EXTREMELY EDGY MONODARK RUN

[HughJ]

The title speaks for itself

Time to begin our journey.

Part 1 - Back Alley Master:

After leaving the bombing site, I met Victoria outside the Hall. I can only imagine that the interaction went something like "You're going to be even more unbearable than me, aren't you?"

Once I was inside the black building, slick inside and out with rain and sorrow, I had to choose a small animal to begin my immersively competitive children's video game. The frog from France was the only viable starter because his final evolution is dark. Unfortunately I hate frogs (I think I still have some trauma from Sonic Heroes), but ideally my sheer AMBIVALENCE will carry me through.

Despite my legged tadpole's abyssal stats, I managed to collect some free EXP from Cain and Victoria (thank God she has a fire-type, at least I'll have that upside in the torture to follow). I then proceeded to my first task: snooping around in back alleys to find BEASTS of DARKNESS.

Along the way to the first known shady back alley, Ambivalence brutally OHKOd a pichu using bubbles. Looks like Sakurai wasn't too far off with the poor lifeform's survivability in melee.

I defeated Hotshot Seth to gain access to the extremely EDGY kids' hideout in the back alley next to the bridge, but all I found there was garbage. I don't know what kind of kids that can afford bright red track suits enjoy passing their time in the company of municipal waste.

I decided to move on to the big leagues and found a different edgy back alley in Peridot Ward. This one was full of depressed homeless people, which was pretty rad. Unfortunately this place was filled with garbage too, and I had to make some quick trips back to the Center every once in a while to keep my frog from dying of Montezuma's Revenge.

At first I couldn't see Jack™ but fortunately a Zangoose jumped out of a trash can and reset the gamma value left a trail of Fairy dust that lit up the room (I think that's how that type works. I still don't know)

FINALLY a level 10 dog showed up and I managed to catch it with my frog at the EDGE of death. Its stats also kind of sucked but not as badly as my frog. Its nature was pretty good too. I named it Neglect.

The Frog and Dog dream team then proceeded to wreak havoc on the city in the quest to our second objective: evolving both in preparation for the first gym.

Some highlights include Ambivalence water pulsing a rabbit and it proceeding to kill itself in confusion (brutal) and drowning an old man's gross pet bugs to collect some sweet $$$$$ EXP and get access to a garden. I also left a whismur to die in an empty house because it was too mainstream in typing and therefore WORTHLESS to me.

By now Ambivalence's Protean ability had started to play a role in battles, particularly in the way that it allowed him to become a sp00ky ghost every time he licked things. (Which is kind of unsettling because of how prominent a frog's tongue is). The type changes reminded me of clear units in Bakugan (throw back wednesday I guess), and I started thinking of him as the Frog God of Clearasil™.

Some other events of note were rescuing a Pachirisu on the bridge (which I then left there because Electric types are too loud for my cool crisp underground style) and whooping Fern in front of an abandoned factory.

Fern and I grew to be best? buddies? during the Meteor factory raid, though. He said he was cramping my style, but both of us were so unwittingly ironically EDGY that it wasn't clear who was cramping whom. Kind of a chicken and the egg thing really. Speaking of which, I was amazed his Budew didn't contract salmonella or AIDS or something from sucking up all those Meteor Grimers. The thing must have impenetrable white blood cells.

The explosives were guarded by a man named after a fishing appliance and a man named after a Beatle. They used sentient rocks as defense but my evil dog was immune to MIND GAMES and so it drained their life energy to reach a stronger form:

I decided to extrapolate the idea a bit and started thinking of Neglect as a Reaper, draining the souls of her enemies through her teeth to become an increasingly powerful being... something like how Wolf Link rips the souls out of all those bugs in Twilight Princess.

The rest of the factory raid proceeded as normal which meant that it was finally time to CHALLENGE THE GYM.

My frog's powers to become a sp00py jhost DARK SPECTRE through the use of its omnipresent tongue allowed me to dodge cheap sonicbooms AND get rid of my electric weakness.

It dawned on me about halfway through the Gym grunts how appropriate it was that nothing affected Ambivalence. This is the sort of poetry that really writes itself

I relived a bit of PTSD walking through the final room to talk to Julia. On my first run of this game I must've lost to her upwards of 20 times because of Sonicbooms and that overpowered Electrode, so like most things in my extremely EDGY life I resigned myself from success from the get-go.

I led with Ambivalence who quickly became a ghost and licked Helioptile and a Voltorb to death (the Voltorb reportedly tasted like a jawbreaker, à la Ed Edd and Eddy.) I then switched out for the Emolga.

After my Devil Dog™ sprayed some sand into her flying squirrel's eyes, the airborne rodent then missed FOUR SUCCESSIVE TIMES. In response, I used Howl twice (the poor man's Swords Dance) and proceeded to BITE IT IN HAAAAAAAAALF

Neglect then proceeded to OHKO another Voltorb and her Blitzle, adding them to the List of Reaped Souls.

After this, she sent out her final Pokemon, the Cerberus to her cheerleading Hell. I braced myself for the last 4 minutes of progress to be wiped away like they were a smear on kitchen glass. She instructed it to use Charge Beam, and

NO SAND NECESSARY. Neglect proceeded to bite the thing to death like it was a massive chew toy. She legitimately did not get hit once this battle (her only damage came from Aftermath), and it made me question if she was the real specter all along.

And so it was that SHADOW, the EDGE-MASTER, defeated Julia after only one try. It was absolutely brutal. Thanks for reading Chapter 1.

Part 2 - A Fresh Grass Hell:

http://www.pokemonreborn.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=22582&page=#entry567855

Part 3 - Adieu:

http://www.pokemonreborn.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=22582&page=#entry568100

Part 3.5 - Team Update 1:

http://www.pokemonreborn.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=22582&page=#entry568484

Part 4 - Overcoming Victoria:

http://www.pokemonreborn.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=22582&page=#entry569267

Part 5 - Purification:

http://www.pokemonreborn.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=22582&page=#entry569938

Part 6 - All for Nothing:

http://www.pokemonreborn.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=22582&page=2#entry571297

Part 6.5 - Team Update 2:

http://www.pokemonreborn.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=22582&page=2#entry572083

Each installment picks up where the last left off and concludes after I receive (or am supposed to receive) a gym badge.

