6. And the wheels start to fall off

With the main baddies trapped in the ultra realm for time being I set off to conquer my last island. Immediately I notice a jump in difficulty when fighting the trainers and wild pokes on the island. I went from fighting hordes of grunts with dudes in the mid to high 30’s to wild pokemon in the low 40s and trainers in the mid 40’s very abruptly. I’ll have to keep my guard up. My first catch is a Granbull who I’m not too interested in training because Casper is my resident fairy, but I quickly find a trainer who wants to trade her Steenee for one. Enter Stena the Steenee, who in one level evolves into Stena the Tsareenna. She came complete with her own grass z crystal and a cool grass move called trop kick that lowers opponents attack. Something felt right about Stena. I had just lost a physical attacker grass type who was very dear to me and I knew she’d do her best to live up to Decidueye’s legacy.

Why are the so many
sexy pokemon in the gen?

The plot of this island is to make it to an ancient ruin so we can summon the game’s legendary to help us travel to the ultra realm and rescue the people there. On the way we fight the island’s ground type kahuna who used gastrodon, flygon, alolan dugtrio and a mudsdale. It was my first time facing a mudsdale, I had always sort of taken how scary Murphey was for granted until I had to face another. The fight itself was pretty straightforward but It took a lot of healing and waiting for the opposing mudsdale to die of poison. That thing was a brick and it hit HARD.

I continue my trek through the island’s winding caves and valleys fighting veteran after ace trainer after veteran. The battles are tough and I find myself using way more healing than I’m used to but my team is performing admirably. Suddenly I see the end of the trail in sight. I know its the end because there are three veteran trainers right in a row before the entrance to a big cave. Veterans are a pain in the butt to fight because in addition to having high-leveled, evolved pokemon they usually employ some semblance of strategy.

The last veteran battle got interesting. His golem sets up stealth rocks and promptly uses explosion before Murphey can finish him off. This causes a brief panic but the attack misses (HA!). The veteran follows up with Cloyster who sets up spikes before getting flattened. I’m not too worried because Murphey has this under control and I’m not planning on switching him out. The Vet’s last mon is a Granbull who only uses roar to keep my dudes switching out and taking stealth rock damage. This is not a problem until Sloan gets forced out. She was sitting at about ⅓ health safely on my bench until the super effective stealth rocks drops her into the single digits… and then the spikes finishes her off. What a steaming pile of Mudsdale feces. The stupidity of the whole encounter is almost enough to keep me from weeping for my best special sweeper.

The totem poke I fight immediately after this is a Kommo-o. These things are so badass but can do pretty much nothing to hurt Brisbane and Casper, who make short work of it.

Kommo-kommo-kommo-kommon get
wrecked by my moonblast

I complete the ritual to summon the legendary Solgaleo. It creates a portal we use to travel to the ultra realm and I have to face off once again with the president of Aether corp. At this point she is completely bonkers and wants to stay in the upside-down with her precious squids forever. I’m inclined to let her, but the plot demands I take her in. She uses the same team as the last battle, but this time they’re all boosted like the totem pokes have been. To make matters more annoying, all of her team members have some sort of healing move. I put in Remy vs. her Clefable and immediately max out evasion and defense. Time to sweep (or more accurately, be an unkillable brick and wear out everything they throw at me). Unfortunately, her Clefable has the magic guard ability, meaning poison does no damage, and moonlight, meaning it can heal almost all the damage I put on it. It probably would have been a lot faster to send out something that does more damage than Remy, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to give up all these stat boosts. One eternity later, the Clefable lies dead, and the cycle continues with Milotic/recover. Fortunately, Milotic is susceptible to poison, so once a lucky poison jab connects it goes much quicker. Wash, rinse, repeat with Bewear and its hella annoying pain split. Remy is able to one shot her last two, Mismagius and Lilligant thanks to type advantage, and the battle is over.

We return to the real world, bad dudes in tow, and I’m told that Solgaleo wants to come with us. I have to battle him for it though. He must have really wanted to come with, because I threw one quickball and the battle was over. yayy.

