More Evolutions and the Journey to Saffron and Beyond.
We made it to the Butterfree migration spot, and Ash still let his Butterfree go. I never realized it before, but he got rid of his only Pokémon effective against Psychic types right before his battle against Sabrina. Oh well it's his own problem to deal with. It was especially sad this time seeing Butterfree go and Ash being sad, now that I had been around both for so long. I hope to never have to go through that with my Pokémon.
While we were on the road to Saffron City I walked beside Ash.
"The Saffron City gym leader is a Psychic type gym leader, do you know what Pokémon you're gonna use?"
"Well, I figured I'd go with Pikachu, but what do you think I should use?" Ash
"Well Psychics are only weak to Ghost and Bug type moves, so I think we should detour into Lavender town so that you can try to catch a Ghost Pokémon. This will also fill the 6th slot that opened up when Butterfree left." Alan
"I see. Your Gastly is pretty strong." He says while looking to my Pokéballs.
"What have I said about being jealous." I say while flicking his forehead. "Just go capture your own and make other people jealous instead." I turned back to look ahead and then brought out my map. "Look if we go here we'll have to camp out one more night, but we'll reach Lavender Town about midday tomorrow. You can catch your Pokémon and we can be on our way to Saffron, giving you battle experience with your Pokémon before we get there." Alan
"Thanks Alan! Lets do it, lets go to Lavender Town." Ash says excitedly, no longer viably down about Butterfree.
With a nod and a slight change in direction we make our way to Lavender Town. Not much changed from there except Ash actually catches Haunter this time after asking him if he wanted to join Ash on his journey. During our breaks on the way to Saffron Ash would spar against Animo and get used to its Psychic type attacks in preparation for the battle against Sabrina. It seemed to be coming along quite nicely, as he was utilizing Haunters ability to go invisible to sneak around.
We made it to Saffron early the next evening, and we strode up to the Saffron City gym. We still ran into Sabrina's father, but he left us alone once he saw we had 2 powerful Ghost types as well as a strong Psychic type. I decided to let Ash go first, so that he could get rid of the crazy alter ego of Sabrina first and also so that her Abra will already be a Kadabra.
Sending out Haunter Ash begins the battle against her Abra, with practice against a Kadabra as well as Haunter actually listening to Ash they defeated the Abra before it could ever evolve. After defeating Abra, Haunter starts making funny faces and weird noises eventually causing Sabrina to laugh, getting rid of the alter ego.
The match wasn't much different with her against me. Umbra easily defeated her Abra, I almost wish she had made the match a 3 on 3 or something so that Umbra could evolve. Oh well, a badge is a badge. This just means that both Umbra and Cae are close to evolving, I'll make sure to focus on their training during our trip to Celadon.
Ash decided to call Professor Oak to show off his badges, but only ended getting mad because he found out Gary and the other trainer who I know to be a girl named Grace have already gotten their 5th badge.
"And Gary has already captured 30 Pokémon." Oak says.
"30 Pokémon?!" Ash exclaims.
"What about you Ash, I haven't gotten any Pokémon from you in a while? Not since the day you sent me Krabby here." Oak
"Well Alan only 6 Pokémon and 4 badges like me." Ash tries to argue with Professor Oak.
"Who? Oh yes, the young man who left with the Charmander. How is he by the way? He's never checked in since he left, but since his Pokédex has been updating his badge progress and registering his Pokémon I knew he was fine." Oak
Well he's stronger than me for now, so he's obviously 10 times better than Gary." Ash
"He has caught some powerful Pokémon, if trained properly his Pokémon will be a force to be reckoned with. I hope you're learning everything you can from him. If these notes thats he's typed in his Pokédex are true then he is a great trainer." Oak
"He's been helping me a lot actually, I wouldn't have know to capture Haunter to use against Sabrina if he wasn't here. I've gotta go Professor Oak, I can't catch Gary if I stand around all day." Ash
"Before you go please tell Alan to call me the next time you reach a Pokémon center, also you need to call your mother as well." Oak
"Don't worry Professor, I will." Ash then hangs up the phone.
While we're all sitting around eating Brock's jelly filled doughnuts, Ash come over all gloomy about everything that he heard from Professor Oak. He also informed me I need to call Oak at some point, and that's when the Mankey popped out with Ash deciding to try to capture it. Eventually he angered it like the show resulting in the Mankey stealing his hat.
With a kick from James, we now have a violent Primeape on our hands. Ash soon catches it after actually battling it with several of his Pokémon giving Ash his 8th Pokémon. With Primeape tamed, we finally made it to Celadon City.
Ash still makes a fool out of himself when he makes fun of their perfume, getting him kicked out. I don't mind perfume, but there's just too much so I decide to follow him to the gym. There just like the show he gets rejected by the woman running the desk because of his offense against perfume. I honestly think this is all ridiculous, so I decided to step in.
"Can you just forgive him, he is indeed dumb, stupid and immature, but if he can't beat the gym then I can't leave here either. Which also means you'll have a perfume hater who will come back everyday to try and battle the gym. Over and over and over again." Alan
The woman running the desk's face continued to contort into increasingly more worried faces thinking about Ash coming back everyday. She finally relented after thinking on it some more, and allowing us both to enter. Before I walked in however I stepped to the side and called out Flos.