Edited October 24, 2016 by HughJ

[laggless01]

I might be wrong, but I think you can get Stunky in the alleys...Might give you some decent coverage.

[HughJ]

I might be wrong, but I think you can get Stunky in the alleys...Might give you some decent coverage.

I think I can, but I didn't have much use for a skunk at the time. I might consider it going into the upcoming Grass Hell

[Atlas105]

Well this is hilariously entertaining to read

[Damage]

one step closer to the edge and im about to break. (this was fantastic)

[HughJ]

Part 2 - A Fresh Grass Hell:

I found Florinia outside of the gym and she greeted me with my name, fully capitalized, as always. I guess everyone just screams my name in this game. It's extremely metal

Moving on... as per the advice of an otherworldly spirit, I made my way back to the landfills this city calls its back alleys in search of a purple skunk.

I figured I'd be there forever but by the will of Satan the first thing I ran into in the miserable cool kids dumpster hideout was just the skunk I desired. I named it Black Chill after an unadvertised variant of AXE, because the name sounded idiotically gritty and I'm relatively certain that the actual body spray is just skunk extract

The Chill started off at level 3 but its stats weren't bad at all, which meant GRINDING TIME

I mainly just did some MMO-style first-turn switch-outs (radical hyphens bro) to give Chill some gains as I walked past Florinia into the overgrown garden that had become East Obsidia. I ran into this backpacker who apparently had been fired from Yureyu. After I disfigured his electric mice he just said "ugh,,, nothing's fair" and we totally vibed.

I found a back entrance to the Underground Railnet and just inside was a wonderful guaranteed level 15 Woobat spawn. Fortunately, as will become a running theme, my team is wholly unaffected by MIND GAMES; psychic types make for some EZ$.

Unfortunately, to reset the guaranteed spawn I had to run up and down a staircase and into and out of a loading zone with flashing lights. That meant that I was basically foaming at the mouth and having an epileptic seizure by the time the big Chill got to level 15.

I figured 15 was a good level for now and made my way over to the slums (where better a place to spend Wednesday nights?) and oH GoD It'S VICTORIA

She started with Ralts which I figured wouldn't be that big of an issue, but it used Double Team ONCE and my poor aerosol skunk missed four turns successively. I kind of had it coming considering my performance against Julia last chapter, but if I didn't believe in Evasion clause before, I sure did believe in it now.

Because Chill got a bit of damage in on the Ralts I managed to finish if off with the wet slap of a frog tongue (which must be covered with ectoplasm, or something). I figured this would set Ambivalence up for any incoming fighting moves when she switched into her starter.

This proved unnecessary though because a raw water pulse almost killed her muscly furnace pig. When it did eventually die, it gave me 666 experience points, which, again, I just honestly can't make up. THE EDGE WRITES ITSELF

She sent out a Makuhita in a last-ditch attempt to secure her pride but it couldn't even lay a pudgy yellow finger on the ever-evasive Clearasil Lord. She wrapped up with this perfect quote:

Yeah, maybe I will be fine, once there aren't any more wannabe saiyans threatening my life every time I try to take my daily stroll to the slums.

After dealing with Vicky I pressed on to the dilapidated buildings. If I weren't in such a rush to defeat all the gyms I'd probably take a selfie in front of them - you know, one of the good ones, with my hair over one eye and a filter that makes it look like a discarded Polaroid from the late 80's.

Among some of the less interesting things I saw were moving boxes that gave me some Ao Oni flashbacks and a sky blue egg that I left abandoned (the color was a little tacky imo)

I also caught a Pancham (seen below) but I couldn't really bring myself to use it at this time: not only because it's not yet a dark type, but also because I don't want a disgustingly cute teddy bear on my INTENSELY EDGY team.

On the way out of the place, I ran into the Scrafty gang that had been puppeteering the boxes and unwittingly made the mistake of leading with Neglect. This doesn't initially sound problematic, but it meant that 3 of the 4 Pokemon at the start of the doubles match had Intimidate.

I just sat there staring at nothing for like 2 minutes while the Attack stats updated. I imagine "Mad World" running through everyone's heads as our arms turned to spaghetti

At least one cool thing came out of it: a Scraggy sprite didn't show up on the turn it got sent in, then on the next turn flew down from the ceiling to headbutt KO my skunk. It put a little bit of light (darkness?) back into my life because I got to reimagine the scene as a cage match where I could be the UNDERTAKERRRR

I made my way out of low-budget Fight Club and over to the Coral Ward PokeCenter. After healing up there I went to the docks where I watched Cain rescue some wildlife from a polluted area by using pollution itself. I wonder what Al Gore would have to say about THAT.

Cain naturally wanted a fight; I sent out Black Chill, against his Grimer. Like true poison trainers, we started the match by immediately blinding each other. After a few mudslaps and smokescreens, it was practically Special Olympics MMA. I think Chill was literally Disabled partway through, but I couldn't really see anything, so I can't be sure.

Cain's Grimer must have been an ex-Nam sniper though because it landed every other Sludge and I had to shift out to Neglect. Neglect ran away with stat boosts while the opponent struggled to see (another recurring theme of this run) and then just bit through the remainder of the team.

My reward was the EDGIEST HM of them all, Cut. Unfortunately I can only use it on trees and other pokemon, but the emotion is still there. I taught it to the Black Chill and gave him the title Resident Emo.

After wandering around a bit I remembered the plot and made my way to the park. Besides some frisky tentacles there wasn't much to the PULSE fight, just stat setups and flinchhax. With this, it was time to move on to my NEXT GOAL: defeating Florinia.

I set out for the Onyx trainer school; some interstitial events included me defeated a happiny (poor man's blissey) north of the garden for 500XP and Chill high-key exploding when a Ponyta Flame Charged him. It was a grim reminder of aerosol's flammability.