You know, the guy from the cover of the game

At this point, having defeated all totem challenges and Kahunas, I am invited to challenge the newly constructed pokemon league. Veler the Russian railgun comes out of the box to fill in for Sloan and we set to work getting him caught up with the rest of the team. I slog to the top of a snowy mountain and am set upon by my sort of rival Gladion. I haven’t talked about him yet because he doesn’t show up much, but he’s the one who destroyed Candycorn’s dreams of becoming a fighter pilot way back in episode 2. Veler takes out his Crobat easily, but he follows up with a Lucario he’s never had before and I’m forced to switch out. Sloan could have dispatched it easily but I have limited options against it now. In short order my team is all in the yellow and I’ve done little more than put a glorified dent in this damn thing. My last healed up team member is Casper, who I've been loath to send out due to her weakness to steel, but at this point I have no choice. She does a sizable chunk of damage, but is hit in return hit with a crit that drops her down to 1 hp. Remember how I mentioned this fight was on top of a snowy mountain? Well it just so happens that hail has been on this entire battle. My sigh of relief gets caught in my throat as a chunk of sky ice wallops Casper in the face after she fought so hard to cling to life. After Decidueye died last episode, Casper had become the most senior member of my team. It was weird playing a pokemon game without a starter forming a foundation for the rest of the team, but this goofy bowtie covered cat had done a great job filling in. R.I.P. Casper.

Brisbane is able to slowly whittle the Lucario down to zero and I’m face with another previously unseen pokemon, Sylvally. This one is annoying because its a sort of legendary whose type changes based off the item it holds, so it could be anything. Once I discover that it’s a fire type through trial and error, Murphey makes short work of it.

Sylvally. Obviously a fire type, right?

I opt to leave the Murphster in against Gladion’s final pokemon, Weavile, despite the type disadvantage because of the defense boost he received while fighting the Sylvally. Weavile’s first attack takes about ⅖ of Murphey’s health off, so I decide to leave him in and go for a 4x effective double kick to try and end it. Naturally, Weavile’s 2nd ice shard crits, bypassing Murphey’s boosted defense, and drops him down to 1 hp. This all-too-familiar situation means that if Murphey can’t finish the battle this round then hail will become the deadliest enemy in the game thus far. I go from never-lucky to occasionally-lucky though and the double kicks connect, ending the battle before the murderous water chunks can annihilate my precious horse. I’m now down two members of my team in the course of mere hours.

I trudge on up the mountain and finally reach the pokemon center just before the entrance to the elite 4. I take a little bit of time to recenter my team. I bring out Sherpa and MrsBombastic, the Ribombee to fill the numerous holes in my bench, but they serve as bench warmers for now until I can get Veler up to fighting form. Commence training montage. I catch Sherpa the Snowrunt in my last area before the E4 and get down to some mindless grinding. I’m rudely awakened when Veler is brought low (read: dead) by  a crit from a wild absol. I hadn’t really even gotten to know Veler yet, but the loss of a growing friendship stung, and the 10+ levels of experience I’d sunk into him for no payoff certainly hurt.

I take some time off of grinding to keep from losing my mind and do some exploring of the mountain top. My head connects forcefully with my desk when I take a step too far and am set upon by my OTHER rival, Hau. How silly of me to think there would only be one rival battle immediately outside the Pokemon league. I am not prepared for this. I switch to Murphey to battle his Raichu but have to immediately take him back out when Raichu’s psychic takes him well into the yellow. Remy’s dark typing makes him perfect for this and I fall back into my old strat of minimize x3, acid armor x3. Lets do this. Remy takes down Raichu, Komala, and flareon without much trouble. Hau’s last poke is Primaria, his water/fairy starter. Remy’s super effective poison jab drops is down to just a sliver of red health, and it responds with a water z move. I don’t know if z moves cant miss or I’m just really unlucky, but Remy is brought from 100-0 by one of the first moves of the whole fight that hit him. I'm am too emotionally drained to deal with this.

Primarina got tired of being pooped on by Decidueye the
first 6 times we fought and finally got her revenge. 

My team is in shambles now. I had finally made it to the homestretch and in short order I had lost three core members of my team in Sloan, Casper, and Remy, and one late but powerful addition, Veler. There is nothing between me and the Elite 4 now but I am not ready for it. I think that's enough pokemon for right now.

Deaths: 13 :(

RIP Sloan, Casper, Veler and Remy (Dammit, you made me google Salazzle again)