out, but immediately lose him as he leaves the bulding. We find Cal though. Blue haired, he attempts to make peace with Shelly. He goes to stall his brother Blade some while we head back into the house to see if we can find the hidden passage Cal says is hidden inside. (Wouldn't it make more sense for Cal to look for the hidden passage he knows about and us to chase Blase? >_>)

In any case, we find the hidden passage and release Heather. She appears to have recovered from the shock sessions and is more angry than hurt. Especially when we tell her about the ring that was just stolen. She and Shelly go off on Salamence to stop the air support that Meteor is calling in to get Blake out while I head off on foot to try and catch up with Cal and Blake.

Doing so, we catch up with Cal and team up for a bit break through the horde of Meteor Aces on the mountain. Partway up, Heather flies by and asks for Cal's assistance, since he can Fly as well. He gets on his Charizard and joins Salamence in the sky. Shelly is let down to go up the mountain with us, and we continue busting our way through them. And wow has Shelly gotten stronger. Near the home stretch Shelly runs ahead while we lag behind and get challenged by Aster. To be sure we bother with him, he puts the Waterfall machine on the line as well.

Aster gets depressed when we win again, but hands over the machine. He seems to be thinking over the lengths Meteor is using to achieve its goals, but doesn't seem to think he's strong enough to make a difference. Or maybe he'll just do something else on the sidelines who knows. Anyway, our Pokemon are healed and we head the rest of the way up the Mountain. There, Shelly has already fought and lost to Blake while we had our battle downstairs, so now its our turn.

Blake leads with Jynx and Rotom and we go with Rapidash and Heliolisk. Rapidash Megahorns Jynx for the one-shot and Heliolisk Dark Pulses the Rotom because I keep thinking its a ghost in this form. It responds with Thunder on Rapidash. Its very close to a KO, but Rapidash still stands, even after the hail.


Vanilluxe is sent out next. Rapidash suicide Flare Blitzes it and Heliolisk Thunderbolts it. Together, this KOs the ice cream. Rotom uses Blizzard and KOs Heliolisk with the help of the hail.


We send in Aurorus and Mega while Blake goes with Weavile. Weavile misses with something(I think it was Icile Crash) and Mega Grass Pledges the Weavile and is paralyzed by a Thunder. Aurorus does heavy damage with Blizzad.


Blake uses a Hyper Potion on Weavile and KOs Mega with a Blizzard. Aurorus answers with another Blizzard and KOes Rotom while dealing heavy damage to Weavile again.


Blake sends in Mega Glalie and we send in Silk. Weavile Poison Jabs Silk for decent damge and Silk finishes Weavile with Double Edge. Glalie knocks out Silk with something while Aurorus Blizzards it for alot of damage.


Pride is next for us and Blake's final pokemon is Walrein. We use Pride's turn to Max Revive Heliolisk. Glalie knocks out Pride with something, but Aurorus KOes it with Blizzard while doing a little damage to Walrein as well. It uses Surf on Aurorus for good damage.


We send in Heliolisk again. We Thunder Wave the Walrein and heal up Aurorus a little. It surfs again, but Heliolisk has Dry Skin now and is unimpressed. Being absurdly safe, I heal up Aurorus again and Thunderbolt the Walrein instead of just attacking with both. It survives and gets healed next turn, but we attack with both Aurorus and Heliolisk that turn and take it down from full HP.

Even after we win, Blake still refuses to part with the ring. As his helicopter is here as well, he looks like he might get away, but Hether and Cal show up just in time to take the ring away. Thwarted, Blake continues his escape, but his parting words about the sleeping Agate city are troubling.


So yeah, Terra be bad. Cal flies us off the mountain(we really, -really- need to get Fly at some point >_>) and we head back to the circus to confront Terra...except, when we do, she says "well duh" and jumps into the computer, Megaman style. We chase after her as Player 2 and find outselves in Pokemon Red/Blue-land on Victory Road. We traverse this place while making it through the Terra challenges...


until we come across a random stranger...