The Onyx kids outside the place were pretty obnoxious and I had them pegged as PREPS from a mile away. I'd say I wiped the floor with them but that would just have made the floor dirtier.

Fern then proceeded to perform his latest dick move and lock me out of the building. It seemed friendship with him was an impossibility, even for myself, a character more or less parodying him. That's fine, though, Cain is cooler anyway.

Some events and observations on my way through the trainer school:

+ Black Chill upgraded Cut to Slash which was pretty intense. Getting into SAW territory right there

+ The elders were just bald Watsons... but seeing as I'm just a Steven reskin I guess I couldn't really complain

+ Reading is for chumps so I just Googled and guessed my way past the computers.

At the end of the road was Fern, standing guard with his... plants. The match dragged on twice as long as it should have because his bag was just filled only with Super Potions, I guess.

At the end of the match, Roselia had set up leech seeds on Neglect and I would be going into the next turn with just 1 HP. If Fern used a potion, I'd be dead meat... but I had to take the Mind Games (not the psychic mind games, just the normal, pedantic ones) to the NEXT LEVEL.

Instead of healing or switching out, which would have allowed Fern to get off a free Mega Drain and avoid using an item, I stayed in and used Assurance to end the flower's life.

It was pretty awesome. Fern didn't appreciate it though, just like he didn't appreciate his family's love or really anything else, so he made himself scarce.

FINALLY, I got to challenge Florinia and never see her again for half the game.

Halfway through the match the game glitched when I was in the healing menu I fumbled an ultra potion and it sprayed in my eyes, turning the world black. Florinia kept yelling about her unique field from the other end of the room but all I could do was frantically yell back WHAT FIELD WHAT'S HAPPENING

After resetting I just channeled Fern and camped like it was Terminal. I sent in the Chill to blind her cactus with smoke (smoke and AXE really go together well, just ask your average 20-year old college student), paralyzed it with Ambivalence's otherworldly tongue, and finally sent in Neglect for a Howl setup and sweep.

After pocketing 6 more souls, Neglect earned us the Canopy Badge and we strolled on out of prep central. Thank you for reading Chapter 2.

Edited October 15, 2016 by HughJ

[laggless01]

one step closer to the edge and im about to break. (this was fantastic)

You mean 'fall off'?

[WanderingCorvus]

Wow, this is great. The "Now Cain is my best friend" image had me chuckling. Keep up the good work friend.

[Debojit97]

Great job man (or woman)!!!

Beware of Kiki and keep it up.

[HughJ]

Part 3 - Adieu:

Having dealt with the emotional wrecks of Fern and Flo I decided to pick up the panda cub again. I figured it could be sort of edgy, in the way that goth girls put cute animals on their backpack or something. Anyway, the thing's stubby arms meant that it couldn't really effect damage on any grinding material in the surrounding area, so I threw it in the back seat and made my way over to Beryl Ward.

The air was thick with pollen and horror as I walked through the gate to the overgrown Jasper Ward. A police officer ran up to me on my way in: "Oh God, you have to help!" He said, his blue uniform stained green with chlorophyll. "We're losing men out there!"

I brushed my faded dyed black and platinum hair off of one eye and over the other and whipped out my unflavored vape pen. Blowing a puff of steam into his face and putting a hand on my double-belted hip I responded, "Screw the law."

Then I essentially became a human lawnmower and rolled through the boring-ass forest. Fighting grass-types in this game is lighting fighting grass in real life. You can stomp on it as much as you want but by the end of the day it'll still look the same and you'll be sweaty and tired.

Taka greeted me with an unimpassioned "yo" in front of his dad's tentacle robot machine and I was like "sup" and then we tried to kill each other. You know, normal Reborn interaction

Anyway my dog rinsed through his team because his dopey Lileep was really easy to set up on. Neglect actually high-key slayed his Tangrowth as seen below:

After escaping the wicker trap of anthropomorphic nuts and flicking some magic bridge-switches I made my way into northern Beryl Ward. I got slightly held up by a Meteor grunt who just really didn't want me to cut down a tree (maybe he was decorating it?), but I said "Eff the environment" as edgily as possible and diced it up anyway

Then I ran into Taka again, which I think earns him the record for fastest NPC reappearance. Unfortunately for him he also has the record for slowest NPC brain so after I deleted ZEL's team I just set up on his Lileep again 2v1.

That didn't mean the fight was without frustrations though: I managed to blind myself once again, and this time it seems the situation was contagious because I'm pretty sure my dog and skunk hit themselves and each other more during the doubles match than they did the actual enemy. Which, mind them, was an ANCHORING POLYP that had not moved in LITERALLY MILLIONS OF YEARS

I put my ever-simmering rage aside though, like a master chef with pans full of angst; and moved on to dealing with Corey. He seemed pretty edgy on the surface, but he was the annoying, wordy type of edgy that thinks they're super cool because they browse wikipedia in their free time. I swear they're like preps in disguise.

Speaking of disguise, because I never helped the police, Heather never learned Corey's identity (so I guess I did him a solid there?) She didn't have to learn that to bail on him anyway though, which was pretty sad. I think I thought about shedding a tear.

Corey's fight was pretty run of the mill, so I decided to mix it up a bit and put in the form of a villanelle (I couldn't decide if poetry or rap was edgier so I flipped a coin)

That guaiacum and patience could ease the soul...

In this hollow world of disappointment and spleen,

The ignorant youth should out-edge the old.

First came Mephitidae, rank as a manhole;

Releasing chilled smoke so that naught could be seen,

That guaiacum and patience could ease the soul...

The Skrelp proved strong, forcing out my limbed tadpole;

Ambivalence reigned, paralyzing the seaweed.

The ignorant youth should out-edge the old.

The hour had come, and with it the black dhole;

Neglect pierced the air, and with it Corey's dreams,

That guaiacum and patience could ease the soul...

