The next day, they're on a walk along Goldenrod City beach. The storm from yesterday has left its touch: the sands are strewn with rotting kelp, garbage, driftwood, and other debris. If the storm really had been Lugia trying to rise from the depths, the area closest to the water had suffered the worst of it.

They come across a crag where the trash really piled up. Soda cans, pokéball halves, unidentifiable shards, an old net, and much more are combined in a soupy mixture that goes from the sand into the water.

Maggie's foot squishes on something wet and slippery and she slips in to the sand. Behind her, a tentacool's cap is squished into the sand, the red bubble on its head burst. She didn't see it with this garbage everywhere.

"Do we have to be here?"

"We have to be strong. There's something we're looking for," says Lucy, helping Maggie up.

Whatever it is, they don't find it yet. Under some papers and the plastic that goes on a ten pack of moomoo milk, a purple pokémon oozes out, emanating a stench strong enough to make Maggie's eyes water. She starts backing away. She'd recognize this one anywhere: a grimer.

Lucy sends out her starmie. The air seems to shudder as it sends psychic waves at the grimerm and it only takes a second to collapse it into even less defined goo. Without a form, it's even harder to distinguish its liquidy body from the garbage-strewn sand and particulate-filled water.

"How disgusting," Lucy says. "It's things like these that show what people have done."

"What do you mean?"

Lucy looks at the dirty gray water, then turns to Maggie with a resolute look in her eyes. "Let's take a break here. It's a good spot to do some training."

A few minutes later, they have a fishing rod baited with a particularly rank rotting fish cast into the ocean. Lucy sends out her drifloon as Maggie stares at the puddle of sludge that was the grimer. She thinks about Lucy's words. What people have done...

"You're not supposed to drink the water or swim in it if you see any grimer in it," Maggie starts, "because if there's a whole grimer that means there's a lot of germs in the water, so you could easily get sick from it."

Lucy nods. "There's always this kind of junk in the water, but it's only when humans throw away enough that it gets condensed enough to become grimer. In Kanto, there's Celadon City–a place where the first grimer were discovered. The trash people were thoughtlessly dumping in the water had congealed into grimer. And they had to have spread outward from there, because after that in other cities people started noticing grimer were showing up."

Maggie looks at the beach. Even if it was Lugia that tossed it up, it was humans that put it in the water in the first place, wasn't it?

"They're especially bad for ocean pokémon like corsola that will die under even slightly polluted conditions. You can't even catch them to get rid of them, because all it takes is one muk for more to split off, and they rejoin their bodies and hide when threatened. Even in Kanto, no one wanted them except for people in gangs. It's a shame that people had to create something so ugly."

Maggie takes one more look at the sludge in front of her eyes and thinks she's seen enough. She starts to get up and nearly hits the drifloon that was hovering right beside her ear. She didn't see it there! The drifloon bobs a little higher, its strings touching her shoulder.

The fishing line thrashes. Maggie rushes to help Lucy as she bear-hugs the jerking pole. Whatever they caught, it's huge. It takes Drifloon holding onto Maggie holding onto Lucy holding onto the pole to reel it in.

A head-sized ball of sludge is pulled onto the sand. The starmie drifts closer, glowing ominously, until Lucy says, "No, we're here to train the other pokémon!"

They watch the ball sit there, settling into a puddle on the sand... then a pair of eyes open. "Drifloon, gust!" Lucy shouts.

Drifloon flexes its body, and a sharp breeze whips through the air, striking the grimer. It flattens itself against the wind and then piles itself up, dripping down its own body even as it moves. Suddenly it launches a section of its body at the drifloon, which lets out a high-pitched squeak as sludge covers its head. The drifloon flails backwards, arm-strings pulling horrendously close to Maggie. She ducks away from its reaching strings as its shaking head flicks off bits of sludge everywhere.

Lucy shouts, "Gust again!"–and when it keeps flopping–"Hey, you're resistant to that!" It doesn't seem to work. The starmie drifts closer as the grimer starts building itself up again–"Pikachu, come on out!"

Pikachu takes one look at the situation and makes quick work of the grimer with an electro ball. She strikes a pose as the drifloon buries its head in the sand. Lucy goes to apply a full restore.

Judging that the risk of getting covered with toxic sludge has gone down to safe levels, Maggie decides to send out her slowpoke as well.

