InsaneJournal

Current location:	ON THE FLOOR.
Current mood:	blah
Current music:	Shogo Sakai - Moreover El Mariachi ~ Mother 3
Entry tags:	pokemon, rsescramble

RSE Scramble 04!
Now with the ability to use Flash inside caves (the only place one should ever do such a thing), Anti ventures back into the depths of Dewford Island's single cavern. After going down one floor and becoming enveloped in darkness once more, she releases Spaz from his Poke Ball, and commands him thusly:

"Spaz, use Flash!"

Obediently, the Treecko assumes a ready stance... then pulls a flashlight out of nowhere and hands it to his trainer.

Anti fumbles with the switch briefly before properly turning it on, finally lighting their path through the darkness.

"You ever get the feeling our technological progress is a little lopsided?" Anti asks Spaz off-handedly. The Treecko shrugs.

The path through the cave is fairly straight-forward, aside from the Zubats trying to eat Anti and her Pokemon team alive.

After the third time of getting into a battle in as many steps she figures it's time to pull out the Repel, and viciously sprays it in the non-existent eyes of any stupid bats that get too close.

She ends up on an elevated part of the first floor, now able to reach an opening she couldn't before when she first came in. Eager for some treasure or something else at least vaguely rewarding on her magical cave adventure, she dives through it headfirst... only to find a small, bland room. And a guy with silver hair standing on the middle of it.

The silver-haired man looks down at Anti. "Er, do you need any help?"

"What the Hell is wrong with your hair?" Anti asks while standing up and dusting herself off. "And is there anything more to this stupid cave? Because seriously, I feel like I'm wasting my time in here."

The man raises his eyebrows. "There's not much here, unless you're into collecting rare stones." He indicates to the boulder he was chipping away at prior to Anti's intrusion. "Perhaps there might be some other reason you came here?"

"Why else would I bother coming here except to..." She blinks and squints a little at the man. "Are you Steven?"

"Yes. Why?"

Anti digs furiously inside her backpack and pulls out the Devon President's letter. "Here, I guess was supposed to deliver this to you or something."

"Oh! Well, thank you." Steven takes the letter and deftly rips it open on one side with a fingernail, then takes out and unfolds the letter to read it. "'FW: FW: FW: the funniest thing ever! You just have to see'--" He drops the letter and facepalms. "Not again! I thought I told Dad not to open those!"

Anti nods in grim sympathy. "My mom actually replies to the vitamin spam ones. She thinks they're very moving and poetic."

Steven drops his hand from his face and sighs. "I'm sorry my father put you through all this trouble. I can at least give you something..." He reaches into his pocket and fishes out a Steel Wing TM. "This should do."

Naturally, Anti's brain translates "consolation prize" into "sweet sweet treasure". "Cool thanks bye." She turns to leave.

"Wait!" Steven forestalls her. "Since you visited with my father, he probably bribed you with a PokeNav to make this delivery, correct?"

"Two deliveries," Anti supplies.

"Right. Well," he continues, "why not register me in your PokeNav?"

Anti holds up an index finger and opens her mouth to protest, then stops. This Steven person is probably the first, and maybe only non-idiot she will ever encounter on this adventure. She nods. "Sure, why not."

Friend codes sufficiently exchanged, the two part ways, Steven using his Aron's Dig move to leave the cave, and Anti using an Escape Rope she found lying on the ground to do the same. She returns to Dewford Town and approaches the dock with a terrible sense of dread.

"Ready to head off to Slateport?" Mr. Briney cheerily inquires.

Anti climbs aboard the deathboat. "Do your worst."


Ten screaming seconds of dodging swimmers and sandbars later, Anti and her teammates escape onto a crowded beach front stretching out before Slateport City. Little kids evading parental supervision pick fights with her, and Anti's three fighters stomp their house pets in typical level-cycling style. She owns her way to the beach house, which is quite convenient, because she could really go for something to drink right about now. And a chili cheese dog.

There is no rest for the wicked, Anti discovers, as even the patrons inside the beach house want to throw down. She manages to avoid tossing Poke Balls at their faces long enough to win some sort of unofficial contest.

"Nice fighting there!" the portly beach house owner congratulates her. "Here's your prize, a half-dozen bottles of soda!"

"Pop," says the inner-tube kid in the far corner.

"No, it's definitely soda," corrects the fashionable girl eating a bowl of shaved ice.

"We used to call it all coke in my day!" argues a middle-aged sailor.

Anti holds up one of the small glass bottles. "Shut up, it's Ramune. I can see the frickin' marble."

Without waiting a moment longer, she expertly dislodges the trademark glass bead and takes a good long swig.

"Pokemon enjoy it too, you know," the owner puts in.

"Oh really." Anti pops open another soda and hands it off to her Treecko. "Here Spaz."

Happy that he's getting a treat, Spaz takes the bottle in both paws and takes a sip.

