Xisode 7: I don't know if I'm going to make it.

Here's a quick recap of my current team.

Colby

Mega Smithers

Grumble

Betty

Scooter

Gullbee

 Last time, after earning his 7th badge, Habberdash was urgently summoned back to Lumoise city, the giant one with the 5th gym, in order to thwart the evil schemes of Lysandre and his Team Flare minions. Holy run-on sentence batman. The mysterious plan I have been inadvertently thwarting this whole time has been to use an ancient legendary pokemon that was turned into a tree and buried underground to power an ancient death star-like laser called "THE ULTIMATE WEAPON" he found to wipe out huge chunks of the earth's population so that the survivors can create a beautiful utopia because they don't need to compete for resources any more. Apparently this is the game's commentary on overpopulation.....
Habberdash arrives at the sprawling metropolis and uses his keenly honed detective skills to deduce that Lysandre's secret hideout is hidden under the "Lysandre Cafe." Upon finding the hidden entrance, I confirm that it has all the staples of a gang hideout: teleporters, elevators, keys, and spinny floor panel things. We immediately set off through the waves of grunts in search of our nemesis.
 Things go smoothly for a while, but eventually even grunts begin to wear down the team. We come up against a grunt with a single toxicroak. Betty is leading the charge but it seems like a prime time for gullbee to gain some catch up experience. Plus, Betty is 4x weak to fighting. For the record, I am still playing without exp share.I expect gullbee to fly the toad to death without too much trouble, but the knave predicts my moves perfectly somehow (hint, it was really really bad luck). By using sucker punch  and nasty plot perfectly in time with my fly so he doesnt waste any moves. Fly takes him down to very low health but he'll still get one more attack. I'm a little perplexed by the nasty plot, as I assumed he was a physical attacker, but I press on anyway, expecting to endure the next attack and finish him off. Instead, toxicroak surprises me with venoshock, boosted by nasty plot and Gullbee is slain. Frig frig frig. This puts me in a awkward spot. Smithers and scooter I realized are at very low health and can't take a boosted hit like that while grumble and colby are weak to poison. Rather than risk my core, I send out Betty. The three moves I know it has wont hurt her, and hopefully he doesn't know any fighting moves. If he did, at least theyd most likely be physical and not boosted by nasty plot. What the toxicroak DID  know was mudshot. 2x super effective+2x boosted special attack=1 dead betty. Just like that, my team is down two members.
Retreating temporarily to lick our wounds, we return to the hideout with a vengeance, now joined by Westley the Sneasel,  freshly ground up to near competitive levels. We cruise through the rest without incident to arrive only a moment to late to stop THE ULTIMATE WEAPON from being activated. Fortunately, there is still time to save Alderaan. The weapon is in yet another town, buried under pokemon Stonehenge, so I have to fly there and rescue the legendary pokemon Xerneas, who in ancient times turned into a tree and is now being used to fuel the cannon. yup. Cue another basement full of grunts and admins to wade through. When I finally reach the base of the weapon, Xerneas awakens and I catch him. He is immediately added to my party and while technically he is my first encounter here I decide not to use him after this climactic final battle.

Xerneas (I forgot to name him)

Next follows the final showdown with Lysandre. He uses a team of Mienshao, Honchcrow, Pyroar (fire type lion), and gyarados. Xerneas rolls through the first three due to legendary status, but needs a break before he sends out gyarados. Then the game totally blows my mind by having Lysandre Mega evolve his Gyarados, something I was lead to believe only I could do. Fortunately, It was nothing colby couldnt solve with leech seed and a good deal of tanking.

Seriously the scariest thing ever though.

 So when its all said and done, Lysandre is defeated, the legendary Xerneas freed, the world saved, and we all learned the valuable lesson that genocide is wrong no matter how good your motives are. Now back to the important stuff. After some more grinding, Westley is up to roughly the same level as the rest of the team, and for the first time in a long time, I have 5 pokemon at the same approximate level. Now I just to find that last team member and train him up and I'll be back in top shape. Not even all these deaths can keep me down. My first encounter is Sid the torkoal, who after just enough training to be disappointing is quickly and unceremoniously dispatched by a stunfisk's thunder. How embarrassing. Later on the same route, the feisty but unevolved Westley is slain by a dedenne's thunder. I really hate that move. There werent any extenuating circumstances, I just wasnt expecting the rat to hit so hard.

Dedenne, the raichu wannabe pokemon.

