Recap: We restored order to Hoenn by bringing Rayquaza to settle Kyogre and Groudon down. Meadow won the Hyper Rank Smartness Contest, and we defeated Juan for the final Gym Leader Badge.

Woo hoo! Look at all those votes! Ladies and gentlemen, the final six have been chosen! Looks like we’re swapping out Commando for our new Vaporeon!

Vaporeon shall be called Issac Fair, I absolutely love that name.

Magneton shall be Jack, Suicune shall be Haley, Miltank shall be Belle…

…and you know what? Let’s go ahead and call Bellossom Annie. You’re right, maybe he just likes female names better?

First things first, we need to teach our Pokemon some HMs in order to get through Victory Road without pulling our hair out.

Tiger learns STRENGTH over Drill Peck.

Edge learns ROCK SMASH over Flame Wheel.

I know, I know, FLASH isn’t really necessary, but I can’t get through Victory Road without it or else I’m banging my head against a wall. Meadow learns it in place of Covet.

We make our way through Victory Road and grind ourselves to level 60 in the process.

Saphire realizes she never picked up the Exp. Share, so Twix flies her back to Rustboro for a quick trip to the Devon Corp president. Saphire gives the Exp. Share to Issaac Fair to help him level up faster.

So we stop grinding and decide to take on the Elite Four. Twix is at level 56 at this point.

Issac Fair stops at level 56 as well and I am stoked to bring him with us to the final battles.

Meadow is at level 58.

Our three heavy-hitters at level 60.

We sell all of our worthless items and purchase a bunch of Full Restores and Hyper Potions. I’m a little nervous because the Elite Four is randomized, and I don’t know what to expect.

We talk to these two blonde dudes and head forth!

First up is Sidney. Whatchu got for us, son?!?!

He sends out a Furret. Twix is first up. Furret doesn’t seem like much of a threat and Twix does a nice job of getting his HP down. I wasn’t concerned until Furret poisoned Twix.

I had one Pecha Berry leftover from the PokeBlock days and fed it to Twix, because I am not going to put up with this poison shit during the Elite Four.

I expected this.

Furret knows the way to piss me off is to turn back around and poison Twix again. Rather than waste a turn pulling out a Full Restore, I have faith that one more attack will take him down. One FLY later and Sidney sends out Machamp.

Machamp throws an Ice Punch right out the gate and freezes Tiger. With Tiger’s ability of summoning a sandstorm, I assume I can wait out the status ailment. I let the sandstorm take Machamp’s HP down a bit before realizing Tiger isn’t going to be defrosting himself anytime soon. I feed him an Aspear Berry to warm him up and he is prepared to take Machamp out with a Hidden Power. Damn Machamp had endured the hit pretty well, but he didn’t anticipate the sandstorm would be just enough to faint him. One dash of sand takes him down.

Ninja comes out to Blast Burn Meganium. That’s all it took to get him out of the picture. Next up is Clefable, who feels a little cocky and slams into Ninja. Ninja holds steady and uses WATERFALL in an attempt to drown her opponent. Sidney whips out his next Full Restore and Ninja sends an entire ocean wave to show that she means business.

One more SURF later and Clefable hangs on for dear life with a tiny bit of HP left. Luckily, Tiger’s sandstorm is still brewing, and it smacks Clefable in the face to get her out.

Two Pokemon have been taken down with Tiger’s sandstorm now.

Edge is summoned to battle Sidney’s last Pokemon: a Jumpluff. This fucker means business, too. He gets rid of Tiger’s sandstorm by calling upon a Sunny Day instead. He uses Protect when he knows Edge is going to use Aerial Ace. He’s even got a damn berry in his mouth to heal up mid-battle. Edge keeps her cool and patiently waits out Jumpluff’s Protects. She winds up knocking him out with CUT and Sidney is defeated.

Two Full Restores later and we’re all set to go to the next room.

Phoebe seems determined to send us home crying, but little does she know we never give up.

Phoebe’s first Pokemon is a Hypno with the shittiest accuracy… She tried to use FLASH a bunch of times and missed every single one. Twix hid underwater for the most part and drenched Hypno to the brink of her life, but a Full Restore resolved that issue and we have to start from scratch.

Finally, Hypno lands a few attacks. Secret Power paralyzes Twix, but he doesn’t care and flies up into the sky anyway. Hypno manages to pull off a FLASH, which does manage to affect Twix’s accuracy with attacking for a turn or two, but he lands enough FLY attacks that Hypno faints.

Next up is Ariados… this… fucking… Ariados…

So, first of all, he poisons poor Issac Fair, who was super eager to get into his first Elite Four battle. I think, “that’s okay, we’ll just press forward”, and lo and behold, Ariados seduces him into falling in love with her. As if THAT wasn’t enough, she throws in a Swagger attack just for fun and confuses Issac Fair. So, he is poisoned, confused, and in love with the enemy. This damn bug knows what she’s doing, that’s for sure.

