Disclaimer: Me no own Pokémon.
Chapter 16: You came looking for gyms, but you found fillers instead.
Gringey City in the East Coast of Kanto was by far, the most industrialised place in the region. There were hundreds of factories of all kinds which meant that the city was extremely polluted. Although the industries were successful in containing the damage within the city boundaries with the help of Pokémon, the city itself was not spared. The waters were a murky brown colour and the air had a scent of burning rubber lingering in it. We quickly went towards the Pokémon Centre, which was the least polluted place in this city. Night was coming soon so we decided to stay in this place for now.
"Welcome." Nurse Joy greeted us as we entered the Centre. She was looking tired and by looking at the number of Pokémon lying in the stasis chambers, I could infer that she had a busy day.
"Hello Nurse Joy. We would like to book a room for the night." I said.
"No problem, we don't get many visitors in this part of the region." Nurse Joy said while giving a low chuckle.
We soon unpacked in the room and took a bath. After changing clothes, we went downstairs to the reception where Nurse Joy was preparing dinner. After a while, the three of us ate dinner together and just as we were about to turn in for the day, the power went out. In all honestly, I had forgotten about this development. I had no plans on catching Muk again as he was completely useless other than to annoy the Professor.
"Oh Dear! This is bad." Nurse Joy was panicking.
"What's the matter Nurse Joy? Don't you have a backup power source here?" Brock asked.
"Well, the backup generator is currently being fixed, so there is nothing to do. All these Pokémon will be in trouble if we don't do something about the power." Nurse Joy said while pointing towards the struggling Pokémon in the Centre.
"Nurse Joy, where does the power in this city come from?" I asked.
"There's a power plant at the East end of the city. You guys are trainers right? Could you please go and check what's wrong?" She asked us.
"Sure. We will come back as soon as possible." We said.
The Power plant was easy to find due to the fact that I already had a general idea on where it is located. We reached there in ten minutes and the insides were completely dark. Charizard was too big to fit in the hallways, so we used the torch light provided by Nurse Joy. After wandering around inside for a while, we soon came across the culprits.
"Look there Ash." Brock pointed his flashlight towards one of the corners and sure enough, a lot of Grimers were there.
"Yep. Those are Grimer. They are notorious for destroying these kinds of establishments." I said.
The Grimer were starting to notice our presence, so we ran away and soon came across the Control room where the workers were currently holed up. After meeting up with them, we got a full description of the situation. After consulting with the captain, we decided to clear out the generator room first.
"Venusaur, I need your help." I called the grass type. He was big enough to fill up quarter of the room, but that was not a problem.
"Buddy, use Sleep Powder on all those Grimers." I told him. Soon, the silvery green powder fell upon all the Grimers near the generator who started dropping down. "Alakazam, we need your help." The psychic type was ready for a fight."Use Psychic to move all the sleeping Grimers outside." I ordered.
This process was repeated in every room and soon, the power was back on. Even the leader Muk was asleep and was piled outside the Power plant. To ensure that they didn't cause trouble again, I even asked Charizard to burn them as an intimidation factor. The intense heat of his flames woke the poison type Pokémon up and they all ran away into the river. That ought to solve the problem. We went back after all the employees of the power plant said their gratitude and even Nurse Joy gave us a heartfelt thanks.
We would have left for Fuschia City the next day, but the weather suddenly turned ugly. A storm hit the East coast of Kanto and we were in the path of it. The winds were blowing at a considerable pace and we were holed up in the Pokémon Centre for the entire day. The Wild Pokémon had all fled towards safer locations and would take a while before returning. The storm lasted for the entire day and we even heard that there was a Storm Surge in Route 18. We could only wait till the storm passed before we could hit the road again.
The storm subsided by midnight and the route was clear to travel by the next day. We hit the road by ten in the morning and while travelling, we came across an interesting sight. A large number of Magikarp were splashing around in a small pond.
"I think that they were carried here by the storm surge yesterday." Brock said.
"Yeah me too. But the problem is that they need to get into the open water before the pool is evaporated." The day was getting hotter and the pool in which they were stuck wouldn't last for a long time.
"What do you say Ash? Shall we help them out?" Brock asked.
"Sure. Why not." It took us about half an hour to drop all the Magikarp back into the water. Once they understood that we were only trying to help, they co-operated pretty well. There was a Golden Magikarp in the group, but I chose to not catch it as it was currently outside of its natural habitat.
After everyone was finally back in the water, they danced around a little to show their appreciation before finally swimming off. As we were about to go, I heard a splash behind me. The golden Magikarp was still splashing around and didn't leave.
"What's the problem buddy?" I asked.