Zuko the Ninetails leads for our opponent while we go with Rapidash. Ninetails starts with Zen Headbutt, which doesn't cause a flinch, so we hit it with Drill Run. 2 Full Restores are burned here as Ninetails just keeps taking the right amount of damage from Drill Run and we just use it again. On its last turn, it decides to Solar Beam instead of Zen Headbutt again, and Rapidash KOes it with another Drill Run,


Aya the Dragalge is next, but it gets one-shot with Aurorus's Blizzard.


Abraham the Mega Alakazam is next. We send in Heliolisk to eat the Psychic and hit it with Thunder Wave. We then Volt Switch it out and send in Pride. Abraham uses Energy Ball instead of another Psychic and it does little damage to Pride. Pride uses Hurricane on the following turn, but Abraham Fire Punches instead of Koing Pride with Psychic, leaving Pride able to finish it with Facade.


Chubby the Snorlax is tanky as heck though. We send in Heliolisk again and suicide Thunder Wave it and hope it helps. We send in Pride to see if we can get in some para-confusion with Hurricane, but Hurricane misses and Pride is KOed. We would send in Silk here to Thief away the leftovers, but I forgot to remove the Silk Scarf I gave her on a previous attempt, so that's a no go.


We send in Aurorus here. Even with leftovers, Chubby isn't tanky enough to win vs. Aurorus's Ancient Powers and general tankiness while paralyzed. It didn't hurt that Chubby didn't Amnesia until it was hit with 3 Ancient Powers, the last of which procced on Aurorus.


The Ancient Power proc from before makes Aurorus too tanky to be taken out by Grim's Psychic. Grim falls to a Blizzard and another Ancient Power.


Aurorus has done good work here, and we decide to just Blizzard once more and let Ozzy KO him, but Aurorus doesn't like that idea and KOs Ozzy as well.

Next was a Mega Mewtwo Y, which could one-shot my entire team with Psystrike or Ice Beam. This was solved by giving Mega a super-effective-Ice redicing berry to allow him to set a Light Screen after Mewtwo Ice Beams it...which ultimately didn't matter, since Mewtwo decided to use Thunder or Thunderbolt on Heliolisk which wouldn't have KO'd it anyway. We get the Thunder Wave off and the fight is easy from there.


And beyond that...there was Terra. Mega Terra, even.

Terra leads with GIOVANNI the Nidoking and I start with Heliolisk. Heliolisk wins the speed tie and Surfs for good damage while Nidokind one-shots him with Sludge Wave.


We send in Rapidash now and burn all 3 of Terra's Hyper Potions with Drill Run. On what would have been its last turn, Terra switches out Nidoking for HIPHOPOTAMUS the...well...you can guess. Drill Run does almost nothing to it. I hard switch out Rapidash for Silk and offer her as sacrifice here. We do get in a Double-Edge, since one Earthquake isn't enough to KO Silk.


We send in Aurorus here and cancel the sandstorm with Snow Warning and finish off the hippo with Blizzard.


Terra goes for EXCAKILL the Excadrill. That's a no go on Aurorus, so we send in Mega. Mega tanks a Life Orbed Earthquake to hit it with a Petal Dance. Afterward, it uses X-Scissor and finishes off Mega. Rapidash enters to KO it with Drill Run afterward instead of having to Flare Blitz it.


GIOVANNI is next, but Rapidash still finishes it with Drill Run.


SWAGSIRE is next so we send in Aurorus again. Freeze-Dry easily one-shots it.


CLAYBOYBUNNY sets Reflect and is tanky enough to not quite fall to Blizzard + hail without a nevermeltice equipped. Instead of doing some damage, Terra hard switches to RAWRCHOMP, which fallls to the 2nd Blizzard, relieving me of having to worry about a crit Stone Edge that could one-shot Aurorus.


Claydol switches back in and falls after using Psychic.

Gravity Badge is get!

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Its interesting. I don't trust my only thought on the doubles battle, which was that is was weird how unopposed Aurorus felt was outside of Vanilluxe's Metal Shot, but strategically I'm horrible at doubles xD. In the last two fights Aurorus was really, really good so even though I didn't have any trouble, I don't feel like that's saying much. Its not like the teams didn't have answers; Ninetails and Alakazam would beat Aurorus and Snorlax sometimes does, depending on when it uses Amnesia and how often Ancent Power crits due to the speed thing. Excadrill and Nidoking both beat Aurorus and Mega Garchomp would beat it if I didn't give Aurorus the ground-super-effective reducing berry. Eh.