"Flos, Team Rocket is going to try to steal something from here. Do you think you could keep a loot and send them packing before they can? I really don't want to have to wait until the next day for my battle against Erika." Alan
"Saur, saur." He nods before heading off into the bushes to wait for Team Rocket.
I now turn to head inside as well. It's time for Ignea to reach her final evolution. When I walk in the room Ash is already in his gym battle against Erika. Thankfully he seems a little smarter, this time he started the battle with Pidgeotto instead of Bulbasaur. Using a series of wing attacks and sand attacks it took out Tangela easily, but got defeated by her gloom. Sending out Charmander next, it also struggles against gloom's terrible smell. However it sees me and Ignea, who I let out to watch the battle, and seems to have renewed determination. It fires a flamethrower through the stun spore, blowing it a way in the process causing it to evolve into a Charmeleon.
Ash yells in excitement for his newly evolved Pokémon, but quickly focuses back in the battle. Erika sends out weepingbell next, but it couldn't handle the newly evolved charmeleon. Charmeleon seemed to become cocky though and was about to hit the downed weeping bell when I had Ignea subdue him.
"Ignea stop him quickly before he severely injured Weepingbell." Alan
"Chaaaar!" She cries out sending metal claw straight for Charmeleon's head knocking him to the ground where she stomped her foot on his back squishing him against the ground. Charmeleon squirmed and thrashed, sending out shots of flamethrower in his rage.
"Ignea, knock him out." I calmly call out.
"Char." With a quick thrust of her hand to Charmeleon's neck she knocked him out, allowing Ash to return him to his Pokéball.
"It seems your Charmeleon will need some disciplining if you plan on using him in any future battles." I say to Ash.
"Y-ya, thanks Alan." Ash is a little confused in his emotions as he's glad they stopped his Charmeleon before it caused any extra damage, but also disheartened that his Charmeleon was taking down so easy by Ignea.
"Good job Ignea." I rub Ignea's head when she got back to me.
"Meleon."
I had to wait a couple hours for Erika's Pokémon to rest and heal before I got to battle her. Cae and Umbra are my only unevolved Pokémon, but Cae is weak to grass being a Squirtle, and I really want Ignea to go ahead and evolve so she can always be stronger than Ash's. That will help him also because we'll be able to beat the ego out of him when he becomes a Charizard. I'll just use Umbra and Cae on the road to Fuschia and against the gym leader Koga. Surely they will either evolve before we get there, or during the battle. Setting up for Cae to evolve to Blastoise against Blaine.
"Sorry Erika, I would normally use a different Pokémon in this situation to help them gain experience but as we saw it seems Ignea has a junior she going to have to be able to control." I said nonchalantly to Erika while looking at Ignea, who seemed ready for her first gym battle in a long time.
"I appreciate the though, but I would never stop a trainer from using the Pokémon they chose. I see you and your Charmeleon are very close, it's obvious in the way you 2 interact." Erika
"Thanks, lets begin the battle please." Alan
"Let's!" Erika
And with that the battle began, with Ignea taking the field in my side and Erika starting Tangela just like she did against Ash. I had Ignea start off with Dragon claw just to have some fun, Tangela countered with a constrict and then vine whip. However Ignea quickly grabbed the vines and jerking Tangela toward her before using Mega Punch right in Tangela's face knocking it out.
Erika seemed stunned, but recovered and sent out Weepingbell. Not much changed here, her Weepingbell was too slow and the vines just caused it to be dragged into a mega punch or dragon claw. I wanted Ignea to win the match with out any fire moves. Next up was Erika's gloom who tried to use the terrible smell to disable Ignea, but she used a smokescreen to negate the smell. She jumped through the smoke with 2 charged Dragon claws scoring hits with both of them, she was about to hit Gloom with a mega punch, but Erika called Gloom back and conceded the victory.
With the pride of victory swelling in her chest and that she beat 3 Pokémon without her strongest moves, Ignea roared and triggered her evolution into a Charizard.
"Wow Ignea! You went and evolved into a Charizard just like that, amazing." Alan said as he admired Ignea's new form before giving her a big hug. Everyone else could only look on in awe of the newly evolved Charizard, as well as the usually cool and stoic Alan hugging such a dangerous looking Pokémon.
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CURRENT TEAM:
Ignea-Charizard F
Mortiflos-Ivysaur M
Caeruleum-Squirtle F
Animo-Kadabra M
Colubrosus-Gyrados M
Umbra-Gastly F
Author's Note: phew 2 badges and some 6 episodes I believe. Some things changed here but not much, really only the one big one which is Ash's Charmander evolving into Charmeleon already. Good thing big sister Ignea is there to keep him complacent. Lol. Ignea evolved into Charizard. Umbra was originally going to evolve against Sabrina, but with just a weak Abra I decided to wait till later. Big time training for Cae and Umbra coming up to get them to their first evolution. Ideally before I reach Koga if it works out that way. But I definitely plan on evolving Caeruleum into Blastoise against Blaine.
Other than that truthfully not much happened this chapter, just battles and couple evolutions. Oh well, until next time.
Thanks for reading
-TaediumVitae