5. Spooky junk

Remy looks delicious

By saving me from a near assured wipe, Brisbane has cemented himself a place on my team, but due to Gooby’s untimely demise, I’m still short a pokemon. Remy the Grimer gets drafted from the box to fill the Gumshoos-sized hole on my bench. Fortunately he’s amorphous so he can fill holes of any shape. Plus, his alolan form poison-dark typing will be invaluable in the next trial which I find out will be ghost type (Poison/dark is only weak to ground, how awesome is that?). Datrix also evolves into Decidueye who I will not be using in the trial out of fear for his life, but how cool is he??? He has a hoodie and his wing turns into a bow and arrow when he attacks and he’s Ghost/grass so no more 4x weakness to ice! My little starter is all grown up.

And we just got a fancy Decidium Z crystal as well

  The ghost trial takes place in an abandoned shopping mall. I have to walk around it in the dark and use my camera to see invisible ghosts who are committing various poltergeisty shenanigans. If you’ve ever heard of the game Fatal Frame it's a lot like that but with less gruesome death. This is probably my favorite trial so far simply because I like the concept so much. I photograph and fight a gastly, haunter, and gengar in succession (all of whom Brisbane takes Handily) and make my way to a closet in the back. The room is claustrophobic and covered in creepy children’s drawings but for a few seconds I can’t find anything through my viewfinder. I turn around slowly and OH GOD IT'S RIGHT BEHIND ME.

*Screeching stringed instruments*

The totem poke is Mimikyu. I’ve heard about him but have not seen one yet. It’s schtick is that no one loves it because it's an unknowable eldritch horror so it pretends to be a pikachu. From a game standpoint this means the first attack against it has no effect. Ghosts are especially worrisome in a nuzlocke due to mean look/curse/destiny bond shenanigans, but I have a plan that while not very sporting, should keep my team pretty safe. Sloan the Salazzle leads off and uses toxic. Then uses toxic again because Mimikyu was annoyingly carrying a lum berry. Then I switch to Brisbane and… wait for it to die from poison. Thats it, thats the whole strat. Nothing interesting happened the whole battle but it worked. GG EZ.

I catch TRADE FODDER the haunter on the way out of the building, so named because I met a dude in a pokecenter who was offering a graveler for one. Pretty soon I have a fancy new electric-rock Golem named Veler (I take back what I said about NPC’s using uninspired names). He’ll be riding my bench for now, but I’ll definitely look him up if I need a rail gun on my team in the future.

Battle cruiser operational! 

Afterwards, I discover that a friend of the ghost captain has had her yungoos stolen by the incompetently nefarious team skull. While up until recently their involvement in the story would have made me excited for their hoodlum antics, the death of Gooby at the hands of their leader has made me a mite more resentful. I set off on my quest to rescue the abducted rodent and receive a Sharpedo jet ski (awesome) to help me get to the town Team skull has permanently taken over. This ironically makes them the most competent team of villains in any pokemon game in some way. They are the only ones to take a town and keep it for more than 5 minutes. I arrive at the Skull stronghold and wade through a swarm of grunts until I reach their leader Guzma. Who for some reason is the one who ended up with the stolen Yungoos? We do battle for the second time, but this time I am ready. Brisbane is now fully trained up and is able to take down the golisopod and ariados himself. I hope he starts showing up in that damn bug’s nightmares.

Before leaving the island I encounter the 3rd island’s kahuna who uses dark type. I didn't take any notes on this other than Remy, Brisbane, and Casper all had resistance and that it was easy so it must have been pretty boring.

Main Plot spoilers to follow. If you haven’t made it to the 4th island yet skip the rest of this post for now.

Upon returning triumphant with the yungoos, I find out that team skull returned as soon as I left to rescue the nameless, unimportant yungoos I’d never met before and kidnapped Neby, the mysterious purple fluffball pokemon one of my companions has been carrying around all game that can apparently destroy the world. Priorities, man. Rather than take it to the town I just finished ransacking, however, we discover that they’ve actually taken Neby to the Aether Paradise!! What?! But they hate each other?? One stands for preserving pokemon and the other for wanton destruction and petty theft! Well, it turns out Guzma and the president of Aether whatever were in cahoots the whole time. What a douche. Their plan is to use Neby’s mysterious power to open wormholes for Ultra Beasts like the one we saw in episode 4 to come through. Dun Dun Dunnnn.