Also, I forgot to tell you guys, I replaced Mud-Slap with Wish.

It would appear that Full Restore does not do anything about your Pokemon being in love with the opponent. It cleared up Issac Fair’s confusion and poisoning, but he still couldn’t bring himself to hurt the spider he loves. Ariados saw he had been cured of his confusion and said, “fuck that”, and used Swagger again. Issac Fair made a wish that did successfully heal him, but what good does that do if he won’t attack?

Good job, buddy! Snap out of that confusion like a BOSS!

Oh for god’s sake…

Issac Fair pulls himself together to pull off one more Water Pulse and defeats Ariados. I consider switching him out for a different Pokemon, but he insists he can fight better. I believe him and allow him to fight Kingdra. He starts off strong, despite the fact Kingdra immediately poisoned him, and I go ahead and use a Full Restore to avoid potential harm from allowing poison to last.

One more Body Slam paralyzes our little Vaporeon, but he fights through it and Sparks Kingdra out of the game!

Ninja burns Exeggutor before she gets a chance to fight.

Though the magic of the Exp. Share, Issac Fair gains a level.

Ninja stays out to battle Azumarill, Phoebe’s last Pokemon. She spams Metronome just for fun (because Ninja can’t be touched what with her spectacular defense) until Azumarill is defeated.

Glacia is our next victim. This’ll be a piece of cake.

Oh… oh no… how did that happen?????

Edge steps forward to avenge her fallen friend.

Then Marowak comes out and does the same thing.

Edge is down and out! This isn’t good!

No more games. Tiger is here to fuck some shit up.

He burns through Marowak and then sets fire to Gardevior.

Persian didn’t stand a chance against Tiger’s fists of fury.

Tiger ends Glacia’s run by breathing fire onto her final Pokemon, a Hypno.

Saphire revives Meadow and Edge before venturing into the next room.

We all have to finish the Elite Four together!! No ‘mon left behind!!

Drake looks like he’s ready to kick our ass. He’s probably got some really scary Pokemon.

Not gonna lie, seeing Wigglytuff come out first made me laugh louder than it should have.

Meadow was having a hard time against Wigglytuff because he could only use Dig against her and she kept throwing Solarbeam and Blizzard, so Issac Fair took over.

One Jump Kick later, Wigglytuff was out.

Then he single-handedly took on Furret.

Tiger destroyed Drake’s next Pokemon with one Cross Chop.

Poliwrath was Drake’s next Pokemon and two STRENGTHs took him out. Issac Fair grew another level.

Wobuffet was Drake’s last Pokemon, and Twix was sent out to deal with him. Thunderpunch rocked his world and we moved on to the Champion.

Dun-dun-dun! The Champion is Wallace, the dude that helped us in Sootopolis!

Ursaring was his first Pokemon and Issac Fair took him down in only a few turns.

What is with all these Hypno in the Elite Four??

Bahahaha… Ninja was sent to burn Glalie and she did just that.

Meadow wanted to redeem himself, so he insisted I allow him to fight Wallace’s next Ursaring.

The bastard knows Substitute and uses it as often as he can.

Meadow stays strong for several turns but ultimately tags Edge in to finish the job.

She succeeds valiantly, but allows Meadow to come back out to face off against Wallace’s final Pokemon.

Wallace sends out the ever-terrifying Jumpluff.

Meadow’s attacks don’t do a whole lot of damage to Jumpluff, so we decide to play strategically. Jumpluff starts spamming Double Team, making him pretty hard to hit, so we counter with a little spam of FLASH to make sure his accuracy falls so low that he can’t land an attack on us.

Meadow’s strategy is working! Jumpluff can’t hit him at all! Luckily, his Double Team spam didn’t do him much good, as Meadow is throwing punches left and right.

I love finishing the game with my starter Pokemon. I mean, that Pokemon has been with you the longest, they deserve the finishing blow.

And Meadow does just that!!

Way to go, little man!!

Wallace congratulates Saphire and inducts her into the Hall of Fame, but not before Brendan shows up to put a damper on the mood. He’s so weird…

Anyway, Prof. Birch criticizes our PokeDex entries and then we ignore him and go watch our partners be immortalized in the Hoenn Hall of Fame!

We did it, you guys!! We did it!!

Welcome to the Hall of Fame, my friends!!

I have had such a blast doing this randomized run and playing with all of you guys that every one of you who voted and suggested names deserves to be in this Hall of Fame, so for the credits, I’ll be naming all of the Reddit users who named one of Saphire’s Pokemon. Thank you for playing with me, this was a lot of fun — I have actually grown pretty attached to all of these Pokemon, if you believe it, much more attached than I’ve ever been to a team of mine in a Pokemon game.

Maybe I’ll see you all again in another game! 🙂

Stay tuned for credits!