Two minutes later, all of Anti's Pokemon have more or less taken over the beach house with their sugar-high antics in an out-of-control soda rave. Spaz is the life of the party, already surrounded by piles of empty bottles while he upends yet another one. His loaded Pokemon comrades are chanting something that sounds suspiciously to Anti like "CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!"





After Chester belches loud enough to send the other patrons scurrying, the owner kicks Anti and her Pokemon out. She heads into the city proper, gets distracted by the open air market long enough to buy a Skitty Doll, and eventually figures she should get around to delivering that package from Devon to, whatsisname, Stern or something.

As luck would have it, Captain Stern's not where he should be, and is instead where Team Aqua decided to be for the day, in the oceanic museum. Anti rudely shoulders past as many as she can; she can't even enjoy the air conditioning with all these idiots crammed into one building.

A staircase leading up to the next floor finally provides some much-needed artificial atmospheric refreshment, because apparently Aqua's goons don't know how to use stairs. Anti isn't completely alone, however, for standing in front of a glass case housing a model of the St. Anne is none other than Stern himself.

"Okay finally," Anti says as a means of greeting the captain. "Hurry up and take your pack--"

Team Aqua suddenly proves the narrator wrong when two of them come thundering up the stairs like a pack of elephants. Anti doesn't even have time to curse in exasperation before they start making demands.

"Fork over the goods!" says Thuggalicious #1.

"I'll fork YOUR goods," Anti replies, siccing Chester on him.

"God, you suck," Thugsly the Second berates the first Aqua grunt when he loses, then steps up to take his place. "My turn!"

"To get owned." Anti proves this only seconds later. "Hey, any more o' you guys comin' up here? I might get my team to level thirty at this rate."

Another Team Aqua member does come upstairs, but he's no grunt--it's Aqua's leader, Archie.

Anti doubles over laughing. "Haha, your name is Archie! Oh god!"

"Hey shut up!" Archie growls menacingly. "I mean, what the Hell kinda name is Anti, anyways? It sounds like... like Andy. Is it even short for anything? Or are you a flower child?"

She stops laughing long enough to answer. "It's short for Antipathy. Retard."

"Contexty," Stern comments from behind them.

Anti holds up a Poke Ball, and Archie waves his hands in a stalling gesture. "No no no, it's not time for our fight yet. That comes later. Right now I'm just supposed to be surprised at how there's more than two sides to this world-changing environmental conflict."

"Like the side that doesn't give a crap," Anti says.

"Right, right. Well, I'll be seeing you." With that, Archie and his cronies skedaddle.

"Ugh." Anti turns on one heel to the waiting Captain Stern. "So, yeah, here. Package." She shoves it in his arms. "I'm gone."

Stern is left standing by the St. Anne's display case, feebly replying to the empty room, "It's supposed to be 'parcel'..."

Anti heads north out of the city to Route 110. Facing her almost directly after getting out on the road in a weird purple house. Inside she finds a man with a receding hairline who seems to enjoy hiding under tables waiting for children to come and find him.

"Dare you undergo the Trick House Challenge?!" the Trick Master asks Anti in a far too enthusiastic voice.

"Well--"

"So you accept? Very well then! I will be waiting at the back!" And he flies up, drilling through the ceiling with his partially bald head to parts unknown.



This time it's Trick House: Cut Edition! Surprisingly, Anti finds no emobunnies here, just lots of trees for Spaz to climb, then destroy without mercy. She makes her way to the back room, where Trick Master is playing solitaire and crowing with victory.

"Yes! Forty-seven straight wins!" he cheers. "I'm the best! THE BEST!"

"You're crazy," Anti interrupts. "I passed your stupid challenge. When does the place refill with experience-givers?"

"You mean CPU trainers? About once every gym."

"Got it." She leaves without another word.

She continues down the grassy part of Route 110. At the rate Anti's going, she ought to change her name to Apathy.

Anti snorts. "Get bent."

This doesn't change the fact that she hasn't cared about anything lately, and is getting rather bored--until she sees a certain like-aged boy in the middle of the route.

"Hey Anti!" Brendan calls, waving to her and running to meet her.

Crap, he already saw me, she thinks, then points ahead of her dramatically. "Ohmygawd! It's Arceus!"

"Dude really?!" Brendan whips around to look behind him. "Wait, it's not even fourth generation y--"



One swift cranium punch later, Anti has a fancy new Itemfinder to shove to the bottom of her backpack and never see again. She arrives at Mauville in slightly better spirits, and starts barging into everyone's houses as per usual. She finds another HM giver, the self-proclaimed Rock Smash Dude, and gets the hidden machine of the same name.

Anti checks the back of the disk. "Let's see here... oh, well whaddya know." She releases her Treecko from his ball. "Hey Spaz, you know what time it is."

