Part XIV. Welcome to Kanto!
After earning ourselves a spot in the Indigo League Hall of Fame, the adventure wasn't over just yet. Professor Elm is overjoyed to let us know that there's a whole other set of eight badges to earn in Kanto. Technically we already set foot in Kanto when taking on the league, but this time we are going there by boat!
On the ship, an old man is making a ruckus over his missing granddaughter, so we show our kind heart and help find the little girl, who was actually just exploring and having a good time. There's also a couple of trainers you can fight on the ship, but they were quite weak in comparison to the Elite Four Battles.
The ship eventually drops us off at Vermillion City, home of the Electric type gym lead by Lt. Surge. The routes surrounding Vermillion have quite a bit of trainers in the original games, but we don't have that luxury this time around. My team hadn't really leveled much since the fight against Lance, but I figured it would be fine since I did plenty of grinding before taking on the league.
One thing I was not looking forward to, however, was doing the gym puzzle. I know how it works, yet I always have the worst luck with the Vermillion gym puzzle and end up choosing the wrong trash can EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Eventually I did get the thing unlocked to advance to the gym leader. I considered giving my
Heracross Earthquake, but I would rather wait until
Dragonair evolves and teach it to her then. This does leave me with no real answer to Electric types, but I was hoping
Typhlosion could just power through with his strong fire type attacks.
ー VS. Gym Leader Lt. Surge
I lead off with
Typhlosion as planned, doing a nice amount of damage to the Raichu as he opts to go for Thunder Wave and cut my speed. I don't want to mess with hax, so I use a Full Heal right away. This does open up the opportunity for Lt. Surge to start setting up Double Teams which is mildly annoying. Eventually I do hit another Lava Plume, taking out the Raichu but leaving my
Typhlosion at only about 60% health.
I didn't want to take a big hit from the Electrode (especially since these things are notorious for exploding) so I healed up first before going for any attack. This is where things started going downhill because the combination of Double Team and Special Attack raises through Charge Beam proved to be very annoying. In a moment of panic, I also didn't remember that Swift has perfect accuracy so I should have gone for that as soon as the Electrode began to raise its evasion.
By the time I remembered,
Typhlosion couldn't survive two Charge Beams, so swapped into
Umbreon to get just a little bit of damage off with Quick Attack and ensure the KO with Swift afterwards, as well as give me a chance to heal
Thyplosion. Having to sacrifice a Pokemon like this gave me flashbacks to the fight against Claire, but I didn't want to lose my starter and only fire type either.
RIP Hades the Umbreon
Lv. 5 ~ Lv. 53
Once the first Electrode dropped,
Typhlosion managed to defeat the remaining of his team fairly easily. I knew I had to go for Swift right away against the second Electrode and both Magneton and Electabuzz were no match for Lava Plume.
I received the Thunder Badge and the TM of the move that almost swept me, but I was mostly just frustrated over losing my special wall. While Umbreon was definitely the weakest in terms of raw power, he would have been extremely handy to have around for the upcoming gym battle against Sabrina.
After taking a look at which reserves I had left, I eventually decided to head back to Victory Road to catch myself an
Ursaring. This would add another Physical attacker to the team and Ursaring can learn some Dark and Ghost type moves which will hopefully come in useful against Sabrina's strong Psychic types. The bad news? I had to do A LOT of grinding.
Artemis (F) the Ursaring has joined the party!
Lv. 33
Gentle nature
Guts
Fury Swipes / Faint Attack / Sweet Scent / Slash
Since there are no trainers in between the Vermillion and Saffron City gyms, so I had to resort back to my old grinding spots in Johto. I can tell you, it wasn't fun to train up this thing a whole twenty levels. It is part of the reason why this update is so late, although I've also just been procrastinating.
Once
Ursaring was caught up with the team, I headed straight to Saffron City and went straight for the gym. I taught
Ursaring both Return and Shadow Claw, hoping she would be able to pull through in the upcoming fight. Pyschic types usually are very frail on the physical side, so having a hard-hitting physical attacker that isn't weak to Psychic helps a lot.
ー VS. Gym Leader Sabrina
Sabrina doesn't have as many Pokemon as Lt. Surge did, but two of them have the power to take out entire teams if they set up one or two Calm Minds. Which is why I was mildly concerned when her Espeon went straight for the set up on turn one and Shadow Claw failed to be an OHKO. Thankfully, Psychic at +1 didn't knock out
Ursaring from full either (but it came very close) and the next hit took out Espeon.
Mr. Mime was the least of my troubles, but I wanted my
Ursaring to be healthy for Alakazam so I swapped out to
Ampharos to take out the Mr. Mime with Signal Beam. Mr. Mime did set up a Light Screen so it took more turns than expected, but his attacks didn't hit as hard as Espeon's.
Alakazam is her final Pokemon and a huge threat. I had to swap in
Ursaring on a Reflect, which is both good and bad. It's good because I don't have to take damage, but also bad because now I definitely won't OHKO with Shadow Claw. It ended up doing about 50% while Psychic did over 70% to Ursaring, so I swapped out to
Slowking hoping to finish it with Shadow Ball. I was fully expecting to get hit by a Shadow Ball myself first, but instead she runs Energy Ball on this Alakazam. It isn't STAB and
Slowking has great special defense, so we live it no problem and finish off the Alakazam.
No casualties this time, but this gym definitely wasn't a pushover either. So far Kanto has been proving to be quite a challenge. I'll probably take on Erika and Janine next, which hopefully will be a little easier.
Dragonair is getting really close to evolving as well so I'm definitely looking forward to that.
-- TO BE CONTINUED --
Ares - Male - Lv. 55 - Mild nature - Blaze
Hestia - Female - Lv. 54 - Serious nature - Static
Poseidon - Male - Lv. 54 - Sassy nature - Oblivious
Aphrodite - Female - Lv. 53 - Serious nature - Guts
Artemis - Female - Lv. 54 - Gentle nature - Guts
Athena - Female - Lv. 53 - Bashful nature - Shed Skin