Howling hath precluded the pain to be doled,

Adieu, adieu to Corey and his mediocre team;

The ignorant youth should out-edge the old.

But ah, my sweet badge, I could not even hold

You in my hands - post-Crobat, Corey fleed,

That guaiacum and patience could ease the soul...

The ignorant youth should out-edge the old.

Corey's team was gone, and so was he; but as I went to the bridge to collect my reward,

That was probably sad for somebody, but it was really just kind of inconvenient for me. Fern showed up and agreed, which made me reconsider our ex-bromance a bit.

Thanks for reading Part 3 (renaming Chapters to Parts to prevent confusion with game.) Fortunately this one was a bit shorter than the last. Please, leave comments or suggestions in the thread. I'll do a team update next.

Edited October 14, 2016 by HughJ

[HughJ]

Part 3.5 - Team Update 1:

Black Chill, aka THE BIG CHILL, aka Miasmic Emo Prince

Notable achievements: blinding pretty much everyone for the past two chapters, slaying Fearows on the cliffs in Beryl Ward (seriously, imagine a skunk taking down a vulture; pretty badass), and dying to pretty much everybody and everything.

Ambvialence, aka the Frog God of Clearasil, aka the Spectral Tongue

The fact that he likes to thrash means that he's a canon speed metal fan. EDGYYYY

Notable achievements: laughing in the face of type deficiency, putting Victoria's team through the wash cycle, and serving as the bleeding edge of frog evolution (someday he will fulfill his dreams and become a Chameleon. Yes, chameleons are reptiles, but let him dream).

Neglect, aka The Black Dhole, aka The Reaper

Her tendency to scatter things about is really a perfect manifestation of her name. Her Jolly nature implies a sort of warped cackling as she moves from victim to victim

Notable achievements: obliterating two PULSE tangrowths with crits and flinch hacks, more-or-less singlehandedly defeating all of Florinia and Corey's pokemon, and otherwise terrorizing the people of Reborn

This bear thing

Notable achievements: none

maybe it will do something next installment... hopefully

[Noir]

Pretty solid natures all around -- you must be pretty lucky. In any case, this is looking to be a pretty solid run, so good luck to the times ahead.

[DemICE]

Pretty solid natures all around -- you must be pretty lucky. In any case, this is looking to be a pretty solid run, so good luck to the times ahead.

Well its not a nuzlocke, so he's prolly searching for the right natures Edited October 15, 2016 by DemICE

[HughJ]

PART 4 - Overcoming Victoria:

It's a beautiful night in Reborn... and what better a way to start off a new leg of our journey than by running into trouble with the law?

Thankfully there's no stop-and-frisk in the Pokemon universe, otherwise he might have noticed my collection of butterfly knives and switchblades.

Also I think this is the same guy I said "Screw the law" to earlier, so I sort of had this coming.

Anyway I made my way from the overgrown territory to the Grand Hall, where I noticed that there was FINALLY a grinding battle available at the counter. Ideally this meant more viable Pokemon in my party, and consequently more strategy than just the rinse-and-repeat sweep system I'd been using.

But it turned out to be a disgusting ruse because the guy had a Charmeleon with Dragon Rage.

Seriously, that move in early game is cheaper than a night with Cain.

He also had a Gardevoir with a OHKO on all of my team. With these two fairly infuriating facts in consideration, you might understand why I kept resetting when I wanted to try again instead of paying out $750 every time. I somehow managed to forget to save after the cutscene at the bridge though, so I ended up watching Corey kill himself the same way three times in total, like this was all some demented Groundhog Day.

Eventually I let go of my salt and moved on towards the Big Stairs, passing a weaboo and a rager on the way. I really related to the latter after that grinding battle, but she was a little too distastefully obvious with her emotions.

Fern wasn't at the Big Stairs like he said he'd be, so I guess he either lied or got lost somehow.

I just went ahead to Lapis Ward because I had a badge to collect/loot. Along the way I passed a girl with purple hair muttering about vengeance in front of the featureless concrete face of an insane asylum. With a few appropriate filters it would have made for a classy

A E S T H E T I C

After dealing with some annoying old people trying to hold me up, I located Corey's body and approached it, hoping that someone hadn't already looted the mess. As I was making my way through the crowd though, a feeling of ominous dread settled on my shoulders. It was as if something... something horrible were watching.

Then I realized it was just Victoria. She appeared to be holding an innocent child hostage and forcing them to look at the body through reverse psychology, like the MONSTER she is.

There was also this eerie manifestation of human dread wearing a fedora and trench coat and named SHADE. He was OBVIOUSLY trying to cramp my complex, silent, shady style. He even ripped off my name. I knew from that moment on that this edgy playthrough was only big enough for one of us - and that would be ME.

I couldn't really do anything about him stealing my hard-earned badge though, so I just had to let that go.

Victoria took the kidnapped child Shelly back inside of the gym, where I learned that she was actually the leader. As I was about to challenge her though, Vicky pokéblocked me and said we should go back to the Stairs.

I tried to explain that the only recent change at the Stairs was just a hole, and that there was no reason to go look at the absence of a thing, but she was already gone. Shelly was in some sort of shock so I just followed Victoria to help get my mind off the fact that I'd just been low-key robbed by Shade.

Once I got back to the Big Stairs and climbed into the hole (great idea) some grunts grabbed Victoria and dragged her away, saying something about using her as a hostage. The joke was on them: hostage situations necessitate a desire to free the captured party, which in this case was wholly lacking.

But because they were entertaining to look at, I decided to follow the Wet Bandits further down into the crystal caves. On the way I wondered how two people blatantly dressed in Meteor uniforms managed to set up industrial-level explosive equipment on a popular city monument unnoticed.

At the bottom of the caves there was another dude in a trench coat who actually seemed pretty chill for a meteor guy. Though he did manage to mix up amethysts and emeralds, I figured that probably wasn't really a major plot detail big deal in the grand scheme of things.

After that I poked around a little more and stumbled across the three from earlier. Apparently this time Victoria wanted to help me, which was such an unwelcome change of pace that I nearly shut off the game passed out.

