A/N: I'm back!

Kinda fell into a writer's block with this part, not gonna lie.

And real-life work had been keeping me really really busy.

Hopefully I can make headway during the next few weeks.

First Visit to Lavender Town (feat. Gary)

When you think of lavender you are probably thinking of a light purple flower with a lovely fragrance, perhaps an endless field of it in Europe, and all kinds of beautiful and bright images.

Well, that's the opposite of what Lavender Town is.

The people in this town kept to themselves. All the houses had closed fences, locked doors, and drawn curtains. Restaurants were all boarded up and the only Pokeshop in town was small, its merchandise outdated because it didn't get much business. The cold mist and frequent rain seemed characteristic of the town, located in a valley surrounded by tall rocky mountains. The streets were mostly empty, and passers-by were always on the move with a purpose.

After checking into the Pokemon Center, I made my way to the infamous Pokemon Tower.

It was a gigantic building with six or seven stories, built upon a large foundation. It felt daunting to enter the building with its large high arch doors and limestone/marble floors and walls. They gave off echoes as I walked towards the security guard at the reception desk. There were no other visitors, and even though I don't believe in ghosts (except Pokemon types), the building and the atmosphere sent shivers down my back.

When asked about the history of the Tower, the security guard said that it was erected as a resting place for Pokemon. He was polite, but I could tell he wasn't going to be overly nice to me, or any outsider that visited the tower. I thanked him and headed towards the staircase by the East wall of the building.

My footsteps echoed throughout the marble building as I made my way up to the second floor. The place was dimly lit, with rows and columns of shelves that contained jars of ashes, photos, and other small memorabilia of dead Pokemon. The numbered spots of the shelves seemed to be filled chronologically. This meant that the Pokemon enshrined here were older, and that the upper floors were unfilled.

As I found out later, not every dead Pokemon is remembered or processed this way. Most often they are processed by local Pokemon Centers. Imagine how your local (in the non-Pokemon world) processes dead pets, and it's most likely similar. But since Pokemon are able to communicate more closely and intimately with their owners than your average cat or dog, some owners choose to rest their Pokemon here.

According to the signs, the stairs that lead up to the next floor were on the opposite wall (terrible architectural design, by the way). Of course, because I knew there was something important up on the top floor, I headed that way.

About halfway across the empty floor, I came to a space where the shelves that went up all the way up to the 10-foot ceiling stopped to a clearing. And standing in the middle of this moderately sized clearing was… Gary.

With his back to me, I figured I could go down to the next column of shelves and get past him unseen (imagine going over to the next supermarket aisle). But that's no fun, right? After all, it IS another chance to destroy Gary.

"Ahem," I faked a cough and Gary turned to show his ever-smug-and-punchable face.

"Hey, it's you! What brings you here?" Gary asked. And even before I can answer: "Is your Pokemon dead?"

"What the-"

"I can at least make them faint! Let's go!" And with that he threw out a Pokeball.

WHAT DID HE JUST SAY TO ME? IS MY POKEMON DEAD? This punk needs to be put into his place yet again.

His Pidgeotto came out and was immediately at a disadvantage due to the low ceiling.

"Ivysaur, let's go!"

With a series of hand and sound signals, I instructed Ivysaur on the strategies. Having to balance a large plant on his back, and being on all fours on his very large limbs, Ivysaur's acceleration, agility, and balance were not his strong suits.

There was a real chance that Gary's Pidgeotto could actually beat him.

…

HAHA just kidding.

I let Ivysaur tank a few gust moves and flying tackles (too weak to be considered a dive or wing attack) just to test limits. Oh, Ivysaur's limits were NOT tested.

Still, it was true that compared to the melee striking speed of Charmeleon or to the agility of Pikachu, my Ivysaur needed some work. And by some afterlife buff given to Gary as a named NPC, so to speak, his Pokemon WERE stronger than the other trainers I had normally had the chance to battle. It was a good sparring and training opportunity.

Could I have one-shotted Pidgeotto with Pikachu's lightning moves? Absolutely. But this wasn't a game world where the power of my Pokemon were quantified into numbers. No, this was, as far as I was concerned, a REAL world. What if in a series of battles, my Charmeleon was unable to battle, and I had to go against a bunch of Grass types? Or what if there were a whole lot of Rock and Earth type enemies, and my Ivysaur and Wartortle couldn't take them all on?