At this point, this route has yielded a net loss of team members, so I'm excited to see a cave attached to it. I eye my first encouter dubiously. Lorraine the Lairon is slow and has 4x weaknesses to fighting and ground type attacks, both of which I've found in abundance thus far. Nevertheless, she is added to the team and quickly impresses me with her grinding ability. In only two levels she evolves into Aggron and has an impressive array of moves to overcome most obstacles. 

Lorraine

 The cave proves to be less fortuitous when I enter into a double battle against a nidoking and nidoqueen. Crappily, my first two pokemon are Lorraine and Scooter, both of whom are weak to ground. With Smithers and Grumble not having magically lost their poison weakness, my only safe substitution is Smithers. I have to make a judgement call. Lorraine gets swapped out due to her 4x weakness and lower level. Scooter will just have to cope until Smithers can clean up next turn. The nidoking's attack is a predictable earth power that unpredictably targets scooter, rather than the space that used to be occupied by Lorraine. It takes Scooter down to just barely in the yellow. I hold my breath as I hope the nidoqueen's attack won't do the same.....

....but it is and it does. Scooter goes  down hard. I cradle his bloodied head in my hands, barely aware of the muted scene around me as Smithers power washes the Nidos' carapaces to dust. I never thought it would come to this. He was amongst the best of us. So strong, so fearless. Always willing to switch into an attack so someone else could get a break despite the fact that he was one of the least tanky members of my team. It was only two routes ago that I found him as a tiny little bug/poison scorpion, but he'd quickly grown into a central part on my team and it seemed as though he'd been there much longer then that. I thought for sure he could avoid this curse I had. This was the first death in a while that really hurt, if you can't tell. Scooter valiantly sacrificed himself to protect the weaker member of our team. With selflessness not expected from a dark/poison type, he gave Lorraine the chance to carry on. It was almost as if he was saying, "my time is over, now its your turn." Lorraine has some big shoes to fill. 

Shortly after this, Grumble was taken out by ANOTHER DAMN TOXICROAK after taking it down to about 5 health. I'm not going to cheapen Scooter's eulogy by writing another one right after it, but trust me that this loss hurt too. Grumble had been on my team longer than anyone other than Colby and Smithers. I never planned on training him when I caught him but He got me through 4 badges handily. I'd always written off Granbull as something I had no interest in keeping on my team, but I was very happy to be proven wrong by him. The previous losses had mostly been new catches and were in the process of being trained. Now for the first time I had lost some of my core team. Fully evolved and trained. With all the deaths surrounding me, my core had survived it all. It made me feel confident that no matter how bad things got, we'd still pull through. For the first time, with the final gym in sight, I feel vulnerable. I don't know that we're going to make it through, but we're not quitting yet.

At this point, I'm in worse shape then when I started this post, despite all the new captures. Fortunately, there are several more areas before the next gym. I catch Goomba the Sligoo (who looks dumb but is freaking awesome for a nuzlocke because he's basically gen 6 dragonair), Trevan the Trevanent (Trevan IRL, you're famous! and a ghost tree!), and Eddie the Noctowl. 

Goomba

Trevan

Eddie

Goomba is quickly added to the team, EV trained, affectionated, and evolved into Goodra. Boo yah. The final gym is ice, so he wont see much action, but I bring Garfunkle the klefki and Smithers the Sawk out of retirement for it to flesh out my team. 

The gym goes smoothly enough. We sweep through the trainers with ease and take stock before challenging the leader. My team is as follows.

Colby, Chestnaught, level 61

Smithers, Blastoise, level 60

Garfunkle, Klefki, level 48

Grover, Sawk, level 51

Lorraine, Aggron, level 60

Goomba, Goodra, level 61

Anyway, we kicked butt. Colby and Goomba didnt see any action, but thats probably for the best. The leader had an Avalugg who used curse 3 or 4 times that scared the hell out of me, but smithers put him down before he had a chance to do any damage at all. This did loads for my confidence. I still have some level discrepancies in my team, but theres still time to fix this.Thats all for now. Join us next time as we take on the victory road!

Badges: 8
Deaths: 16
Cheats: 3 (I got nearly swept by a non official battle on one of the routes. I discounted the battle because it was a "inverse type advantage" battle where attacks that were super effective were not very effective and visa versa. In addition, the pokemon I was fighting were 10 levels higher that everything else on the route and I had the option of refusing the battle, ergo not an official battle).