Next section in 4 days probably.

[Dragon116]

Good work! That stranger fight certainly was well chosen, since Mega Alakazam can wreck anything.

[Quickslip]

Didn't actually -do- very much here, but there were enough battles to make it seem ok. Here we go

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With the power of waterfall in our hands, we explore the mountain caves a bit more till we get bored, then head down to save Titania. She seems weakened from the fall/thirst/starvation, but still game to beat her way out of this place. She also seems to favor Saphira's way of dealing with Meteor.


Even with Titania crippled by injury and only having Aegislash with her, we proceed to steamroll our way through the puzzles. Taka seems to be helping under the guise of trying to slow us down, and it quickly gets on Titania's nerves.


Taka seems unwilling to leave, and so just leaves us to conquer the puzzles with his help. Eventually, we find a room that Titania and I cannot both pass, so Titania stays behind and we stop the PULSE Swalot by ourselves. It was quite hard until I realized that Blizzard froze the evil water, and then it was easy. We then proceed to wander around the plant for 2 days, not realizing that we can just surf on the now purified water. I am stupid sometimes.

Beyond the trap we free Titania from is Taka. He tosses us Amaria's bracelet and lets us go with the request that we defeat him in a battle to make the whole thing look reasonable to his boss. Titania, disgusted that Taka won't just leave, refuses. We, since we're doing a run-like thing, accept.

Taka leads with Klefki again, so we go with Rapidash. It takes 2 Flare Blitzes to KO Klefki, so its sets up Light Screen and Thunder Waves Rapidash.


Floatzel is up next so we switch in Mega. I set up a Light Screen instead of Reflect for some reason, and it Crunches. It does so again next round while I Petal Dance. We burn Taka's 2 Hyper Potions, but Mega hurts himself on the final turn and falls to Crunch. Floatzel outspeeds Heliolisk and gets another Crunch in, but falls to Thunderbolt.


We think to use the same strategy on Gliscor as before, but its learned Stone Edge now and KOs Pride after the first Feather Dance. Aurorus takes revenge, but gets its Nevermeltice knocked off.


Mega Aerodactyl is next. It decides to use Wing Attack of all things, so it doesn't even get close to KOing Aurorus and falls to Blizzard as well.


Cradily takes 2 Blizzards to KO, so it gets in an attack that does decent damage before falling. I think it was Seed Bomb?


Chatot is last and we remember it outspeeds everything. We send in Heliolisk and heal up Aurors. It Boombursts and finishes him off. We send in Aurorus again and think he's healed enough to tank the Boomburst. We'll never know, since Chatot decides to Nasty Plot instead, and falls to Blizzard.

Taka thanks us and runs off. We start to do likewise, but Shade appears and stops us along the way, telling us that only 2 of the 4 scenes we saw way back in his factory are actually true. Weird. Titania's dissappointed that we helped Taka, but doesn't do anything about it. We both head up the waterfall, she on Amaria's Lapras Deliverance, and head back to the house.
On the way, we get stopped by Florina and Julia. They explain that they saw us climbing up the waterfall and got curius to what was going on. Also, Ame wants us to have the machine for Fly, so they hand us that too. (!!!) Now we just need to defeat Ciel to use the thing. We finish making our way to the house, but find Meteor on the roof. They want the Sapphire Braclet, and they want it enough to challenge us to 3 double battles in a row. Yikes. We fetch Arcanine and train her a bit on the re-fightable clown for this. We'll skip the first fight, as its just against a pair of Meteor Aces with Florina as our ally.

Fern and Blake lead with Ludicolo and Walrein. I go with Heliolisk and Florina starts with Hippowdon. Our Thunderbolt does almost lethal damage to Walrein. Ludicolo Scalds Hippowdown and Walrein finishes it off with Surf. Dry Skin keeps Heliolisk at full.


Florina goes for Tropius here. Blake trys to Hyper Potion his Walrein back into the game, but it has too much MAX HP, so it just falls to Heliolisk's Thunderbolt. Ludicolo Scalds Tropius, but it doesn't burn so it doesn't matter. Tropius gets in some damage with Leaf Blade.


