Recap: We tried out some Pokemon Contests, awoke Rayquaza, and fought with Steven against Team Aqua!

Coming down to the wire, guys, we’re reaching the final stretch of the game! Let’s move on out!

So, it took me almost an entire night just trying to find where Sky Pillar was. I glanced at maps online, even read a few walkthroughs for its location, and damn it, I still couldn’t find it.

Did get to fight a few double-battles though, which is always fun.

I managed to accidentally find Pacifidlog Town. I got pretty excited for a moment, then I remembered this town is pretty much useless. Disappointment settled in before we went back out to sea to locate the freaking tower.

Nope, no tower here. Went too far again. We can’t even get into Ever Grande yet because we don’t have Waterfall…

This little beauty welcomed us to the entrance to Ever Grande. Thanks to her politeness, we understand she must be added to our ever-expanding roster of Pokemon.

She was not amused by our attempts to catch her and broke free of a decent amount of Ultra Balls.

Now, before you look at this next picture, remember I play emulators on ridiculous speeds… so at this point, the game was running almost too fast for me to really pay attention to what I was doing…

NOOOOOOOOO

NOT THE MASTER BALL!!!

The game was running at like, 500% speed or something and I guess I pressed down once more than I needed to. I know I wasn’t sure what the Master Ball was going to be used for, but I don’t think we absolutely needed to use it on Suicune…

Our happy little accident is named HTBCD. You’d better be worth that Master Ball, missy.

Ah, at last, Sky Pillar!

We catch a Magneton inside the pillar because, why not.

His name is JEKPO. We’ll test him out later.

We locate Marshtomp in the pillar also, but we don’t throw any balls quite yet. Not sure if we want one, so we’ll let them be.

We wake up the sleeping lizard at the top and he instinctively knows what’s up. He flies away and we assume that is our cue to head back to Kyogre and Groudon’s showdown.

Rayquaza shows up, gets super pissed off at the two Legendaries, and yells at them to go to their rooms. They obey, disappearing from Sootopolis and restoring the weather back to normal.

Maxie’s all confused because he wasn’t aware there was another Legendary in this gen.

Archie has some kind of revelation regarding his team’s efforts to expand the sea and how silly it was.

Wallace is stunned by Saphire’s beauty.

I mean, her ability to calm the Legendaries…

He gives us the HM for Waterfall, then dares us to fight the Gym Leader Juan.

Might as well, we’re gonna have to anyway to get to Ever Grande.

Gym-Greeter warns us of the dangers in this gym. We scoff at him and charge up those stairs to the icy floor.

Now, I forget how this works… is it that you can’t stand too long on one spot, or that you just can’t walk over the same spot twice?

Woah, what happened? How’d I fall?

Maybe I stood in the same place too long. That must be it.

Ahh, so that’s where all the trainers are. If you fall through the floor, you wind up in a battle with one of these lovely ladies.

She only had one Pokemon and Ninja threw a Thunderbolt at her to win.

Oooo, I’m so scaaaared.

Loser.

Crap, why’d I fall??? I was practically running across the ice that time.

Ohhh, that’s right, you have to clear the whole floor area by cracking the ice once before you can go on to the next one. That’s why those rocks are there.

Now I remember.

Was it always this easy to navigate through…?

Wooooah, that’s Juan?!!

No wonder he has a bunch of women in his basement, he’s really cute!

I tried to give more than just one Pokemon the limelight in this Gym Leader battle. Everybody was happy to participate and wound up taking down their opponent in only a few moves without getting harmed themselves. Tiger is a tank, man, he was hit with a few Super Effective moves that hardly moved his HP bar whatsoever. He is just the greatest. Juan’s final Pokemon was Espeon, so it was only fitting to put Meadow up against him.

Meadow didn’t get the glory of hitting Espeon with the final blow because Tiger’s sandstorm was still going on. You know, the sandstorm that appears when he just walks into a room?

Hey, now! I gave you a compliment earlier!

Woah, what? Already??

I completely forgot Juan was the final Gym Leader while I was fighting him.

Boy, this game sure is going by quickly! I feel like it was just yesterday Saphire picked little Meadow from a PokeBall…

Sorry I made you guys vote last time, because I’ve decided I’m just gonna do all 4 of those options on the poll. I’m not tired yet and we need to take advantage of all the game has to offer before we beat it, amiright??

Meadow is up first to take the title for Hyper Rank Smart Winner.

Hmmm… I’m not liking the looks of this… Meadow has 4 hearts and so do two of his opponents… looks like we’re going to have to strategize our appeals.

He may have not stood out a lot, but he managed to avoid being startled twice. I call this a really good start to the Hyper Rank.

Second round went great! We actually stole attention away from Yena AND got the crowd going!

