Chapter 5: Locked and Loaded

We stayed away from the Complex after that. At the very least, the Pokemon in the dark grass on Route 20 were the same level, and were types we could actually fight against.

Training was brutally long, but it paid off in spades. Nibbles was the first to evolve, transforming into Swadloon and then deciding that wasn't good enough for our team, and almost immediately evolving into Leavanny, which honestly, the little worm biting pieces off of our enemies definitely wasn't as disturbing as watching a humanoid praying mantis rip them apart with a giant smile, but Nibbles had more than put his work in. Not wanting to be left behind, Catkyoin evolved into Liepard, and I knew we were pretty much done here. Sink or swim, the XP gain was just too low, and there was no way these wild Pokemon were going to give us anything else other than risk of death. It was time to challenge Roxie.

Gym Leader #2: Roxie

Type: Poison

I was biting my nails going into this one. After the surprise Cheren gave me with his Pokemon being so much stronger than the wilds we had trained with, I was honestly expecting her to have unbelievably powerful Pokemon. Not to mention, we were at a type disadvantage; Catkyoin could handle it, sure, but Nibbles was a Bug/Grass type. If she tried anything with status effect build-ups, Nibbles would bite it, hard. Pun intended. So, nervously, I challenged her, with Catkyoin in the lead.

And got a series of pleasant surprises.

For starters, Roxie only had 2 Pokemon, like Cheren. For two, her first Pokemon, Koffing, was actually pretty far behind Catkyoin in terms of levels. Considering Catkyoin had just made mincemeat of Roxie s bandmates, I had confidence she could handle this one.

It was a little tough, to be sure; Koffing had just enough Defense to be annoying, and just enough Attack behind its Tackles to be concerning. But Catkyoin was faster, and tougher, and Roxie made a fatal mistake; she used up her one Super Potion on it. Catkyoin was still able to beat it after that, and that only left her second Poke mon; Whirlipede.

Now, Catkyoin was in rough shape, despite her victory, and I wasn t quite comfortable with her going up against Roxie s star in her condition. So, with a bit of a cold sweat down my neck, I sent out Nibbles, because I knew, if he could withstand the first attack, he could use his coup de grace. You see, for Nibbles to have reached his final evolution, he had to achieve max friendship, and with max friendship, he had max power behind a move I had taught him earlier; Return.

Now, Return is an interesting move. The way it works is, the more a Pokemon likes you (and it grows to like you with each battle that it fights in and survives), the stronger the move is. It was the opposite of Frustration (a move that became more powerful the more the Pok mon hated its trainer), and was essentially one of the most powerful moves I could apply to Nibbles. Since I hadn't lost with him, that meant his friendship was off the charts, and so I was literally counting on the power of friendship to beat this Whirlipede.

And it pulled through.

It wasn't a one-shot kill, but it got it into the red, and like I said before, Roxie had blown her one healing item. She dropped a Venoshock on me in response, and even though I wasn t already poisoned, I was still pretty scared, given the 2x effectiveness. But Nibbles shook it off like the absolute monster that he was, and another Return soccer ball-kicked that Whirlipede backstage.

The battle was won. After so many losses just between these two gyms, we had gotten our second Gym badge, and we were ready to continue on, our heads held high.

Let's hope the future held some good fortune.