"Karp karp." He was still splashing around and his head was pointed towards the direction of my Pokeballs.
"Do you want to join me?" I was not really surprised as Magikarps were some of the only Pokémon that would willingly join a trainer's party without any fight.
"Alright then. Welcome to the team bud." I caught him/her with one of my Pokeballs, which meant that it was the seventh Pokémon in my party.
We soon headed towards Fuschia City and by the time we reached near the outskirts of the City, it was already evening. We decided to camp out for the day as the gym was just over a nearby hill.
The next day, Brock decided to head on towards Fuschia while I would go there after the gym battle. I also needed to train Magikarp for a little bit before hitting the gym. The outskirts of Fuschia were filled with a large number of high levelled wild Pokémon. The thing about training a Magikarp was that one needed to have an extraordinary amount of patience. No Magikarp in the wild would be above level 5 which was the egg level. This was due to the fact that a Magikarp did not have any attack that they could use against other Pokémon. The only ones that evolved into Gyarados were the ones that participated in the rituals for becoming one.
This was one of the reasons that a newbie never really owned a Gyarados under most circumstances. They tended to treat their Magikarp like shit which reflected in their behaviour upon evolution. There were cases where a Rookie trainer was maimed by a newly evolved Gyarados because he couldn't control it. The only way to control a Gyarados was to treat it with respect like every other member of your party when it is a Magikarp. Dexter had the following things to say about mine.
Magikarp, the Fish Pokémon
Magikarp is virtually useless in battle as it can only splash around. As a result, it is considered to be very weak. However, it is actually a very hardy Pokémon that can survive in any body of water no matter how polluted it is.
This Magikarp is a Female and has the ability Rattled.
This Magikarp is currently level 5 and knows the move Splash.
Note: This Magikarp is a shiny Pokémon. Although it is unknown why these Pokémon exist, it is said that these Pokémon are extremely rare.
It was just as expected. The only way to level up Magikarp was to use a buddy system. For this Purpose, I paired her with Blastoise to fight Pokémon in the nearby lakes. There were a large amount of wild Poliwag in there which contributed a lot towards training Magikarp. Blastoise was easily able to knock out multiple opponents before they could attack Magikarp who was the weak link. The amount of exp gained this way was pretty abysmal as far as Magikarp was concerned. In five hours time, we were only succeffu in levelling her up five times, taking her to level 10.
By the way, the TM training was now finished and everyone had perfectly mastered their TM moves. This meant that it was time for me to teach them a new move. However, since the time remaining was too short, I decided to challenge the gym first.
Fuschia Gym, in actuality was not a gym at all. The original gym was located in the City like every other gym, but Koga decided to move back into his ancestral home for the battles due to it being more suited for his battle style. The gym building was build around four hundred years ago during the era of the Warring states. It looked well maintained and given the fact that the Koga clan's disciples were constantly maintaining it, the looks matched the strength.
The inside of the gym was a labyrinth of sorts with many different kinds of traps laid out. Even for someone like me, it was difficult to understand where the central chamber was. I ran into multiple traps, some of them involving exploding Voltorbs until I finally reached the gym chamber. But there was no one there.
"Hello? Is there anyone here? I need to have a gym battle." I yelled out but no one answered. Just as I was about to exit the room, I heard a voice.
"To live and die in the shadows is a shinobi's creed." Ms Aya, who was Koga's sister, said.
"Um miss. Are you the gym leader?" I decided to act as if I didn't know anything.
"Before you can challenge my esteemed brother, I shall test your resolve. Venonat, stand for battle." She said.
"Pidgeot, i need your help." The room was a little congested, but there was no problem because Venonat was just level 25.
"Venonat, use Poison Powder." She commanded. Venonat released a purple coloured powder from between its antenna which started to spread towards Pidgeot.
"Send it back with a gust." Pidgeot did as told and the poison powder was scattered toward Venonat again. However, a Poison type Pokémon can't be poisoned, so I decided to finish this off quickly.
"Finish this with a Wing Attack." Since Venonat was still recovering for another attack, Pidgeot who had much greater speed, easily connected with a bluish wing which knocked out the opponent.
"Ho ho ho. You have much more to learn before you can become a full fledged shinobi my dear sister." Koga, who made his presence known, said.
"Please forgive me for failing esteemed brother. I shall correct this as soon as possible." Aya said.
"Very well. Now as for Mr challenger here, My name is Koga and I am the gym leader of Fuschia City. State your name so that we can begin our match." He said.
"The name is Ketchum, Ash Ketchum from Pallet Town." I replied.
"Very well, this shall be a Three on three fight. But first, let's head outside to the courtyard." Koga said and we followed him towards the centre of the dojo.
