As Iono confidently resud her journey, chat buzzed with heated discussion.
[Looks like the strear should breeze through the first gym!]
[Classic Iono, progressing faster than even Cynthia. Our girl is really stepping up!]
[Hey now, Cynthia just had work obligations. If she were playing right now, she wouldn't be any slower than Iono!]
[Exactly! Just wait until Cynthia gets back and check her stream. She's the Champion—no way a Gym Leader beats her at a ga with actual battle chanics!]
Deep in Petalburg Woods, the character triggered a story event: a Devon Corporation employee was being robbed by Team Aqua mbers who had stolen his package. Naturally, Iono's character stepped in to help, battling the Team Aqua grunt, successfully retrieving the package, and earning an Ultra Ball as a reward.
After helping the Devon employee, instead of imdiately leaving Petalburg Woods, Iono stayed to level up her Joltik and Mareep. Only after both Pokémon reached the current level cap of 15 did she leave the forest and enter the first gym's city—Rustboro City.
This was a thoroughly modern tropolis, with towering buildings and busy streets that made for quite a sight. The ga's visuals beautifully captured the city's character, drawing amazed reactions from viewers.
Iono headed to the Pokémon Center to quickly heal her team, then followed the map to find Rustboro Gym's entrance. Her face showed clear anticipation.
As a Gym Leader herself in the real world, she was only used to others challenging her. Though this was just a ga, it was still her first ti challenging soone else's gym—a novel experience.
"I'm ready! Ti for an intense gym battle!"
She took a deep breath, eyes full of excitent. Considering how tough even the Team Rocket NPCs were in this ga, this Gym Leader would surely be no ordinary opponent. The upcoming battle would probably be challenging.
But that was exactly what excited her!
With that thought, Iono had her character enter the gym. The first thing she saw was a signboard:
[Rustboro Gym]
The sign displayed a large brown rock icon.
So this was a Rock-type gym??
Could she really be this unlucky? She should never have jinxed herself earlier!
Iono's eyes went wide.
Chat went wild.
[HAHAHA it really is a Rock gym!]
[Love that quote from the strear: "With so many type possibilities, surely the first gym won't be Rock or Ground, right?"]
[LOL I feel like this ga was designed this way on purpose. With this ga's style, maybe choosing different starter types changes the gym's type too.]
Reading chat, Iono took a deep breath and tried to pump herself up: "Even if it's Rock-type, there's nothing to fear! At least it's not Ground-type! It's still early ga—Rock Pokémon shouldn't know many Ground-type moves. Plus, I've got two excellent Electric Pokémon at the level cap. I believe they won't lose!"
With that, she had her character head deeper into the gym. A path stretched ahead across rocky terrain, leading to a raised platform. NPCs stood on both sides, waiting.
The mont Iono approached, an exclamation point appeared over an NPC's head.
[You want to challenge Rustboro Gym? Let see if you're worthy!]
Battle activated instantly.
Three minutes later, Iono had cleared all the gym's NPCs and reached the platform. What gave her a headache was that, despite being a Rock gym, these trainers used two Ground-types—a Sandshrew and a Diglett.
Fortunately, as preliminary gym trainers, their levels weren't particularly high—several levels behind her team. After a few close battles, she took them down.
But this raised a new concern—if even the gym's regular trainers were this tough, wouldn't the Rock-type Gym Leader's team be packed with Ground-types?
This wasn't impossible—she'd heard that a certain Dragon-type Elite Four mber from Kanto actually had more Flying-types than anything else on his team.
However, when she started the battle with Gym Leader "Roxanne"—a girl with twin-tails wearing a sharp business suit—Roxanne's opening words made her breathe a sigh of relief.
[The solid, powerful hearts of Rock-type Pokémon—let show you now!]
After saying sothing like that, it would be pretty rude to pull out Ground-types, right?
The next mont, Roxanne threw her Poké Ball, and white light flashed. A strange purple Pokémon with what looked like blooming lilies on its head appeared before Iono.
Looking at it, she paused. As an Electric-type Gym Leader from the Paldea region, she knew quite a lot about Pokémon—she could recognize most of them. But this was genuinely her first ti seeing this one.
She instinctively looked at the na display and read it aloud: "Cradily? Looks like it should be a Grass-type Pokémon."
"If so, you're up, Joltik!"
She decisively switched Pokémon, sending out Joltik. According to the ga's rules, the first switch during a gym battle wouldn't consu a turn—faithfully recreating the real-world gym challenge rule where the Leader sends out first, then the challenger chooses their response.
Seeing this bizarre Pokémon, chat started buzzing again.
[Huh? What Pokémon is this? Never heard of it before.]
[Did the developer create an original one?]
[Who cares? If it's Rock Grass, it shouldn't be too strong, and the strear just trained Joltik. Bug beats Grass—perfect timing!]
Iono had Joltik use the Bug-type move "Bug Bite." After a flash of dark green light, "Super effective!" appeared.
But contrary to her expectations, Cradily's HP bar only dropped a small amount.