Blake sends in Mamoswine next. I eye Ludicolo's HP and decide she looks low enough to Volt Switch and KO. Fern counters with his Hyper Potion, so Ludicolo lives. I send in Mega, predicting an Earthquake and hoping for no Blizzard. Mamoswine actually uses Icicle Crash on Tropius and KOs it though.


Florina goes for Mega Steelix next. Grass Pledge isn't quite enough to one-shot Mamoswine sadly, so it gets off a Stealth Rock. Ludicolo Scalds Mega for a little damage and Steelix Earthquakes for the KO on Mamoswine and a little damage on everything else.


Blake sends in Weavile. Florina hard switches out Steelix here for Ferrothorn. Weavile Poison Jabs Mega for the Ko and Ludicolo Blizzards for some heavy damage on Ferrothorn. I send in Arcanine next.


Weavile's really fast, so it gets in a Poison Jab on Arcanine and poisons her sadly. Still, Arcanine's Heat Wave clears the enemies field entirely.


Next we face Rotom and Krookodile. Krookodile's speed allows it to Crunch Arcanine and get off Moxie. Rotom Volt Switches for a little damage and changes places with Glalie. Ferrothron Power Whips and one shots Krookodile thankfully. That might've gotten out of hand rather fast.


Mega Evolution is totally cheating, so we have Rapidash Flare Blitz the Glalie before the silliness starts. Roserade's Hidden Power takes out Ferrothorn. That fire though.


Blake calls out Rotom again and Florina summons Mega Steelix. We Flare Blitz the Rotom, since we think Blake is getting really low on Pokemon. It falls but Roserade gets revenge with Giga Drain. Steelix has my back with Heavy Slam though.


Blake's not out yet sadly. We face Jynx and Mega Sceptile while Aurorus comes in for us. Sceptile and Jynx focus down Mega Steelix with their mighty SpA, but Aurorus's Blizzard takes out Mega Sceptile and does a iltte to Jynx.


Fern calls on his Ferrothorn here and Florina sends out Cradily. Jynx Psychics Aurorus, but the answering Ancient Power is devestating. Cradily's Rockslide finishes it off and causes Ferrothron to flinch. Blake is out of Pokemon here, so we just Blizzard + Rock Slide again, which causes it to flinch again. A final Blizzard takes it out.


Serperior is last. Leaf Storm takes out Aurorus, but Serperior takes some damage from Cradily. We think Pride might be able to tank one and hit with a Hurricane, but Serperior's Leaf Stom misses, so we'll never know. Pride's Hurricane finish's the match.

Fern and Florina talk a bit. Fern's words are troubling to her, so Sirius has Serviper attack while she's distracted. Julia steps up to take her place in our next Double Battle.

Thankfully, our Pokemon have been healed again. xD
We start with Heliolisk again while Juilia starts with Electrode. We're up against Excadrill and Whiscash. Neither of those seems like a good target for Heliolisk, so we try to Volt Switch out...but it doesn't work against Whiscash. Electrode gets a Foul Play on Excadrill for good damage, but its answering Earthquake KOs both Heliolisk and Electrode. Not the best start.


We send in Arcanine and Eelektross. Solaris Full Restores Excadrill here like I hoped, and Heat Wave knocks it back into the red. Eelektross's Giga Drain KOes Whiscash before it does anything. The Orderly sends in Kecleon.


Solaris uses another Full Restore, but Excadrill falls this time to Heat Wave and a Flamethrower from Eelektross. Kecleon dodges and Thunder Punches Eeletross for very little damage.


Solaris goes for Mega Gyarados here. We Heat Wave again, but Kecleon once again isn't hit and Mega Gyrados takes very little damage as you may expect. I suppose that's ok, since Gyarados decides to Earthquake and KO it while doing a good chunk of damage to both Arcanine and Eelektross. Eelektross Volt Switches out for Rotom. The Orderly sends in Slowbro on the next round.


Slowbro turns out to be a Mega Slowbro, so Arcanine's Crunch here does little. Rotom Shadow Balls Gyarados for a little damage too. Gyarados takes out Arcanine with Waterfall and Slowbro's Surf does a little bit of damage to Rotom.