Sure, in official gym battles, I could walk in with fully battle-ready Pokemon in tip-top shape. But in the real world? Especially having to go against Team Rocket baddies who didn't play by the rules? It was good to make sure that my Pokemon and I were so strong and well-coordinated, that "type effectiveness" that played AGAINST me could be negligible. Imagine a Venusaur that could tank a Flamethrower move, a Blastoise that could withstand a full Thunder, or a Charizard that laughed in the face of Hydropump or Surf (protecting his tail flame, though, obviously. Let's not get carried away here). In order to achieve this level of OP-ness, I needed to test the limits and try new strategies. I wasn't just going to depend on type-countering all the time.

Back to the battle.

Knowing that speed, agility, and balance were things I could work on with Ivysaur, I instructed him to start dodging and evading Pidgeotto's moves. We used Ivysaur's strengths to do this. Since he had a lot of stamina and endurance, even evading a fraction of the moves was tiring Pidgeotto out more than it was hurting Ivysaur. Also, we found out that certain parts were less painful to take hits on than others, which is also true for the human anatomy. And finally, we realized that by spreading out his vines like the appendages of a spider, Ivysaur could actually leverage them to move more quickly out of the way, and later even learned how to launched himself with his vines.

When I decided that enough was enough, Ivysaur caught Pidgeotto with his vines, and slammed him into the ground really hard to knock him out instantly.

Next, he sent out his Kadabra.

Last time, I had embarrassed Gary so badly by responding with my own Kadabra, that this time, I opted for something else.

"Let's go, Charmeleon!"

With some success, I had been able to train my Pokemon to withstand Psychic moves, by using Kadabra, Hypno, and Butterfree as the attackers. There were two types of Psychic moves in general: one that attacks the mind and tries to hurt the opponent from the inside, or the other that tries to hurt the body externally, like telekinesis. But one thing that Gary perhaps doesn't realize is that Psychic moves are HARD for Pokemon to learn and to become effective users at.

His Kadabra first tried to get inside my Charmeleon's head, but my good boy used the strategies I taught him to resist it.

"Why isn't it working!" Gary yelled in frustration. "He's supposed to be confused or something!"

While it was impossible for Charmeleon to learn Psychic moves himself, it was possible for him to learn how to defend against them to a certain level. It just took practice and training.

Since the first type of Psychic moves didn't work, Gary told Kadabra to throw Charmeleon around with his telekinetic moves. This is much easier to defend against then the mind games. All Charmeleon had to do was lower his center of gravity, dig his paws into the tiles (sorry, maybe Gary can pay for the damages!), and then when Kadabra couldn't lift him more than half an inch off the ground, threw fire from his tail at the dull creature who couldn't move at all. The Kadabra's beard caught on fire and he started to hit himself to try to douse it. I felt so bad that I actually had to get Wartortle out to use Water gun on him to get it out.

"Urgh! Let's go Gyarados!" Gary shouted.

Wow, Gary, I'm actually impressed with that. I hadn't had the chance to get my Magikarp to evolve myself.

But… we're indoors…. Without water…. What the hell?

The Gyarados had a hard time staying upright, let alone being able to attack properly.

I had Wartortle strafe sideways, and Gyarados had to squirm a lot just to face him.

"Slam him or something!" Gary shouted.

Gyarados started to thrash about, and thank goodness we were in the middle of a small clearing. Wartortle was able to easily dodge the clumsy beast, out of his element, water. A couple of headbutts from his blindsides was enough to knock the Gyarados out of the fight.

Gary sent out Growlithe, and I sent out one of my Eevees, since I had a chance to train with my three Eevees I got from Bill.

It shouldn't have been possible for my Eevee to defeat Growlithe, since Growlithes are basically like a bigger and stronger version of Eevees, infused with fire. But… my Eevees were properly trained with my other four-paws crew, which included the likes of Pikachu, Rattata, Nidorans, etc.

"URGH!" Gary shouted.

And finally, he was down to his last Pokemon. His go-to Ace. His final resort. His starter.

His Rattata.

I laughed very hard as Clefairy (this was her first battle) locked Rattata in a Jujitsu guard, and started slapping the daylights out of him until he fainted. It was good to let Clefairy release her stress after the trauma she went through on Mt. Moon. Thanks Gary, for the free therapy.

Wait, it was better than free.

He had to pay ME.