It looked like these two still hadn't learned the lesson about my power to completely disregard brain waves, so their mind rocks just floated there helplessly while I bit and poisoned them.

Their remaining pokemon were less of a joke though and managed to give my team a run for its money. It ended up coming down to Aster's heavily wounded Magmar and my muscly teddy bear, but Insomnia actually punched the caliente Big Bird's face inside out and earned 2.5K exp.

The fight was cool, but regrettably I saved Victoria in the process. She fortunately didn't stick around to ruin my life again though, and on the way out of the caves I actually found a random karate guy who gave me a Rock Smash TM (BLESSSS.) I believe this meant access to Citrine Mountain, where I was hoping to accomplish some miscellaneous objectives.

Just to kill some time, I joined a gang on the way back through Lapis. I ended up catching some cool alley cats in their lair, as seen here:

Loathing had some really good IVs and a nature predisposed for special attacks, which was coverage my team was currently lacking.

I also used the opportunity of a wild area to have Black Chill cut open some trash bags and feast on their insides. He must’ve indirectly absorbed some hormones from any discarded milk cartons, because:

He also learned Flamethrower, which I conceptualized as him carrying a lighter and spraying AXE into it when necessary.

So with some alley cat Fake Out filler and my skunk armed with an incendiary weapon, I returned to the gym, ready to receive my sorely overdue badge.

But of course, nothing in my life is ever easy, and my nemesis Victoria was still there. I almost would have taken a fight with her over more busywork at this point, but getting a doctor from the asylum seemed easy enough. I just prayed she’d be gone when I got back.

The clinic was an emotional roller coaster. A child called me ‘glowy’ on the way in, which was massively insulting, as someone who puts hours daily into concentrating their dark aura. There was also a cool girl who smoked cigarettes and had metaphorical scars, but the pink hair was a bit too tacky and scene for me.

I got rekt by the orderly a few times but it was mainly my incompetence. The doctor I was looking for turned out to be a Louis Yealland wannabe so I bailed and went back to the gym for a THIRD time and asked for my fight.

This time the traumatized purple child actually agreed, but of course Vicky still couldn’t accept the fact that I was making progress so she tried to hold me up yet again...

And yet again my frog DOMINATED her pig (and about half her team) with a combination of shapeshifting and confusing water blasts. Ultimately however she got my core team – Chill, Ambivalence, and Neglect – down to just the Reaper.

Neglect really lived up to that nickname though, because she went toe-to-toe with Victoria’s Hariyama, taking 0 damage and a clean victory in the process. Alternating Swaggers and Bites across 4 turns meant that we cheesed the crap out of her sumo monster in a combination of inspired self-harm and expedient rabies.

While Victoria retreated to lick her wounds and begin plotting against me anew, I bashed my head against some bookcases as part of another unearthly learning-themed puzzle until I got across to Shelly.

Insights gained from the Shelly fight:

- I hate bugs.

- I hate bugs so much dude.

- Struggle bug is stupidly overpowered.

o Affects 2 targets

o 100% accuracy

o 100% stat drop? How is that balanced?

o Hits me super effectively

o She gets STAB

- I really, really, really hate bugs.

My strategy boiled down to using Fake Out (100% flinch chance, but only one-time use and only on one target), Lick (30% paralysis chance, which has an ensuing 25% chance to drop moves), and Smokescreen (6 TURNS of use just to drop chance to 33%) to weaken her leading Pokemon. Then I could set up my sweepers (Howl-boosted Neglect and X Special Flamethrower Black Chill) to rinse through the rest of her team.

I must have reset upwards of 35 times until the RNG didn't screw me over, which I suppose is appropriately brutal for the first type-disadvantage gym. I actively live in fear of the circus I know lies in my future, and every time I Think about Conkeldurr or Hawlucha I break out into a cold sweat.

After finally prying the Cocoon badge from Shelly’s gross insect claws, she gave me the Struggle Bug TM, which I immediately shattered over my knee and urinated on, in front of her.

I hate bugs.

Thanks for reading part 4; please post all comments and suggestions to this thread.

Edited October 17, 2016 by HughJ

[laggless01]

Can't you do the mission to assault Craudburry's house yet? Nets you a Carvanha/Houndour...And scaring the other gang out gives you access to Zorua and Murkrow...You might wat to train the panda for that, tho.

[HughJ]

Can't you do the mission to assault Craudburry's house yet? Nets you a Carvanha/Houndour...And scaring the other gang out gives you access to Zorua and Murkrow...You might wat to train the panda for that, tho.

All in due time

New post should be up today or tomorrow and a good amount of it is the gang quest

[HughJ]

PART 5 - Purification:

First goal of this session was to finally achieve a 'pure' dark type party, AKA give the panda some 'roids and stretch out the frog's tongue that much more.

I figured the gang quest was as good a place as any for XP-mongering, and aligned myself with the Aquas (because of simple logical type advantage and because my starter is an amphibian).

The raid on Craudberry's place went off without a hitch and I sc00ped up some good EXP. Unfortunately I was also handed a pony which had nothing to do with the Spirit of the Edge so I immediately released it.

Because it was raining, every time we engaged a Vulpix with Drought I was bombarded with subliminal messages of the homosexual agenda a disgusting fanfare of garish colors. It's times like the sight of a rainbow that I ask myself why the world can't all be monochrome.

(Insomnia confirmed gay for Maxie's Vulpix)

The fights across the entire quest were pretty one-sided, again because of the blatant type disadvantage against Ambivalence and because Insomnia could more-or-less OHKO Houndours. On the way out of the Magma hideout though I saw a Murkrow (which I kind of wanted) which morphed into a Zorua (which I REALLY wanted).

For my reward in vanquishing the really kind of unfairly disadvantaged Magmas I received a Carvanha, which was pretty cool. It was the first gift/event pokemon I didn't immediately hurl out a window (aside from my starter), but unfortunately its nature and IVs blew so I just dropped it in the box for potential later breeding.