We send in Mega here. Grass Pledge takes out the Gyarados and Rotom's Air Slash causes Slowbro to flinch.


Solaris sends in Scizor here. Not really liking here this is going, I just have Mega set Reflect. Rotom Volt Switches Slowbro for another KO and brings in Eelektross again. Bug Bite knocks Mega into the yellow. The orderly sends in Eelektross. Why hello target.


As the above picture suggests, we Grass Pledge the Eel, but its not even enough to halve its HP. Our friendly Eel flamethrowers the Scizor and KOes it. The enemy Eel thinks there can be only one, but w/e it did was rather inconsequential.


We send in Aurorus next. Sadly, Solaris goes for Tyranitar and our hail is canceled by sandstorm. Thankfully, it does help Aurorus too. Aurorus's Blizzard is the fastest thing on the field, and it freezes the enemy Eel while doing a little damage to Tyranitar. Tyranitar's Rock Slide KOes our Eel friend before it can deal damage though. Julia sends in...Aggron?!? next. What are you doing with an Aggron? xD


Auroros's Blizzard finishes off the Eel, but Tyranitar's Superpower takes him down too. Aggron likes that idea and knocks out Tyranitar with a Superpower of its own.


Our foes send in Magnezone and Mandibuzz while I send in Rapidash. We Flare Blitz the Magnezone, which predictably has Sturdy. It unleashes Electric Terrain, which I don't think will have any impact. Mandibuzz does something, but misses while Aggron uses Heavy Slam on it for a little damage. We Flare Blitz the magnet again to KO it. Mandibuzz uses Foul Play on Rapidash for more than a little damage, while Aggron Heavy Slams again. The Orderly goes for Reuniclus.


No one wants to deal with the tanky gellatin, so we have Rapidash Megahorn it. It manages to just barely survive sadly. Mandibuzz finishes Rapidash with Foul Play while Aggron goes for Superpower on Mandibuzz for a little damage. Reuniclus crits Aggron with a Psychic.


We send in Pride here and Facade the rest of Reuniclus's HP away. Aggron lays down another Heavy Slam of Mandibuzz while it Toxics Pride. Our next Facade just barely leaves Mandibuzz alive, but alive it is. It uses Foul Play on Aggron for some damage, and Aggron sets Stealth Rock. We Facade it again next round for the KO. The only thing left is Solaris's Garchomp.


I decide that I don't like Aggron and Rotom's chances of beating Garchomp and am certain it will Stone Edge Pride. I also feel like this has been a decent enough fight, so I Max Revive Aurorus here. Instead of KOing Pride, it uses Earthquake though, which KOes Aggron. Next round, I decide to try for a Feather Dance, but it Stone Edges that time. xD Rotom gets in some damage with Shadow Ball.


To my surprise, Julia actually has another pokemon here too. She hard switches in Magnezone. Garchomp decides to Fire Fang what would have been the Rotom for some reason and falls to Blizzard.

Titaniam getting bored sitting on standby incase ridiculous things happen, gets bored and joins up with the rest of us. Totally out-powered now, Meteor decides to try to burn the house down. Well. That wouldn't actually work since I'm standing right there with an Aurorus anyway, but Titania opens(breaks) the window leading the Water Gym and blasts them out.
Amaria wakes up from all the racket and apparently has Amnesia. Titania quickly leaves before she breaks something at this developement, and Amaria goes back to bed talking about a headache. Florina heads up to Calcenon to see if she can do anything there, Titania takes the Bracelet and heads out somewhere, probably her Gym in the desert, where Meteor will have a hard time getting them, and Julia stays to watch over Amaria. She suggests we go beat Ciel so we can get Fly working and be infinitely more mobile.

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Given that alot of these were Double battles, I would have thought this part would be annoying. However, the fact that I was basically fighting two separate people who just happened to be fighting together, the fight wasn't nearly as grueling as it could have been. True, there were some comboes the enemies could pull, but it didn't seem as stacked as most Double battles. Also, I giggled a bit too much when Florina pulled out a Mega Steelix. Surprisingly fun overall. The only bad part was when I got lost, and that was really, really just my fault. >_>

Next section in 4 days probably.