CH137 (751), What Happened Just Now?

I spent the days up to the Gym Battle split between exploring Fortree City for what it had to offer, and Utopia with my Pokemon. Fortree City being a city that actually tried that whole part of nature thing was certainly more interesting/unique than the cities I had seen so far both in Hoenn or Kanto, or any other city/region I had visited, no matter how brief that visit might have been. While the situation was nowhere near as exaggerated as in the games or anime where people lived in glorified treehouses, they did include the trees in their buildings with some of the more impressive ones turning the tree itself into a building while the tree was still alive.

That last bit was honestly like it was taken from some kind of elf fantasy story, but it was in fact possible thanks to grass-type Pokemon and the Grass Elementalists, or Wood Benders as they were apparently called by the local population since they manipulated wood/trees. I guess I should not have been surprised by their presence, or more like by the numbers that seemed to live in Fortree City considering how the city was practically the dream of any grass-type specialist as far as the living environment was concerned. I had to admit that the fact that their Gym was a flying type one instead of a grass type was misleading.

Heck, the fact that Sakiko Himawari, Hoenn's Major Grass-type Gym Leader, went to Littleroot City instead of challenging the Fortree Gym to take over after losing the Lilycove Gym was surprising considering the ambiance of this place; At least that had been my first thought on the matter, but as it turns out there was a reason for that. It wasn't that Sakiko didn't want to do it, but that she didn't dare to waste her chance on a bad bet since Winona's predecessor was still the Gym Leader at the time. Wilfred's Pokemon were quite a bit stronger than Winona's Pokemon were right now, which combined with the type advantage his flying types had over Sakiko's grass types had her not even attempt the challenge.

Apparently, this whole thing had been a hot topic at the time, but like with most such news, it became a mere memory that was gathering dust and only got mentioned as trivia on occasion. Also, funnily enough, Fortree City used to have a Grass-based Gym roughly a century and a half ago, but the predecessor of Winona's predecessor Wilfred challenged the Grass-type Gym Leader of the time for the position, breaking the hitherto unchanged chain of Grass-type Gym Leaders, starting a new chain based on the flying type. Winona was the third Flying type specialist to act as the Fortree City Gym Leader since then, and it seemed like the older locals had private bets going on how long this chain would last.

Well, the old guy who shared that said it in a joking manner, but I knew that he spoke the truth, which was funny in itself, especially when he hastily excused himself after I seriously asked him if I could join in on the bet they had going. Anyway, ambiance aside, a major part of my exploration time involved checking out the local cuisine, and by the time I received my parents together with my friends on Arcday noon, I had not only arranged their accommodation for the night but also chosen the best restaurant in Fortree City for dinner.

Nonetheless, since there were still a few hours until dinner I acted as everyone's tour guide and showed them around the best places of Fortree City, at least the ones that did not take up too much time. We only had 2.5 hours until we had to be at the restaurant for our reservation after all. Everyone, directly slipped into the role of tourists, even my parents who I was pretty sure had to have been to Fortree City before, and they all just enjoyed the sights that Fortree City had to offer. Kinji and his girlfriend Violet, who funnily enough were the only ones that had actually been in Hoenn, ended up joining us at the restaurant. It was there that my upcoming Gym Battle was finally brought up, though only after the orders were given.

No one was worried about my chances, especially when I shared the team Winona was almost guaranteed to use against me, so no one said anything when I mentioned my plan to use the challenge phase to temper Thor/Raichu and Gwen/Gardevoir. In fact, the mention of Thor ended up derailing the discussion when Jessie happily reminisced about playing with Thor's family before wistfully saying that she would love to play with all those Pichu and Pikachu again. That had the girls/ladies join in which somehow ended with me promising all of them that I would accompany them to Thor's family so that they could play with them. Weirdly enough, even Violet ended up swiping a promise from me, which left me baffled and had Kinji pat me on the back while chuckling.

When I eventually asked in disbelief what just happened, everyone broke out in laughter. Jokes aside, our dinner progressed harmoniously and ended on a happy note. After leaving the restaurant, I brought everyone to one of the favorite star-gazing spots, and we spent an hour or so there before I led everyone to the motel I organized for them/us. I ended up arranging a room for myself as well even if it was symbolic since I was definitely planning to enter Utopia after entering my room. Either way, we made it to the motel, and everyone went to their rooms after we agreed on meeting up for breakfast at 9 a.m. since my Gym Battle was scheduled for 11:30 a.m.

