CH146 (760), Proven Wrong

Once I had beaten both Gym Trainers, I got to face the Selia City Gym Leader Numan Zehir. The referee mentioned that we would have a 5-vs-5 Pokemon battle, with none of us having any substitution, which was rare. Not the part where the Gym Leader couldn't substitute, but the one where I as the challenger had no substitute allowance as well. Still, it was within the Gym Leader's rights, so I simply accepted it. I was not planning to make use of it anyway, so it made no difference to me.

Anyway, when the referee gave the signal to release our first Pokemon, a (high) gold Seviper appeared on Gym Leader Numan's side, while Gwen/Gardevoir appeared on mine. The reason I was using her so often during these Gym Challenges lately was naturally because I was hoping that these battles would push her further, helping her to complete the final round of her limit-breaking phase faster. I had considered sending out Kun/Azuraid first since he was missing only a single parameter increase to complete his limit-breaking phase, but I ultimately went with Gwen because he was likely going to achieve that within a month or two at most anyway, while Gwen would need another 9-12 months at minimum to complete hers if we did not help push things along.

Either way, I was not expecting Gwen to sweep through Gym Leader Numan's entire team since I was expecting him to follow up with a dark gold one as his second Pokemon, but as long as Gwen took that one down along with maybe a third one, she would have achieved her goal. Gwen's objective was to fight until she couldn't fight anymore while giving it her absolute best after all, so as long as she managed to do that, it did not matter if she swept through Numan Zehir's whole team or lost against his first Pokemon. Not that I thought that the latter was possible.

Gwen first used Safeguard to keep herself from getting poisoned or paralyzed since that was the biggest threat to her as far as we were concerned; More so than any other poison-type move even though she had a weakness against poison-type energy/moves. Gwen still could avoid those after all, but once she got poisoned she was stuck with that. That would interfere with her plan to exert herself to her limit for as long as possible. Regardless, Gwen's Safeguard ended up invalidating Seviper's opening Glare and the follow-up Poison Gas as well. She used the time that gave her to boost herself with Calm Mind twice before she went on the offense.

She used Teleport to move around and to dodge any attempted retaliation from Seviper while she attacked it with Psychic and Psybeam. Seviper managed to break out of Psychic a few times using Bite or Crunch, but the damage caused by it and Psybeam still accumulated. At one point, Seviper insulted Gwen rather harshly, but Gwen managed to remain calm enough, ruining Seviper's plan to provoke her into beating it up physically which would require her to close in. Instead, Gwen used Calm Mind and increased the power of her Psychic and Psybeam. Seviper eventually fell under Gwen's persistent attacks, and Gwen released a huff once it was down, which had me smile.

Gym Leader Numan then proceeded to go against my expectations by releasing a (high) gold stage Swalot instead of the dark gold stage Pokemon I was expecting, but that honestly just meant that Gwen had an easier time beating her second opponent since she had a few boosts going. As expected, Swalot held out for less than 5 minutes and if not for the repeated use of Stockpile and Swallow that time would have been even shorter. Honestly, it was obvious that it had been hoping to use Stockpile and Throw Up to take down Gwen, but the damage she caused Swalot forced it to use Swallow to avoid falling, breaking its Stockpile chain early. Yet, its healing could not keep up with Gwen's damage output so it still ended up falling, and ironically enough it was without causing Gwen any damage at all.

I watched Gym Leader Numan recall his beaten purple pudding/Swalot, and I wondered what dark gold Pokemon he was going to send out to face Gwen. However, I  once again ended up being wrong when Gym Leader Zehir called out a (high) gold Weezing. Seeing Weezing, I could not help but wonder if Numan was planning to keep the dark gold Pokemon as his last combatant, which in my opinion was not the smartest idea. Still, that was up to him, so I pushed these thoughts aside and told Gwen to reapply Safeguard since there was a high risk of getting poisoned while facing a Weezing.

The battle that followed was pretty good since Numan and Weezing fought strategically with the obvious goal of forcing Gwen to expend as much stamina and energy as possible. It used Taunt to keep her from using Teleport, Haze to get rid of her boosts, Protect to block unavoidable attacks whenever possible, Dark Pulse to retaliate, and a combo of Rest and Sleep Talk to recover twice without being helpless. I had to admit that its strategy was effective, especially with them blocking Teleport, but Gwen still fought valiantly. She used the brief periods between Taunts to maintain Safeguard since she knew keeping that up was the most important bit against Weezing's overarching plans.

