Following Falkner’s Flying Gym in Violet City, I was given an egg to carry and hatch as I made my way down to Azalea town along Route 32. I was able to evolve Baxter into a Beedrill! Fighting all those magikarps paid off! He’s very slightly less useless now, but for now I’m hopeful.

Since I spent so much time working on Baxter, I had to level my party a bit before entering Union Cave. Once there, I recalled that in my previous runs the first floor/entrance area has mostly ratattas and zubats, but the other areas are prone to more interesting spawns like geodude or onix. So I used a repel and made my way up the cave, and to my great pleasure I spawned an Onix. Almost all of my party is weak to onix except Ridley the Bellsprout, who is too strong. Luckily I was able to chip her down with Baxter’s fury cutter and catch her. Since she is a rock type, I thought she needed a fitting rock n’ roll name, so I called her Benatar after one of the greatest lady rockers I could think of. Sadly she will never become a steelix since she can’t get traded on my emulator, but then again Pat Benatar was never really metal either.

Now I’m really tired of carrying around that egg, so I grind for a bit in the cave and then go run around outside to speed it up. Ah the joys of pokemon. I hatched a Togepi which I named Ann Veal. Now I had to go show Professor Elm, so that was some fun little grinding. I don’t think I’m going to use this pokemon. Partly because I dont want to evolve it all the way up from level one, but mostly because I would feel evil it I let it get hurt. This is not a weapon of war, this is a cute little egg thing.

But now I was able to properly add Benatar to my party and teach rock smash. Apparantly beedrill can learn rock smash too, maybe Baxter isn’t so useless. (This is false, onix and beedrill are both super fragile). At the Ruins of Alph I smashed some rocks to catch a geodude, who I named Armstrong. I’ll probably use him if shit goes sideways and I need a rock smashy boy, but I don’t really like rock types. Moving on, I did eventually catch up with Rattata on Route 33, and named mine Filbert. I really hope someone follows that reference.

That brings me to Azalea town, where I needed to help Mr. Kurt Apricorn man needs my help to save the slowpokes from Team Rocket’s evil appetites. I follow him into the well. Luckily I don’t need a repel since there are no wild mons. In my first battle with team rocket Uma decided to evolve into Quilava, which is awesome! Also Executive Proton was either really weak or I was way overleveled, the latter might be for the best considering I’m due for the Azalea gym and a rival battle. I decided to tackle the rival battle first. My rival was at higher levels than I was, but since I googled his mons I was able to have enough type advantage to prevail with no casualties!

Onto Bugsy’s Bug Gym (clever name…) it was a huge waste of time. I was way overleveled for all the trainers, and although Bugsy’s Scyther being a bit intimidating, nothing was a threat once they were put to sleep. Low level bugs tend to use poison and normal attacks, so Cobain the gastly and Uma the quilava were more than enough. I wasn’t even leveled enough for Bugsy, but then again it was bug types. They seriously need a buff.

And, to complete the chapter, I drew a fanart of my party. Enjoy!