Iono's eyes widened again. That tanky??
Imdiately after, brilliant, srizing light flew from Cradily's head, striking Joltik.
[Cradily used Confuse Ray!]
[Joltik beca confused!]
Even worse, a ring of deep blue light points appeared around Cradily before rging into its body.
[Due to holding Leftovers, Cradily's HP was restored!]
Its barely-touched HP bar instantly climbed back up.
Iono: ???
Being tanky was one thing, but it had passive healing too??
What happened next was predictable. After Joltik beca confused, it was demolished by Cradily.
After all, Cradily had extrely high defenses, perfect EVs and IVs, and Leftovers—neither Joltik's Bug Bite nor Spark could break through. It healed more than it took damage.
Not to ntion, Joltik's confusion occasionally made it hit itself, adding insult to injury.
In this situation, after Cradily finished off Joltik while maintaining full health, Mareep stood no chance either, quickly falling in defeat.
After this battle, chat went wild.
[Haters speak up! A clean sweep! Oh, wait, sorry—the strear got swept. My mistake.]
[Who said the gym leaders in this ga would be easy? That was pure bad luck hahaha]
[First ti I've seen a ga NPC sweep a player's team with one Pokémon. Sure, the strear only has two, but this would be impossible on the Battle Road. This ga is seriously hard!]
[GG This gym leader is broken! This thing is tanky as hell, plus has control AND healing—who could possibly beat it?]
When Iono lost to Team Rocket's three NPCs earlier, it was at least a 1v2, so losing made sense. But now her two Pokémon had been swept by a single gym leader's Pokémon.
While everyone marveled at the ga's difficulty, Iono steadied herself and walked her character from the Pokémon Center to the gym entrance.
"As you can all see, viewers, this Gym Leader Roxanne is quite sothing. But no worries—I've already thought of a strategy. We're going back to our Thunder Wave tactics from before!
"Since this Cradily isn't Ground or Electric-type, it can't be immune to paralysis. And judging by its bulk, it should be slow, so both Joltik and Mareep should outspeed it.
"So we just need to use Thunder Wave first, like we did against Koffing and Ekans, then pray for paralysis to trigger."
Iono organized her thoughts and explained to chat. However, it seed like the sa old strategy, as the saying goes: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Facing this ga's extre difficulty, she had to use every available resource.
The "Leftovers" item also reminded her that both her Pokémon could hold items, too. Unfortunately, she didn't have anything like that, but she had picked up so Oran Berries on the roadside.
According to the berry's description, when equipped on a Pokémon, it would automatically activate when HP dropped to a certain point, restoring so health. Though the recovery was minimal, it was better than nothing.
After equipping both Pokémon with Oran Berries, Iono re-entered the gym to challenge Roxanne again.
This ti, her plan worked perfectly—Joltik's Thunder Wave successfully paralyzed Cradily, preventing it from using Confuse Ray. Several turns passed with Cradily barely able to act. Even when it got off one "Confuse Ray" during consecutive paralysis triggers, it missed.
With Joltik's Spark hitting Cradily, its HP finally dropped below half, turning yellow.
"Great! Keep it up just like this!"
Iono's excited voice echoed through the stream. Chat started celebrating.
[Nice one, strear!]
[Holy crap, four paralysis procs in a row! Iono's luck is insane!]
[Did she turn on cheats?]
[Obviously, she turned sothing on—her computer monitor.]
[This looks promising! At least we can take down this Pokémon and see the gym leader's next one, right?]
Iono glanced at chat and confidently pressed the keys, selecting Spark again. Her battle with this Pokémon had shown it probably didn't have any moves that could seriously threaten Joltik—otherwise, it wouldn't keep alternating between Confuse Ray and Giga Drain.
Based on its attack pattern, the next move should be Giga Drain. Even if it hit, due to Joltik's resistance to Grass-type moves, it would only deal minimal damage, and Cradily wouldn't recover much HP.
If she could keep grinding with a few more paralysis triggers, Joltik should maintain about two-thirds of its HP going into the next Pokémon battle.
As she calculated, Spark hit Cradily again, bringing its yellow HP down another notch.
Next, paralysis effects flickered across Cradily's body, but it didn't twitch. Iono knew this ant paralysis didn't trigger.
But she didn't care—just as she had analyzed, Giga Drain couldn't turn the battle around.
But then, sothing completely unexpected happened.
Cradily suddenly raised its head, and a beam of white light descended, enveloping its body.
"What… move is this?"
Iono froze, a bad feeling creeping over her.
The ga's notification appeared:
[Cradily used Synthesis! HP was restored!]
In the glow, Cradily's HP bar instantly climbed, returning to two-thirds full.
Another notification:
[Cradily's held "Leftovers" restored a little HP.]
Blue light points danced as its health recovered again.
Looking at Cradily's nearly full HP bar, then at Joltik, whose move PP was almost depleted, Iono sat frozen at her screen.
"????"
She suddenly felt like logging off.
User Comments
0 comments from readers