To wrap up, Operation Aqua was a success: as both Insomnia and Ambivalence were purified (corrupted?) and became Dark types.

The sprite art is pretty tight too, so big props. What's not tight though is the Clearasil Lord's tongue, which had now escaped his mouth, presumably developed some form of limited sentience, and become the dominant organ of his body.

Moving on from my casual gang wars, I wandered back over to the Grand Hall where I found none other than my good? friend? Fern. He seemed casual at first but the moment I asked him where Cain was, he flew off the handle and challenged me, confirming that he had steadily been shifting from EDGY to just plain on-edge.

Defeating him was pretty simple, with only his Roserade proving to be somewhat of a headache. As much big game as he talked, he really had just come to rely on the weird masked flower midget and its campy HP manipulation. Insomnia clutched it out by hurling Fern's grass snake around and ideally slapping him across the face with it.

Once Fern was done with his little meltdown (jk he's never done) he told me that Cain was up in the spleeny mountain graveyard.

After he bailed I stuck around a bit and took advantage of the resident grinding trainer, this time featuring Teenage Mutant Ninja Squirtles. They were more or less EZ$ for Insomnia and he elevated his level to be on par with the rest of the crew (~37). The turtles yielded Speed EVs (perfectly logical), but despite this Insomnia continued to be SlowAF™.

On the way back to Beryl I stopped in on Julia, who at this point I was convinced was just comatose.

I found Cain reflecting on life while he stared at an empty grave, which bumped him up a few spaces on my list. I presented him with the simple task of giving me a key to the wasteland, but because we live in some kind of No Game No Life universe he challenged me to a duel.

The fight actually turned out to be pretty awesome for these moments:

- Insomnia threw half of Cain's team down the cliff (actual in-game text due to Vital Throw) which was immensely badass

- Black Chill ate huge damage from Cain's Venomoth but still succeeded in TOTAL PYROLYTIC FUMIGATION

Of course though Cain got distracted immediately after by a tiny girl riding a dragon and left before performing the iNCREDIBLY SIMPLE ACT of handing me a key.

I put in so much work for these people and all I get is shafted

I hunted down fishnet boy just in time to witness Heather get abducted, which was pretty great because she's a distracting piece of whiny garbage and her father was bad at pokemon battles.

Cain wouldn't stop singing and give me the key though so I went directly from being shafted to being drafted, yet again. At least when I'm dealing with Victoria I know she's going to turn my life into a waking nightmare but I expect better from Cain.

I ended up working with Shelly for the raid on the insane asylum. She was amazed that we defeated the orderlies at the door, and I was amazed that she knew how to fight beyond mashing Struggle Bug in her cheap-ass gym field.

In a brief aside, I'd like to paint a picture of this run's luck since that godlike first gym battle:

- In one of the orderly double battles, Insomnia got the 25% stun chance from paralysis on 4 successive turns.

- That's a .4% chance for the worst possible outcome, and I got it.

- In the same battle, Shelly's Yanmega got the 10% Ancientpower all-stat boost on 2 successive turns.

- That's a 1% chance for the best possible outcome, and she got it.

I rest my case.

After freeing the children I really had almost nothing to do with, they all retreated to the Railnet and discussed their "next move." This, naturally, was sending me out to go do their work for them, and this time specifically I would have the exhilarating honor of... wait for it... turning on some power. (nonexistent crowd oohs)

Apparently nobody had the brains to steal any of the electric pokemon on the top floor and just power the door, so Anna described to me the person I would have to fight:

It was about as helpful an explanation as if she had read aloud the German Constitution in reverse. The fact that she called Shade Mr. Shadow really didn't help at all, but fortunately I had the foresight of programming requesting everyone to scream my name as a means of distinction.

Once she managed to convey that I was to face the Ghost gym leader though, my emotional state was revived. I realized could just bypass Cain's unnecessarily elusive key, grab a totally different badge, and leave the weird basement children to their fate! Excellent.

With this small victory I headed all the way back through the jungle and across the bridge to the sp00ky factory.

Fortunately there wasn't a puzzle this time, outside of watching some snuff films. One of them was Corey, so I got to relive that a fourth time, which was just, great, really, can't get enough of that, no sir

After stumbling around in the dark a while I coincidentally ran into Shade, and geared myself up to finally face my (potentially unrequited) stylistic nemesis.

As some form of psychological torture he actually led with Corey's disembodied soul, which I think counts as my fifth time partaking in that man's suicide. I couldn't let his tactics get to me though, and went for a good old-fashioned Neglect sweep.

She could usually get excellent damage in against his crew (managing to 2HKO trevenant without any stat boosts) but his counteroffense shook her pretty bad. I would then switch out to a sacrifice subject (one of the alley cats or Insomnia, who had only Fight and Normal moves) and heal her back up.

She managed to take down Shade's Gengar, Doublade, Trevenant, Rotom, and Banette in this way, but Shade's Chandelure would have KO'd her before she got in any damage. I then switched to the Chillster, who badly poisoned the lighting fixture and stalled it out with Super Potions.

And with that, Shade was defeated.

As I twirled the Omen Badge between my fingers, I shot a glance up at the shell of the man who had until now been one of my sworn enemies. His velvety black fedora and coat were outlined by a murky, bloody aura and defined crisply by his haunting red eyes. In the flickering light, I could just make out his sharp, sharklike teeth.

I took a long drag off of my vape pen and clutched the badge in my spiked glove as I reflected on the circumstances. Maybe I had misjudged him... Despite our names' similarities, in truth his style and composure were quite different from mine. Where I was way too wordy narratorial and descriptive, he was poetic and brusque; where I found beauty and power in the Dark, he found sanctuary and defense in it; and where I had legs, he did not.

I could come to appreciate his wraithlike Aesthetic, as even my own Pokemon seemed at times to be spectral in nature. "You know, Shade," I sighed as I stroked my five-o'-clock shadow, "You ain't half-bad."

