When last we left off…well, when last we left off I had made a Silver for everyone and was gushing about how all pokemon could be ours now. But before that, I’d just finished hatching eevees and picked future Flare.
I grab my 6/6/6/6/6 one and evolve him.
He immediately tries to learn helping hand. NO, Flare.
Alright, gym time at last.
Current team:
L20 surskit
L23 Tryke 
L22 grovyle
L27 thunderdoggy
L1 Flare
L25 Silver
I turn off the experience share and move Flare to the first slot. Old fashioned leveling, here we come!
Inside the gym, I find there’s also old fashioned actual puzzles! Not that much of one, disappointingly – I mean, yeah, I always fight the trainers anyway, but it’d be nice if the puzzle solutions had a more difficult option where you could bypass the trainers.
I’ve heard that Mauville was founded by Wattson. He was a Trainer long before we became Trainers. He must know all sorts of things!
Like if he actually founded the place or not for sure dear god do you people not have schools. Also, apparently towns are built really, really fast in this place.
Hm, actually that’s another good notch for this place not being all perfect harmony. This enormous place was apparently thrown up in maybe a decade or less.
Beating all the undertrainers only gets Flare to L10, so I decide to take him to the tall grass for a little extra training. He does surprisingly well against the higher level zigzagoon, so I decide to send him against other trainers, who he also does pretty well against despite me doing things like leaving him out with a type disadvantage. Plus, he keeps burning his opponents. Not bad at all. I manage to get him to L15, and decide that’ll be good enough. I cuddle him a bit so he’ll get more experience and survive hits better and then it’s gym time, because I’m Lucki and that means sending Flare against high level opponents and then disapproving when he doesn’t win instantly.
Wattson is staring into the electric void. Finally he notices me.
Oh? Now, what are you doing here? Then spikyhatebox. What? You say you’ve gotten past all my rigged doors? And then he chills slightly. Wahahahah! Now, that is amusing! The plans to reform Mauville are done for now. Making traps for my Gym and battling with young Trainers like you are the things I live for now! Then I, Wattson, the Leader of Mauville Gym, shall electrify you!
And he laughs crazily for a bit.
He leads with a L19 magnemite. I lead with Flare. It only manages a thunderwave, which Flare throws off for my sake, then gets burned after Wattson tries a superpotion and dies anyway. Next up, L19 voltorb which volt switches to L21 magneton who takes an ember to the face before volt switching and knocking out Flare in the process. My grovyle then takes out the voltorb and I decide to have Tryke finish off the barely alive magneton so I can give him credit for Flare’s work.
Crazypants doesn’t mind how pathetic a job he did as gym leader.
Wahahahah! Fine, I lost!
I was electrified by you. Now, take this Badge! With the Dynamo Badge, Pokemon can use the HM Rock Smash outside of battle. One other thing–Pokemon up to Level 40 will obey you now, even if you got them from someone else! All righty then, this here’s for you, too! Go on, take it with you! Volt Switch is a move where your Pokemon attacks the opponent and then rushes back to switch places with a party Pokemon in waiting! I swell with optimism, seeing a promising young Trainer like you!
Well, that’s that.
Fooling around with my underleveled Flare reminded me of how much more fun the game is when you aren’t crushing everyone in a hit or two. You get to see the other pokemon’s moves and all that.
Not sure what the solution is – I’ve been trying to keep the levels down by only having one out at a time, but that hasn’t been working. Maybe it’ll start working better now that I have more pokemon to split the experience between. I’ll keep Flare out for now and see how things go.