Upon learning another move that lets him break stuff, Spaz claps his paws gleefully. Anti holds up one fist to the air and says, "Okay Spaz! Let's go back and use Rock Smash on Mr. Briney's cottage!"

"Badge," Rock Smash Dude reminds her.

"Oh yeah." Anti leaves the house and finds the gym, but can't enter because there's someone blocking the way. She's about to give the person a mighty boot to the head when she recognizes who it is. "Hey, aren't you that one kid?"

"Yeah, I guess," Wally replies.

Anti glances from Wally to the gym and back again. "So... hold on. I'm the one who's being forced on this dumb Pokemon League challenge, so why're you...?"

Wally beams. "Ralts and I have gotten stronger together, so we're gonna take on the gyms, too!"

Anti shakes her head. "You poor fool."

"You don't think I can do it?" Wally holds out Ralts's Poke Ball.

"Do I really need to answer that?" Anti sends out Toadstool. "Level check, yo."

Wally does so and cringes. "Ooh. Well, I still got one thing goin' for me... Double Team!"

All the DT spam in the world can't save that Ralts from a speedy fainting by Headbutt, though. It's a routine victory for Anti, but when she sees how downtrodden Wally looks afterward, she can't help but feel like she should say something.

"Hey, uh..." She looks at the sidewalk, the gym, a Taillow crapping on someone's bike. "If you had more Pokemon to use, you'd probably suck less."

Wally's eyes light up as a realization dawns on him. "You're right. Being a Pokemon Trainer isn't just about battling... thank you, Anti. I realize that now because of you."

"Wait what." Anti stares at the boy.

"I'll go back to my uncle's in Verdanturf to think this over. But I'm not giving up," he adds with a smile. "Thanks again! Come visit me sometime!"

Wally leaves Mauville by the western route. The gym is unblocked now, and Anti is free to ravage the place anytime she wants... so she chooses to do it later, and hits up Mauville's bike shop.

"SWEEEEEEEEEEEEET!!" Anti screams while tearing from the eastern end of Mauville to the far western route at a million miles per hour on her awesome new Mach Bike, the best key item since forever. She careens into Verdanturf, breaks the sound barrier, and crashes through Wally's bedroom window.

"Hey, you came to visit!" Wally says happily, picking his way over to Anti as he steps around the broken glass now strewn all over the floor.

"Lovely," Anti mumbles from underneath her bike's smoking wheels.

In spite of Anti's initial reluctance, she finds the afternoon spent in Verdanturf enjoyable. It's the middle of nowhere, so there's not much for Anti and Wally to do, except lie on their backs on a grassy knoll and look at the clouds.

"That one looks like a colostomy bag," Anti says, pointing at one of them.

Wally points out another. "And that one looks like a quadriplegic Pikachu with Downs Syndrome."



Anti squints at that particular formation. "Woah, hey, it does."

Since Anti wastes the rest of the day in Verdanturf, she spends the night at Wally's aunt's and uncle's, and heads back to Mauville in the morning. She arrives early enough that the gym won't be open for another hour, so she ventures northward to see what the next route has to offer.

There's a house with a sign outside that basically says, "The Winstrate Family: Owning you for generations". Naturally Anti begs to differ, and challenges the punny clan.

The husband and wife go down without a fuss, but when Anti owns the everloving crap out of their little girl's Pokemon, the kid screams and cries loud enough to summon the grandmother from within their abode. A very angry and protective grandmother.

"How dare you make my granddaughter cry!" Vicky Winstrate scolds Anti in her old lady voice. "Prepare to get served!"

Anti does not make exceptions for the elderly, no matter how tantrumy they get. She tops off her four-win streak with a smug, "So who got served?"

Granny Winstrate firmly sets her chin and says, "Well, my grandson can still beat you up and down the street, missy."

And the door shuts firmly in Anti's face. So much for that.

Further exploration shows that Anti needs the third badge before she can proceed, so she returns to Mauville and challenges the gym, which just opened for the day. Sneakily, she sends out all of her Pokemon, and with a little help from Somnolent's psychic powers, positions them on all four of the trap switches, activating them simultaneously and shorting out the system.

"Wahahaha!" A jovial old man approaches Anti as his fluorescent lighting flickers and buzzes from the incurred electrical damage. "You're not really supposed to do it that way, but it makes it pretty clear what you're here for!"

Toadstool leads the fight with some help from Somnolent, Chester, and plenty of Cheri Berries. Wattson has his Voltorb explode early on in the match, but the Shroomish tanks it like a winner, and Anti prevails.

*Team Anti*


Toadstool (Shroomish F), L.26
-Headbutt
-Mega Drain
-Leech Seed
-Stun Spore

Somnolent (Kadabra M), L. 26
-Psybeam
-Recover
-Reflect
-Confusion

Chester (Skitty M), L.25
-Tackle
-Attract
-Doubleslap
-Assist

And of course, Spaz the Treecko.

Next time: screw doing it by the book!