Thank you for reading Part 5. All comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Edited October 19, 2016 by HughJ

[doombotmecha]

freaking. incredible. ironic edginess is my favorite thing, and you pull it off gloriously.

I think i'm bleeding from the edge, well done.

[Atlas105]

I don't know why I find this so hilarious, but I do! Keep it up!

[laggless01]

Just keep slapping Fern like that and you'll certainly keep our appreciation. (yes, such a gif would be great)
For Zorua, you have to chase him around all alleys. Murkrow was with certain weather/time iirc. you'll find it on the hunt. You could've gotten them before Shade, though, iirc.

[HughJ]

For Zorua, you have to chase him around all alleys. Murkrow was with certain weather/time iirc. you'll find it on the hunt. You could've gotten them before Shade, though, iirc.

Get ready for the return of the Back Alley Master then

[HughJ]

Sorry for the delay guys, but Part 6 might not come out for a few days

I'm swamped this weekend and Kiki whooped me so many times that this post will take a while to churn out

In the meantime enjoy this picture of Kougami chowing down on Hypa Oatsu

Edited October 21, 2016 by HughJ

[Atlas105]

Take your time, we all knew Kiki would take a while

[HughJ]

PART 6 - All for Nothing:

My first priority after watching a bunch of disabled children nearly die in an underground chamber:

Go find that sweet Zorua from the Magma hideout.

Channeling the Back Alley Master once again, I plumbed the depths of the city to locate the tiny mirage dog. Along the way I actually found an alleyway I had not yet explored, and everyone there was so massively underleveled that the fights were just an awkward inconvenience. However, I did eventually manage to get my hands on it, as you can see here:



Its IVs were really really bad but I suppose I brought that on myself, naming it after a construct so... vapid, and void of skill.

I also taught Black Chill and Insomnia Shadow Claw because normal type moves were beginning to lose their viability.



I decided to go poke around in the Railnet to see if Cain had maybe dropped his key but of course I only found Victoria. She said she saw Cain earlier but that he had to run and go get an HM and a badge to save the children. I think he probably just ran because no one in their right mind spends over 5 minutes with Victoria

I got to Coral Ward just in time to see Cain sail into Copacabana Bay on a pile of sludge with my key in hand. As I wondered whether I was equally desperate to escape, Amaria appeared out of a shed and told me she needed help. Figuring that she probably had some water types to get me across to badge-land, I agreed.

We made our way to the other suspicious factory that apparently no one decided to investigate after the first was exposed as a Meteor front. You know the one, Smoke Blacksteam Factory, subtitled "very clearly not a Meteor front?" yeah, that one.

She godmodded a waterfall ice-beam combo into a stairway so I guess that meant we didn't need a key (which has recently become one of my trigger words). I wish I could just godmod some heavenly stairway over all of my problems too, but I guess that's reserved for the legitimately clinically depressed.



I don't remember much of what happened after getting inside because I got dropped like three stories onto a steel cage and then was immediately given a puzzle. That's like inducing hypothermia in someone and then offering them a refreshing glass of ice cold water.





After escaping and working my way through the grunts, I ran into trench coat man again and fought his schizophrenic subordinate. Insomnia went ham on PULSE Muk and the rest of their team, and Amaria got punched in the back by a rock dinosaur.

Unlike Cain and many others in this ungrateful universe, Amaria offered me a reward despite a crippling injury and gave me the key to that shed she crawled out of earlier.



Fortunately because piloting a boat is totally common knowledge (???) I made my way over the acid bath to the looming dojo that would soon become my own personal slice of Hell. This idea was only reinforced when Victoria stepped forward as a sort of self-righteous Virgil to my Dante. Only, instead of giving me hot tips, she just sent me to go talk to her boyfriend



I won't put up the fight graphic for Cal because it wasn't really noteworthy. Silently staring off into the distance, dyed hair that wasn't too loud, and a moody backstory gave him a pass in my official EDGE-book, and his pokemon somehow had virtually 0 answers to my frog. I beat him on the first try.

How could you field a monotype team without preparing for its most blatant weakness? I wondered, passively looking over the dojo 400 feet down.



After throwing Cal's team into the volcano (ooka chaka) I rappelled my way down the cliff face and informed Kiki that her student was worse at handling water than an alien from Signs. She coughed up some blood in a seizure I interpreted as laughing and accepted my challenge.

I was overjoyed at the idea of finally engaging in a square, regulated fight for a badge, but as I was tracing Kiki's blood trail out to the courtyard that painfully familiar, ear-raking screech erupted from behind me.


VICTORIANAM WAR FLASHBACKS GO




"SHAAAAADEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWW"


This time she justified ganking me with the fact that Kiki was dying. I was like "bitch Kiki's probably dying because your white knight shtick gave her cancer"

Her giant blue dung beetle couldn't land its gross insect claws on the legendary Lord of Clearasil (his tongue has worked wonders for this team in ways I could never have foreseen); Ambivalence induced paralysis, confusion, and set up a substitute against this poor thing.

I actually went for the disrespect and just sent in Insomnia vs. her Emboar. It used Rollout, which I think must have been the one bad move it had against my kung fu panda. Insomnia proceeded to mercilessly body slam it to death and I imagine the John Cena theme just ripping through the dojo as Emboar was repeatedly flattened under sheer Ursidae muscle.

Then to put to the test the fact that this battle had gone as poorly for Victoria as possible, I sent in Neglect vs. her Hariyama and once again somehow that monstrous reaper dog eliminated the sumo warrior literally 7 times its weight (hit the Bulbapedia e-books for that one folks).





Sobbing, Victoria fell to her knees, her long black hair coming undone and draping itself over her face. "How could this be?" she cried. "I've had type advantage for WEEKS and every time I lose!" The old floorboards of the building creaked ominously from the humid weather.

I popped in my bluetooth earbuds and set my iPod 3 to play my favorite track - "Move Along," by The All American Rejects. The rain blotted out the peripheral sound of students' shocked gasps and murmurs at the pathetic defeat of their senpai, while I nonchalantly adjusted my studded belts and gloves to Tyson Ritter's beautifully gritty, pained lyrics. I checked my vape pen and, realizing I was out of aerosol, tossed it aside.

