Not dead!

Okay, so I need a fire stone for eevee-who-will-become-Flare. I try doing the inverse battling thing and obey the will of the ghost girl, but turns out it’s incredibly difficult to even get to the stone tier and then I’d have to retry until it was the right stone. I decide to grit my teeth and do the supertraining option instead, because if I must grind, I prefer a grind where at least you’re moving forward rather than resetting until the number god is satisfied. Eventually Makit has a ridiculous special attack thus proving it to be properly trained and I can do the secret stuff for items. I get a leaf stone on the first try then it takes a half dozen attempts for the game to cough up the fire stone I actually wanted.

But after all that, I can finally return to the ACTUAL game.

Remember when you could just buy the damn things?

Anyway, let’s go catch new pokemon.

Illumise!

Illumise attracts a swarm of Volbeat using a sweet fragrance. Once the Volbeat have gathered, this Pokemon leads the lit-up swarm in drawing geometric designs on the canvas of the night sky.

The fact there’s now a bug/electric type does nothing to change the fact you are still a terrible disappointment.

Shirou Emiya reaches L20 mid-battle, so I do the only rational thing and send him out to see if he’ll faint or not. His opponent’s a L17 goldeen. He does pretty okay considering I open the battle with splash but doesn’t actually win, so my beautiful mightyena girl saves the day.

Then Shirou evolves! And I’m reminded that right, pokemon don’t stop being fainted after evolution in this gen.
.

When Magikarp evolves into Gyarados, its brain cells undergo a structural transformation. It is said that this transformation is to blame for this Pokemon’s wildly violent nature.

Here’s a way to square that with the anime canon that friendly magikarp become friendly gyarados while actually being pretty dystopic – when magikarp evolve, their brain structure reforms based on what hormones are currently sloshing about. The more stressed, the greater the rewiring, because the stress indicates a dangerous environment full of enemies to fight. As most magikarp owners throw the poor things out to flop around on the ground helplessly during a battle, most magikarp end up insane rage monsters upon evolution.

Then a hidden pokemon pops up and it’s a L24 volbeat who crushes my mightyena and almost gets a handful of my money. For this reason, it gets to be my first greatball use.

With the arrival of night, Volbeat emits light from its tail. It communicates with others by adjusting the intensity and flashing of its light. This Pokemon is attracted by the sweet aroma of Illumise.

WHY AREN’T YOU AN INTERESTING TYPE COMBINATION?

Anyway, off to the renamer for Shirou. Now he’s Archer. What should I do with my gyarados? Wondertrade him?

I run all over for a while to try to get eggs and hatch eggs. I find a sparkly area under the high road for humans that turns out to have a sparkly mega evolution stone for my precious shiny future manectric. It’s enough to make me question my earlier thoughts that maybe Lucki shouldn’t get mega evolution. Also, I can see a ruined building and a tiny island with a tree and sign on it that I can’t access until I get surf, but sure look intriguing.

Actually, I now have plenty of eevee eggs, so I should probably take my eevee and ditto out. I guess I’ll stick Archer in there for now.

I want to hatch all of them and then pick which one will become Flare, so I decide to head back down and see if I can get the last few pokemon in the area. That isn’t productive except for boosting my thunderdoggy’s level to nearly thirty. Checking Bulbapedia, apparently they only appear as hordes, which supposedly have a 5% chance but in practice I’ve seen zero the whole game. So, I dump off my high level and out of PP thunderdoggy and grab fell needle Surskit-chan. It’s sweet scent time!

…this produces a horde of minun who spend their turns using helping hand at each other. Seriously, HOW DO YOU EXIST. Of course, the next swarm, of magnemite, does barely better, since they all use supersonic together. They eventually batter my surskit down, forcing me to pull out the eevee that’s hatched and leveled to seven from spillover. I order him to tail whip a bit, and wow, that is an adorable animation. He looks so mad!

Magnemite attaches itself to power lines to feed on electricity. If your house has a power outage, check your circuit breakers. You may find a large number of this Pokemon clinging to the breaker box.

Shouldn’t that be “these”?

Plusle always acts as a cheerleader for its partners. Whenever a teammate puts out a good effort in battle, this Pokemon shorts out its body to create crackling noises of sparks to show its joy.

I still have eggs to hatch so let’s go back to the daycare area and catch more there.

Ah, marill.

Marill’s oil-filled tail acts much like a life preserver. If you see just its tail bobbing on the water’s surface, it’s a share indication that this Pokemon is diving beneath the water to feed on aquatic plants.

Roselia shoots sharp thorns as projectiles at any opponent that tries to steal the flowers on its arms. The aroma of this Pokemon brings serenity to living things.

You’d think that behavior would be selecting for a fear response to the scent. Maybe they’re really chill normally and don’t mind people around sniffing their flowers, it’s only when you straight up try to tear their arms off they murder you.

Well, I’ve hatched all my eevee, and one had a 6/6/6/6/6 point spread so I guess that’ll be Flare. I might also try to get more fire stones, evolve my surplus and throw some Flares onto wondertrade’s mercy.