A Vicious Circle

Soundtrack of this part

In the last part, I tackled Ecruteak gym and got Fly, caught the Red Gyarados and prepared to enter the Rocket Hideout. Today, the current plan of action is that I'll crush the Rockets in Mahogany, deal with Pryce, fight Jasmine and go to Goldenrod.

When starting today, my team is:
Arson (Moltres) lv. 59, Stuv (Donphan) lv. 56, Raxa (Vileplume) lv. 52, Ulrik (Muk) lv. 55, Smacker (Graveler) lv. 45 and Cory (Sentret) lv. 3 (HMs).

I enter the Rocket lair, and to nobody's big surprise, it has had some makeover. That said, this is a ninja hideout, and walls are of little consequence for the Rockets here. Remember the statues? They're still around, though invisible traps also occur. The Rockets have pumped up their teams, no longer level 20 pokémon, but we're dealing with level 50+, so it's no cakewalk, even with Arson. In true ninja fashion, even Lance hides behind walls in what seems to be the direct heir to the Trick House. After a bit of battling, I obtain the necessary passwords, and fight the exec. In lack of Whitney's Miltank, this will have to suffice, but with either a Rock, Water or Ground (the latter more likely) subtype, it falls pretty easily to Raxa.

After obtaining the last password, I return to fight the last exec. Unfortunately for her, it seems her team was left unedited, so it was in still in the 20's. Suffice to say, she got raped over by Arson. I shut down the hideout, get the HM and move on. Time to fight Pryce.

I enter the gym, and from the looks of it, it's pretty obvious that we're not dealing with Ice anymore. In fact, I'm a bit skeptical (due to pokémon like Tentacruel is Dark now, not Poison), but after seeing Pryce's team, I'm fairly sure it was supposed to be a Poison gym. Doesn't matter though, because when Stuv starts his Rollout sweep, little can stop him, and with part Steel, Poison isn't exactly his number one fear. In addition to Crobat and Meganium (now part Poison), he had a Victreebel (72), but it didn't do much. I nab the badge and fly to Olivine, climb the lighthouse and hand over the Secretpotion to Jasmine. I give the guy with glasses a look to kill and I'm curios to what type Jasmine has.

As it turns out, she uses Dark. This isn't a big problem, until I found out Houndoom learns Jump Kick. Hurts Stuv pretty badly, but it falls to Ulrik. The same does her level 80 Murkrow, though high leveled, it just hasn't the defenses needed. I get the Mineral Badge, and just when I'm about to leave, I get a phone call from Prof. Elm, mumbling something about Team Rocket. I get my ass over to Goldenrod to investigate.

Safe to say I quickly find some Rockets, quite a lot of them actually. The Radio Tower is my first stop, and I must admit Team Rocket has finally gotten some diverse teams, be that a good or a bad thing (though five Unown ranging from lv 55 to 75 might not be that creative). More importantly, they actually start doing smart moves (albeit the Perish Song on that Politoed might not be the ultimate choice when it's your last pokémon...) like switching. Well, it was one grunt, but how often do NPCs, especially grunts, switch pokémon anyways?

Disregard the first picture, I must have edited in twice without noticing it, and I'm too lazy to find a filler.

Continuing on the grunt variety, I must say I was a bit disappointed when I saw a level 100 Primeape. Fortunately they're part Ground, and I Petal Danced it to death. The beasts also make their apperance (that is, one guy with all of them). The fake director gratiously gives me the Basement Key, and I proceed quickly to the Underground to kick their ass over there as well.

It turned out that actually getting to the Underground was a tricky part, as one of the entrances was blocked, and I couldn't figure out how to make it to the other. That is, before I saw that the sea was surfable. That made things much easier, though I'm never taking the Magnet Train, that's for sure. In the basement, I encounter DICKS, and while he gets me the first time (fucking leveling on his team), I get him on the second try. At this point in the game, trainers with level 65+ are to be expected, and levels into the 80s aren't too uncommon either.

After a short battle with Goofy again, I get the Card Key and head back up to the Radio Tower.

One might stare in horror at what is a level 250 pokémon fighting against me, but I'm just glad it's a Magikarp (lol, Bug). Now, I'm expecting two hard battles coming up, but the two execs was more difficult than expected. First off, the female exec had three eeveelutions at 75 (gen I variants). I barely get past her, but the next guy just takes leveling to completely retarded levels. I mean, a level 78 Tyranitar, how am I going to fight that?

As I was thinking how to beat it, I realized there was nothing stopping me from going to Blackthorn. And why the hell not, I'm off to Blackthorn, leaving the Rockets to their scheme for now, while Itry to get some more levels under the belt. Ice Path has been shrunk down to a pretty big ice rink, and after skating around, I finally enter Blackthorn city. Before I entered Blackthorn, I handily defeated a Bird Trainer with Lugia + Ho-Oh. Just for fun.

Now, it does turn out that I have to defeat that nasty executive after all in order to beat Claire, though to be honest, if I can't defeat him, I probably won't do much to her either. At least I'm hoping that she doesn't have Dragons (though as things turn out later, I would quickly regret that wish). Next time I'll do some major team changes and hopefully smack both the exec and Claire, and get the final badge, before I'm off to the League.