"I'd take a drag to cool down," I said, clearing my left eye of titanium hair, "But you aren't even worth that much."

With this, I stepped out into the downpour, with white pumice piling on my shoulder pads and the soot-lined sand crunching beneath my chain boots.





Whooping Victoria was a great boost to my ego but I knew that my transformation into the whoopee was imminent. After healing up at the front, I braced myself for confrontation with the most intimidating terminally ill person I'd ever see.

Here is a synopsis of my failed attempts to overcome Kiki, with highlights (lowlights?) annotated:

Attempt 1:
- Managed to take down her leading Machamp (she did not ease me into this fight, no sir) after burning most of my team
- Healed Ambivalence and sent him back out vs. her Gallade, which he 2KO'd with his tongue alone
- Lucario used Calm Mind (which I assumed was defense vs. special attacks) and then proceeded to WRECK Ambvialence with Psychic
- It's a special Lucario wAT

Attempt 2:
- Machamp just ignores paralysis apparently
- Oh look we lost again

Attempt 3:
- Failure

Attempt 4:
- Managed to take down Machamp with Chill screeching + aftermath
- Took down Gallade pretty easy (mind games still weak, even with muscle)
- Toxicroak messed us up anyway

Attempt 5:
- rekt by lucario

Attempt 6:
- Decided to switch to a poison + stall strategy
> you can't poison toxicroak or lucario
- Neglect managed to set up on Croak because of lucky paralysis RNG
- Then she used swagger and they breAK THroUgh COnfUSIon

Attempt 7:
- this toxicroak has dry skin. like i needed more problems
- hitmonlee kicked everyone's brains out

Attempt 8:
- maybe paralysis has a lower stun chance on Machamp because he has so many spare arms

Attempt 9:
- I am the BLACK ASH THAT LINES THIS BEACH and I will nEVER GIVE uP

Attempt 10:
- took out hitmonlee by baiting a Hi Jump Kick and then

- lucario still capped me

Attempt 11:
- maybe i should give up

Attempt 12/13:
- Failure

Attempt 14:
- running out of food, water
- desperation setting in
- if i don't make it tell my fangirls i hate them

Attempt 15:
- Took out machamp, gallade, and lucario
- Hitmonlee took out itself (again)
- Got Toxicroak to low HP but still lost

Attempt 16:
Despite the weight of 15 failures on my shoulders, I had a good feeling going into the 16th attempt. My strategy was actually improving with every fight as I found new ways to manipulate the AI Kiki's predictably addled brain. Plus, even though I had a type disadvantage, the match was infinitely less frustrating than vs. Shelly and her overpowered moves (i hate bugs i hate bugs i hate bugs).

HARDCORE STRATEGY ALERT

I started the battle with my strategy of poisoning Machamp with Black Chill, buffering his counterattack with a Liepard shield, and switching into Ambivalence. Ambivalence would stall out Machamp with Lick (to avoid Machamp's Strength by switching to Ghost-type) and Substitute (to avoid Machamp's Payback by taking only 30 damage). In this way, the Frog God could stall for up to 8 turns, enough time to goad out both of Kiki's Ultra Potions and kill Machamp with poison.

Ambivalence would then repeat this stalling against Gallade, but poisoning was not necessary because Lick 3KO'd the fragile tonfa man.

After this I switched into Black Chill, whose typing for whatever reason baited Hidden Power out of Lucario (a weak move that the Chill resisted). Chill just rinsed through the metal canine with flamethrower, prompting Kiki to switch it out when it hit low HP. The skunk wall then laid into Toxicroak, and ended up suicide bombing it with Aftermath for a kill.

Kiki sent out Hitmonlee, and I sent out my other alley cat to take the double-blind hit while I healed Ambivalence. When the frog did emerge, he baited out Hitmonlee's Hi Jump Kick with his semi-Dark typing and then used Lick just before Hitmonlee's strike to become invulnerable. In this way, Hitmonlee essentially defeated itself.

Lucario came out next, which Ambivalence managed to riskily finish off with a Water Shuriken.



Kiki's sixth Pokemon, Medicham, finally emerged. Overjoyed at the fact that it was a part-psychic type, I used the remainder of my team as a buffer while healing Ambivalence up for a Lick-Substitute strategy. I envisioned it as him putting up a Naruto log and disappearing, then reappearing with a wet slap of the tongue, only to be invulnerable to attack.

With only one pokemon remaining on either side, it had come down to this. One Lick and Medicham had lost 1/4 of its HP: the end was in sight, I could feel it. Confidently, I instructed my frog to put up another substitute.

Medicham, under the impression that it was facing a sp00py jhost, fell back on its neutral-offense move, Ice Punch. The illusory substitute shield consequently faded, and I readied myself to continue this spectral substitution regimen.

But something was off.

Ambivalence wasn't responding.



Ice Punch froze through substitute.

Ice Punch Froze Through Substitute.

ICE PUNCH FROZE THROUGH SUBSTITUTE

I helplessly watched as Ambivalence and all of my hopes and dreams got shattered

On Attempt 25 some dumb parahax luck just carried me through the fight or whatever. That "whatever" was unironic, embittered ambivalence, by the way. This battle had left me so empty and broken that I felt I was approaching actual edginess.

I kind of staggered across the sand field to get my badge from Kiki, but she had already understandably fallen over by the time I got there. I could see the glint of reward in her lifeless fingers, but Victoria started dragging her corpse away just as I got close. I fell forward and started pulling my exhausted body across the bloody sand like DiCaprio.



Victoria disappeared into the dojo; and darkness, ever present at the edges of my vision, poured in to overwhelm my sight.



Thank you for reading Part 6. As always, leave any comments or suggestions in this thread.

Edited October 24, 2016 by HughJ

[Debojit97]

Glad to know you have defeated Kiki, best of luck for the next gym battles!!!