We ended up leaving the motel at around 10:50 a.m. the next morning, and it was only 11:12 when I informed the Gym receptionist of my arrival. I bid my parents and friends a temporary goodbye when a staff member came over a few minutes later to lead me to the challenger's room. They wished me all the best before heading to the audience section/seats. I had made use of my challenger privilege to reserve some seats for them, so I was not worried about their seating arrangement. Anyway, I spent the next 15ish minutes waiting to be called up through the speakers, and once that happened, I made my way onto the battlefield while the emcee did my introduction.

I gave the crowd a wave since they were cheering and because my group was among them, before tuning out the emcee until he began to introduce my first opponent. The first Gym Trainer I got to face ended up being Bibi, and as I had decided earlier on, I sent out Thor against the poor girl. The crowd was pretty excited to see a "weaker" Pokemon like Thor, they apparently did not care about the type advantage in this case, beat a stronger one. Their excitement went through the roof after Thor went against all expectations and beat Bibi's (low) dark gold stage Gliscor after having taken out her (low) DG Jumpluff, leaving Bibi with only two more Pokemon.

Things took a turn when she sent out a (low) DG Emolga next, and the flying little electric squirrel ended up pretty much wearing Thor down before falling. With both Pokemon out of commission, I was left with 3 more while Bibi was on her last Pokemon. She ended up sending out a (mid) dark gold stage Noctowl which fought bitterly against Gwen, who had to face worse odds than Thor. Still, Gwen gave it her all, and she actually surprised everyone by beating Noctowl by the skin of her teeth before crumbling into a heap herself, though she did have a bright satisfied smile on her face.

I naturally praised her before recalling her as the referee declared me the winner following which Bibi left the battlefield and the emcee once again did his thing. I used the time the emcee chattered to release Thor and Gwen inside Utopia so that they could be restored to perfect condition before recalling them again and storing their ball on my body for the next battle. My second opponent ended up being Kai, and he was not the only one who got surprised when they saw me sending out Thor again, especially when they noticed that he looked perfectly fine with none of the earlier exhaustion and injuries visible. I heard some of them suggest that Thor was a second Raichu, but that changed when he used Electric Terrain to speed up, which was something Thor previously demonstrated.

Thor smoothly dealt with the Swellow Kai sent out as his first Pokemon, even if it took a while because they seemed to be intent on wasting as much of Thor's energy and patience as possible. It seemed like Kai was determined to take out Thor since he sent out a (mid) dark gold stage Crobat as soon as Swellow was done. What followed was a textbook utilization of Crobat. Crobat used its speed to first poison Thor before dodging and dragging things out as much as possible while still attempting the occasional opportunistic assassination strike. This would have probably not worked as well if not for the stage disparity between them, but even then, Thor made sure that Crobat suffered as much as he did.

Before Thor eventually succumbed to the poison, he nailed Crobat with a final Thunder after briefly immobilizing it with Psychic which prevented Crobat from dodging or blocking the move. The Thunder left Crobat smoking but it still held on, making Thor the clear-cut loser of their battle. Still, in its state, Crobat posed no threat to Gwen at all and was taken down by her rather swiftly. Unfortunately, she ended up facing a very well-trained (mid) DG Skarmory with Weak Armor after that. Skarmory first used Autotomize twice before making use of Weak Armor to boost its speed even further whenever it was forced to tank a move while using Iron Defense to more than make up for any endurance/defense reduction caused by its ability.

Thankfully, Skarmory's long-range options were rather limited so it was forced to get close whenever it wanted to attack Gwen, and very impressive final speed or not, getting close to Gwen was easier said than done. Ultimately, their battle dragged out for quite a while before Gwen was able to take the flying chunk of steel out of the sky, though she slumped due to exhaustion after the referee declared her the victor which had him declare her unable to battle right after. I chose to send out Hera/Pidgeot to take care of Kai's last Pokemon, which happened to be a (low) dark gold stage Fearow. The poor fellow stood no chance against Hera.

Not only was she stronger than Fearow, but she was also immune to any flying moves it could use thanks to her Wind Rider ability. Her talent One with the Wind allowed her to steadily recover as long as Tailwind was in play which caused quite a bit of confusion for everyone else seeing how Hera, at least from their perspective, appeared nearly as fresh as at the start even after taking down Fearow after a roughly 4-minute long battle. Fearow did have other moves after all and it wouldn't just give up just because it couldn't use flying energy against Hera. Not to mention that there was no way that any Fearow would give up against a Pidgeot without being forced to do so.

Anyway, once I was declared the victor and Kai had vacated the battlefield, the emcee introduced the final Gym Trainer I would have to beat to challenge Winona, and I chose to once again lead with Thor, which Mia seemed to have anticipated since she sent out a (mid) dark gold stage Emolga. I was not sure what was more impressive, the fact that she actually had an Emolga this strong or that she had read me well enough to conclude that I would against common sense and still send out Thor first.

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