Started off strong in this round, but got startled twice before it ended. That’s okay, it looks like we’re still in the lead.

After this round, I’m pretty positive we’ve got this in the bag. Meadow stayed nice and calm in his little tunnel and avoided being startled while also getting the crowd going. Things are looking good here!

Oh yeah. We’ve got this. Tried to finish strong, but Meadow was startled. It’s all good, though, ‘cuz we’re about to get that ribbon!

Woo hoo!!

Meadow was entered into Master Rank next, but lost. Then Ninja tried her hand at the Hyper Rank Cuteness Contest and lost, so Saphire decided to take a break from the contests.

She asks Twix to fly her around Hoenn to search for unseen Pokemon and to grind everyone a little. Eventually, Saphire runs into Gabby and Ty.

As per usual, they get their butts kicked and ask for a comment on the battle.

Today, Saphire’s word is CARDS.

We check up on our Daycare Pokemon to see how they’ve grown. Jace is currently at level 48, I believe.

As for Kyle, he’d be… level 43, maybe? Didn’t we just immediately put him in here after he hatched from that egg?

During our little excursion, we come across a Bellossom hanging out near our Secret Base. We catch the little guy and give him a shitty name…

AHNV. Poor thing. Not only do I look at a Bellossom and automatically assume it’s a girl, but now he has a name that immediately makes me think of ‘Annie’… we can’t have that! Help me out before he runs away due to some kind of identity crisis I might give him!

To get to Ever Grande, someone needs to learn WATERFALL. I ask Ninja to forget Thunderbolt and she agrees reluctantly, as it was kind of nice to have a little diversity in her attacks.

At Ever Grande, Saphire charges right on into Victory Road. The only reason I wanted to get here was to grind with higher-leveled wilds, so don’t fret, we’re not going to the Elite Four right now.

Oh hell, I’d forgotten about you.

Oh my gosh, you are such a dweeb.

He throws out a Jolteon first. He was the only Pokemon Wally had that gave us any trouble, and it was mainly because Twix was up against him with mainly water-type moves. Wally used a Full Restore just to piss me off, but we finally got Jolteon out of the way. The rest of his Pokemon were a cakewalk.

I let Tiger take Wally down so he could level up. Everyone went out with no more than two hits.

No. Just no. We’re not fighting anymore, Wally. You suck as a trainer and you irritate me. Seriously.

Victory Road is, so far, a bit of a disappointment when it comes to wilds. I’ve been fighting Mewtwos, Wurmples, and Dunsparce. When a wild Vaporeon showed up, I caught him immediately.

I… I don’t… what does I..F mean? How can we get a name out of that?

Now seems as good a time as any to play around with our newbies.

JEKPO failed his evaluation with a shitty moveset. Nothing impressed me about him. He was so boring that I don’t even have anything to say.

AHNV looks more promising.

By golly, he’s pretty damn good! His moveset worked out very well against wilds who were even higher-leveled than AHNV. He withstood every attack thrown his way and chopped his way to victory. I was kind of surprised, because his stats look very low to me, but that could just be because Saphire’s current team is so highly-leveled that anything below 100 seems small right now.

Time for our Master Ball Accident to show us what she’s made of.

I replaced Skill Swap with WATERFALL to give her all offensive attacks. Unfortunately, she was pretty bad at making dents in the HP of the wilds she faced, even lower-leveled ones. Don’t get me wrong, I would really like to train her and whatnot, it would just entail a lot of TM purchasing and patience.

Last up to bat is little I..F.

I gave him Water Pulse instead of Icicle Spear so he had at least one move of his actual type. I am really impressed with this dude! He’s great at holding his own and standing his ground and he has a nice moveset as of right now. I actually wouldn’t be against placing him in our final team, though I’m not sure who we would take out… luckily, I don’t have to make that decision. That is up to you, my friends.

Oh my goodness, you guys, it’s time to pick Saphire’s final team! You can pick any 6 Pokemon you want out of all of these guys and the top 6 WILL be her final squad. If you pick someone who is underleveled, don’t worry, Saphire will train them until they are at level 60. The final team won’t fight the Elite Four until they are all that level.

As for names, today you have

I…F = Vaporeon

HTBCD = Suicune

AHNV = Bellossom

JEKPO = Magneton

Also, I just now realized Miltank was never named. So, if you want to give her a name, it’s currently BOVOJ.

So here it is, the most important poll of all! It had to be split into two parts because StrawPoll only lets you give 30 options, so if you don’t see the Pokemon you want to vote for on the first poll, click the second one to vote for them!

Click link below to pick Saphire’s FINAL team of 6 —–vvvvv—–

First poll for Saphire’s last team

Second poll for Saphire’s last team

Click link above to pick Saphire’s FINAL team of 6 —–^^^^^—–