She supposes that since they're training... along with Drifloon, Pikachu, and Magmar... Lucy could also technically use Slowpoke for a rematch at the Goldenrod Gym. But she has her doubts that he would be good at it. He's just too dopey and cute, looking around slowly, making a soft grumbling noise. No lighting fast reflexes on this one. Turning around foot-by-foot, he dips his tail into the water.

Pikachu, sniffing and curious, comes close to Slowpoke. "Hey, go away–" she says, fumbling with the slowpoke's pokéball, but she's too fast and Maggie can see the moment when she bops him with her sparking tail. Her slowpoke! But Slowpoke himself only slowly turns his head to Pikachu, expression completely unchanged. The sulky look she gives him is priceless, and so is her shameful escape.

There's a distracted frown on Lucy's face as she comes back holding the drifloon's strings, but it changes to a small smile upon seeing Maggie's slowpoke out.

"He's doing some fishing of his own!" Maggie tells her. Her pokémon is the best!

"It's good that you got one that still has a white tip on its tail. Slowpoke can break them off when they're threatened by predators, but they have to direct a lot of energy to growing them back, and then they often don't even regrow the part that attracts fish to them."

"You hear that?" Maggie coos to the slowpoke. "You're the best at fishing!" She watches the motion of his tail, the slight waggling, the adorableness of it all. His tail in the water is maybe a foot long. She really hopes he'll catch something. More than a few minutes pass by as she watches.

She looks up from her slowpoke for a second. Showing their tastelessness, both Pikachu and Drifloon are transfixed by the starmie's spinning and flashing instead of by Slowpoke. Pikachu is exaggeratedly limping, tail sagging to the sand as if hiding a large wound, while Starmie flashes slowly.

Lucy catches Maggie's gaze and smiles. "You know, I wanted to come here to see if there were any corsola washed up, but this is fine. They're being really cute."

Starmie dips, sinking down to the ground and then back up. It flashes a barrage of lights like talking rapidly. Pikachu's ears twitch and Drifloon makes a long wobbly blorbing noise, wiggling its strings in weird motions, and Starmie flashes the barrage again. Pikachu, squeaking sharply, runs in between it and Drifloon. She says, "Pik-awwwk!" and waves her arms up and down at Drifloon. The starmie flashes once with a beep like confirmation. Then Pikachu spins around to lay on the ground, her tail hooking into the water, tongue hanging out.

That's a pantomime of Slowpoke, surely. Rude.

The fishing rod bobs.

"... Whoa. It's a muk."

It launches itself out of the water, immediately spreading across the sand and covering where the grimer puddle was.

Drifloon shrieks, pulling away, but that only alerts the muk of its existence. It strikes the drifloon with a spray of poison that faints it immediately. Pikachu lights up with electricity and the muk grumbles in pain–only to open up and reveal a bubbling ball of sand mixed with poison, and Pikachu falls as well.

"Slowpoke, water gun!" shouts Maggie, hoping to get off a surprise attack. A bullet of water shoots from the slowpoke's mouth, knocking a bit off the muk's body, and Maggie recalls him before an answering limb of sludge can slam down on him.

This would be a good time to have the ninetales, if only Lucy hadn't sent it back to her mom after returning to the pokémon center last night. Or the starmie? Backing away from the muk seeping outwards onto the sand, Maggie casts a glance at Lucy.

But instead of ordering the anxiously spinning starmie overhead, Lucy holds up her newest pokéball. The magmar comes out with the air whooshing in Maggie's ears, lit up in a torrent of flame. It's completely covered in fire.

The muk swamps it with a hose-spray of poison, but that neither puts it out nor has it hesitate as it charges straight into the muk's poisonous body, scorching it black wherever it touches. The air fills with a smell like burning rubber that has Maggie covering her mouth with her sleeve. Bits of blackened sludge fly as bubbles gather on the outer surface of the muk's body. The muk opens itself up and tries to surround the magmar's, but the magmar stomps with fire-coated feet and sprays flames wildly from its beak.

Lucy holds up the ultraball, covering her mouth with her other arm. There's no point in waiting. After the magmar is recalled, there's a burned dark puddle left where the muk was and a lot of new fires on the fuel around them, filling the air with acrid smoke.

Maggie coughs as they flee the burning arena. She looks back to see Lucy's starmie calling a wave of beach water over the sand, turning the trash fire into a smoking black heap.

Well, "I bet that'll be useful for Goldenrod."

"Yeah." Lucy smiles. "I was a little worried that I wouldn't get past that terrible gym, but this magmar is plenty strong."

They spend the rest of the day devising a strategy.