The various Aether employees, who were so welcoming on my first visit, have turned vicious and I fight my way through them as I search through secret underground labs for the lost power puff. What seemed like a legit conservationist organization has had dastardly experiments going on just below the surface the whole time! While pillaging the place, I find a TM for Toxic, which I have been waiting for because it will help Brisbane become what he was always meant to be: A royal pain in the ass. Toxic+fly 4 EVA.

Can't you just tell
he's the worst?

The first real challenging battle I have in the place is with one of the Aether leaders, a goofy dude named Faba. Its a double battle with my rival Hau against him and a grunt. I send out Murphey with Hau’s Raichu. We dispatch the grunt’s only pokemon and Faba’s first pokemon, slowbro, easily but not before both of our pokemon are yawned. Faba sends out the water/psychic type Bruxish, and I send out Decidueye due to his double type advantage and Murphey being asleep. Raichu is still asleep and doesn't get to attack, but Decidueye takes the Bruxish down to about 1/10th health with one razor leaf. My brain is already thinking about who to switch to next to optimize my team’s leveling but I’m dimly aware of my rival’s Raichu getting knocked out in one hit by the near dead Bruxish. I’ve already entered in my next attack command before the ramifications of this dawn on me. I didn't notice what attack was used, but Raichu is electric/psychic in Alola. If that fish had an attack that could one shot him, it was probably dark. Decidueye is ghost type. But that means… oh God no…

Nintendo didn't like that Pikachu's
evolution wasn't as cute.

Sure enough, the Bruxish outspeeds Decidueye and hits it with crunch. Decidueye has great attack and special attack, but its speed, HP and defenses have never been spectacular. I’ve always took special care to keep him out of situations like this in the past but this time my own inattentiveness has doomed him. My heart falls alongside his health as I pray I will be saved by affection and his HP will freeze at 1, but it was not meant to be. Decidueye, my starter, the foundation of this team. Was slain. For a moment I feel like giving up the nuzlocke, or pretending it didn’t happen. No one would have to know other than me and I could keep fighting the good fight with my favorite pokemon in this gen. But he wouldn’t have wanted me to. Any glory I may have attained with him still on my team would be a sham and a disrespect to his memory. I must soldier on. The Aether corp has taken my starter from me, but so help me Arceus I will burn their entire organization to the ground. Except not literally in this battle, because Faba uses water types and Sloan would get wrecked too if I tried it.

RIP Decidueye

The rest of Fubu's or whatever the hell his name is pokemon are eliminated with extreme prejudice, but before I can stop the president, I need to go through Guzma a third time. At this point, these battles feel much more routine. I can almost see the look of “oh no, not again” in Golisopod’s eyes when Brisbane comes out. What started as a near challange-ending encounter has turned into an entertaining little vacation for my metal bird friend. I enter into the president’s secret lair and engage

When not battling, Bruxish enjoys
sucking the blood from infants with
its stupid, ugly mouth and working
on its Hitler/Judas crossover fanfic

her in a last ditch attempt to prevent her from unleashing alien pokemon into the world.

I send out Sloan to fight the president’s clefable and use nasty plot, with the intention of sweeping with her, which would be easy if the rest of her team is fairy type as well. It works for clefable but unfortunately her team theme isn't “fairy type” but rather “pretty.” the subsequent Milotic forces me to switch out for Remy. Remy mostly ignores the milotic’s attacks and uses minimize 3 times for max evasion. I draw great satisfaction from the thought of Remy hurling his putrid mass onto the faces of this immaculate lady’s cutsy pokemon. With the help of a couple pots Remy is able to sweep through milotic, Bewear, Mismagius and liligant without much trouble. Of course we’re too late to stop her evil plan but who cares. Decidueye is dead and I’m sure I’ll have opportunity enough to thwart her in the future. We set off for the 4th and final island. Just once I’d like to wrap up one of these posts on a positive note.

Deaths:9