After we reached there, Ms Aya volunteered as the referee.
"The following match is a three on three battle between Ash Ketchum of Pallet Town and Leader Koga of Fuschia City and is for the Soul Badge. Substitutions are allowed for the challenger. The match ends when a trainer has no Pokémon left to battle with. Let the match commence." She said.
"Venonat, stand for battle." Koga said.
"Alakazam, you're up bud." I called out.
"Venonat, use Poison Powder." He started.
"Alakazam, do nothing." I gave out my order. The Poison type attack hit Alakazam successfully and Koga seemed happy.
"Venonat, follow it up with Leech Life." He ordered.
"Alakazam Teleport out of the way." Despite the fact that he was poisoned, Alakazam was still at ful power. Before the Bug type Pokémon could finish its attack, Alakazam was nowhere to be found.
"Are you sure you want to fight that way? Venonat use Foresight." Venonat spread his energy through the battlefield which allowed him to discover where Alakazam was and made sure that the next move would hit.
"Alright, enough playing around. Finish this now with Psychic." Venonat was soon surrounded by a psychic energy and was tossed out of the ring. It hit a wall and soon showed swirly eyes indicating that it fainted.
In the first pace, Alakazam was ten levels higher than Venonat who was currently at level 36. The only reason that I allowed him to get hit was to check if Magic Guard was working properly. Since he never took any damage from being poisoned, it was working perfectly.
"Venomoth, I need your strength." The second Pokémon was released.
"Alakazam Return. Charizard, you're up." I released my starter who shook the entire battlefield with guttural roar. I could see that Venomoth was intimidated at the sight of the colossal Fire type, but held its nerve which showed its class.
"Do not fear my friend, use Sleep Powder." Koga who was also shaken at Charizard's appearance said.
"Burn it to a crisp and finish it bud." Charizard gave out a stream of fire which was so hot that we could see the steam rising from the ground. Venomoth's attack which was coming towards Charizard was soon gone and it was engulfed in the flames. By the time the attack stopped, Venomoth was already out cold.
"Venomoth Return." Koga ordered. "You know what kid? I forfeit. There's no way that I can beat you using my regular Pokémon and you are not eligible to face the League ones. So let's end this here." He said.
"That's fine by me." The exp that he accumulated through this gym finally allowed Charizard to level up taking him to Level 51.
"Due to the gym leader forfeiting, the winner of the match is Ash Ketchum." Ms Aya said.
After collecting the Soul Badge, I soon ran towards Fuschia City. There were a lot of things for me to do in there tomorrow and I also needed to visit the Safari Zone. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day for sure.
Fuschia City.
The place was the largest in Kanto in terms of area covered. Due to the presence of the Safari Zone, the buildings in here were not much taller than one or two floors. The different shops present in the City were primarily for the visitors of the Safari Zone. There were a lot of people selling Safari Zone hats and attire. There were shops for selling battle items useful for the Pokémon caught in the Safari Zone. Brock had no interest in entering the Safari Zone and had ran off to a nearby Breeding Centre.
The Kanto Safari Zone was the first and largest of such establishment in all of the six regions. The Zone itself was divided into three sectors: The Game Reserve and The Protected Zone. The Game Reserve was the one connected to the city and the place to actually make captures. It comprised a quarter of the entire Safari Zone. The Pokémon found here are generally older ones that could live on their own. These were the only Pokémon that were legal to catch in the zone.
The Safari Zone had a large number of rare Pokémon that were found only in here. Pokémon like Dratini, Kangaskhan, Tauros, Scyther etc... were only found here in the entirety of Kanto. This was primarily due to the loss of their Natural habitat and their long breeding cycle. I didn't have any plans to catch many Pokémon from here as none of them met my battle style other than a few. At first, I thought of catching some Tauros like last time for trading, I eventually decided against it. Caching your own Pokémon was more fun.
As I was about to enter the Zone the crazy warden from last time tried the same shit again but a single roar from the ever handy Charizard was enough for him to shut up. My attack plan for the Zone was pretty simple. Get in, catch the ones you want, get out.
The insides of the Safari Zone had various kinds of environments in it. There was a large lake, a sandy area, a grassland and even a forest in here. There was only one Pokémon that I needed from here which was a Dratini. Under normal circumstances, finding one was nearly impossible but my circumstance is anything but normal now is it.
'System, activate the Pokefinder.' I said once I entered the park.