Their battle took a little more than ten minutes, but Gwen eventually managed to push Weezing to the edge of its endurance, which caused Weezing to choose to go out with a bang. When it lit up with what we intimately knew to be the precursor to an Explosion, Gwen immediately turned around and ran away while using Psychic towards her back to keep the worst of the Explosion at bay while she tried to get away. She had no choice but to do this since she couldn't use Teleport or Protect. Still, she barely managed to run 5 meters when Weezing exploded, and while her Psychic bought her another 2 or so seconds, she still got engulfed by the tail end of the explosion.

Surprisingly enough, Gwen was not the only one who came out of that Explosion without losing consciousness. Weezing managed to Endure his Explosion and used Destiny Bond with the last of its strength before finally getting knocked out, which triggered Destiny Bond, causing Gwen, who had just come out of the Explosion with some degree of damage/burns to sag a bit. The Destiny Bond also interrupted the Life Dew that Gwen used to test if Taunt had run its course, forcing her to wait for the continuation of the battle to continue healing herself. We watched as Numan recalled his Weezing and brought out his next Pokemon. He went with a (high) gold Pokemon, strengthening my belief that he was saving the dark gold one for last.

Anyway, Muk released a Sludge Wave as soon as the referee gave the starting signal, which forced Gwen to go with Teleport instead of Life Dew. She appeared in the air and kept herself floating with her psychic powers. Irked at the situation she began to run down a few Psybeams before Teleporting to the right corner behind Muk to use Recover. She also used another Safeguard as Muk turned around and attacked her, ensuring that she did not have to worry about getting poisoned or burned I guess seeing how Muk released a Flamethrower in Gwen's direction, which she naturally easily avoided with Teleport.

Unfortunately, Muk followed the same strategy as Weezing and while Gwen was able to heal herself, she had no way to recover the stamina and energy she was expending. By the time she was able to take down Mini Muk, who had spent the majority of their battle in a Minimized state to make things harder for her, Gwen was already close to running out of gas, so even when Numan completely went against my expectations due to not using any dark gold stage Pokemon at all by releasing a (high) gold Roserade as his final Pokemon I was not sure if Gwen could win this one.

Nonetheless, out of fumes or not, Gwen gave it her all, and when she eventually failed to keep standing due to a lack of energy/stamina, she received a massive standing ovation from the crowd even as the referee declared her unable to battle. Gwen was able to barely tilt her head up to look towards the stands, and when I saw her hand futilely twitch likely in an attempt to wave towards them to thank them for the support, I used my psychic power to help her out by moving her arm for her. After that, I telepathically told her that she had done great before I finally recalled her and let her out inside Utopia so that she could quickly recover from her very impressive Gym performance.

As for Roserade, she did not come out unscathed from the battle against Gwen. I simply sent Optimus/Butterfree out to tie things up, and it took less than 2 minutes for Roserade to be out cold. I could feel that Optimus was not really happy with how quickly the battle ended, but he kept it to himself and just bowed to the cheering crowd before flying to my side as the referee declared my victory over Gym Leader Numan Zehir. Said Gym Leader approached me as I recalled Optinmus after thanking him for finishing the battle, and after the usual congratulatory bit, Numan handed me the Gym Badge.

The Selia Badge had the standard shape that all B-rank Badges shared, and after confirming the 3 stars printed on one side along with the city name on the other, I placed the purple badge beside the other B-rank/Minor Gym Badges I had earned so far before politely thanking Gym Leader Numan for the challenge. Following that, I left the Gym and spent around two hours strolling around Selia City before I entered Utopia. I briefly left Utopia an hour after dinner to get a look at Selia City at night, though I returned to Utopia after walking around for roughly an hour, but not before I uploaded the pictures I took to the group chat.

That was the main reason I went out in the first place. The girls had asked me to take a few photos since they wanted to see how the city looked at night, convinced that it would look very beautiful if done right lighting-wise, and they ended up being right since parts of Selia City were even more beautiful during the night than they were during the day, at least that was what I felt, and the girls sent comments/replies that validated that. Anyway, after returning to Utopia, I spent the rest of the evening with my Pokemon. The next morning, I left Utopia after the morning training session before heading straight out of Sepia City to continue my journey.

I walked out of the city with Mothra/Butterfree on my head, Hades/Gengar in my shadow, Nyx/Umbreon by my side, and my phone in my hand. The reason I took out my phone was to arrange the matters of my next Gym Challenge. The next city/stop of my journey was Bowl City, home to one of the 14 Standard Gyms of Hoenn; A rock-based one to be specific. Going with my usual travel speed, reaching Bowl City should take me 8 days, so as long as I managed to find a date after that I would be fine, though getting one as close to 9 days later as possible was preferable.

Like before I could not do the registration online and had to call the Gym. Doing the registration so many days in advance I had no real problem finding a fitting date, and I ended up registering for a Gym Battle/challenge for Arcday the week after the next. That gave me 9 days to make it to Bowl City with the battle taking place 10 days from now.

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