'Starting the Pokefinder... Complete
Scanning the area for capturable Pokémon...Complete
Organising Capture Pokémon data...Complete
The following Pokémon can be found using the system
Nidoran (Male)
Nidoran (Female)
Exeggcute
Rhyhorn
Venonat
Nidorino
Nidorina
Paras
Parasect
Scyther
Pinsir
Chansey
Psyduck
Slowpoke
Magikarp
Goldeen
Poliwag
Dratini
Dragonair
Doduo
Kangaskhan
Tauros
Please select the one to be encountered'
'Select Dratini' Although a Dragonair would have been easier to train, it was always better to train a Dragon type from their youngest forms so that there could be a strong bond between the trainer and the dragon.
'Command accepted.
Please follow the following instructions
Step 1: Walk one hundred steps to the front
Completion 0%'
Walking one hundred steps to the front took me to the edge of the rest area where the entrance was located.
'Step 1 Completed
Step 2: Walk fifty steps to the left
Completion 0%'
This took me to the edge of the Lake area where all the aquatic Pokémon were located.
'Step 2 Completion detected
Step 3: Walk twenty steps forward and use the available Fishing Rod
Completion 0%'
The place I reached was the edge of the biggest lake in the the area. I unshrinked the Fishing Rod from my bag before putting it into the water.
'Step 3 Completion Detected
Encounter starts in 3...2...1...'
Something bit at the bait and it was fight on. As Dratini were not that strong, it was easy to reel him in. Since this was the Safari Zone, I was not allowed to bring out my own Pokémon unless it was an emergency. The only way to catch him was through mutual understanding.
There's a saying that Dragon types will only acknowledge trainers that they believe can help them bring out their full potential. So unless one caught a dragon type in their pre evolved form, controlling them was near impossible. I locked eyes with Dratini as a challenge and the staring contest went on for a few minutes. After that, he gave a slight nod which indicated that he was redy for capture. I used the Safari Ball given to me.
Now that I had caught Dratini, I left the Game reserve soon after.The receptionist was surprised that I managed to catch one of the rarest Pokémon in here but nonetheless transferred the Dragon into a regular Pokeball. Dratini's Pokeball went into stasis mode due to me having more than seven, so I had to send one of the others back home.
I chose to send both Gengar and Alakazam but not before teaching them a new TM. The 15 TMs which were available in Fuschia were purchased by me. Alakazam ended up mastering four new attacks which were Reflect, Rest, Thunder Wave and Psywave.
Gengar was taught Mega Drain and I told her to learn Psychic and Toxic from Alakazam. Alakazam on the other hand, needed to learn Shadow Ball from Gengar.
With this, my team once again had just Six Pokémon. I decided to check Dratini's information using Dexter.
Dratini the Dragon Pokémon
A Dratini continuously molts and sloughs off its old skin. It does so because the life energy within its body steadily builds to reach uncontrollable levels.
This Dratini is a Male and had the Ability Shed Skin.
This Dratini is currently Level 15 and knows the moves Wrap, Thunder Wave, Twister, Dragon Breath and Body Slam.
This was a great moveset and given the fact that there was a lot of time before the next gym battle, I could take him to a respectable level before Blain's gym.
Ash' team
Charizard
Level 51 [stats is 32% more compared to a fully maxed out Pokémon of same level]
Moves: Slash, Rock Slide, Bite, Ember, Metal Claw, Smokescreen, Flamethrower, Wing Attack and Earthquake.
Pidgeot
Level 47
Moves: Tackle, Sand Attack, Gust, Steel Wing, Quick Attack, Whirlwind, Wing Attack and Double Team.
Alakazam
Level 46
Moves: Teleport, Thunder Punch, Disable, Psybeam, Reflect, Recover, Future Sight, Psychic, Toxic, Hyper Beam, Dig, Double Team, Rest, Thunder Wave and Psywave.
Venusaur
Level 46
Moves: Tackle, Vine Whip, Leech Seed, Poison Powder, Sleep Powder, Petal Dance, Razor Leaf, Sweet Scent and Toxic.
Blastoise
Level 47
Moves: Tackle, Bubble, Water Gun, Mirror Coat, Bite, Rapid Spin, Protect, Rain Dance and Ice Beam.
Gengar
Level 46
Moves: Hypnosis, Dream Eater, Night Shade, Confuse Ray, Shadow Punch, Destiny Bond, Shadow Ball, Thunderbolt and Mega Drain.
Magikarp
Level 10
Moves: Splash
Dratini
Level 15
Moves: Wrap, Thunder Wave, Twister, Dragon Breath, Body Slam.
That's it for today folks. I have a sinking feeling that this chapter was not really good, but from now on, there won't be another gym battle for at least ten chapters. Anyways, Dratini has joined the team and even a Shiny Magikarp made it. Bagon will soon make its appearance so wait for it.
Anyways, Read and review as always.