InsaneJournal

Current location:	Petalburg City
Current mood:	accomplished
Current music:	Pokemon Center
Entry tags:	pokemon, rsescramble

RSE Scramble 06!
You know you wanted this.

After the two environmentally-challenged teams leave the crater, Anti descends Mt. Chimney, feeling dissatisfied somehow. At the railway station, she buys a bunch of Lava "Cookies" off a dodgy old lady, and she and her Pokemon stuff their faces as they continue on.



Upon reaching Jagged Pass, Anti trips and falls down half of it, but luckily a Magma grunt breaks her fall.



Angered, the grunt sends out a Poochyena, which her Pokemon use as an after-snack chew toy. The grunt babbles some nonsense about guarding an entrance that very clearly isn't there, and as bone-breakingly obvious as his prattle is, Anti ignores the dude and walks on.

Unfortunately for the whole walking part, the footing in the aptly-named pass sucks, and Anti gets challenged by a trainer for nearly every other stubbed toe. There's even a moron trying to have a picnic there, and she laughs spitefully when her team hands his team's butts to them. In a good mood, our heroine is not.

Anti eventually limps into Lavaridge Town, only to have her Pokemon abandon her and leap into the hot springs, despite the screaming protests of the elderly already soaking in them. Somnolent gets high off the herbally enhanced steam Toadstool's spores create, while Chester and Spaz do some half-baked synchronized swimming. Only Bipolar stays out of the water, instead choosing to hang out in the hot sand.

Ten minutes later, while Anti is in the middle of using Bipolar's rocky body as an epic sandcastle foundation, an old lady approaches her, and asks if she might take care of a Pokemon egg she's been trying to hatch. Anti accepts it wordlessly, and uses it as the main tower of the castle.



Since she can see the gym from the spa, Anti knows she has to deal with it eventually, so she drags her drugged-up Pokemon out of the hot springs, returns Bipolar to her ball to collapse the sandcastle, and goes to the Pokemon Center so she can shove the egg in storage. With that done, she enters Lavaridge's gym, and stomps forward with a purpose... right into a sand pit.

By the time Anti deals with every trainer in the gym save its leader, her hair has enough sand in it to build another castle. Seeing the unsteady approach of another challenger, Flannery stands up straight and puts her hands on her hips.

"Aha! So you have come to offer a battle against... uh, I mean, prepare to get owned, challenger! I mean, poor unsuspecting... hold on a second." Digging around in her pants pockets, Flannery comes up with a slip of hastily folded paper and opens it, scanning the message she wrote ahead of time. "Er, prepare to get owned, you pathetic little... is that a G or a B...?"

Anti digs her fingers in her ears, causing sand to cascade out of them. "What?"

Flannery gives up and sends out her Numel. Still trying to get sand out of her ears, Anti just points at what she wants Bipolar to attack, and unfortunately doesn't hear the ensuing screams.

Anti finally clears her ear canals in time to hear Flannery say something like, "How am I gonna pay for the FLOOR?" Anti looks down to see that, while the floor was certainly fire-retardant, it wasn't huge falling rocks-retardant. Flannery catches Anti's gaze, clearly at a loss.

Our heroine shrugs. "I dunno. Use sand?"

Flannery stares back in disbelief for a second, then rolls her eyes and sighs in an exaggerated manner. "God, my grandpa's gonna kill me." She reaches into one of her pockets again and pulls out a badge, handing it to Anti. "If anyone in town asks why I'm closing the gym, don't tell them, okay?"

Considering the badge a fair trade-off for keeping a secret, Anti accepts her terms and strolls out the door.

A certain someone is waiting for her right outside the entrance.

"Hey Anti! How's it--"



Brendan, obviously standing much too close to Anti, gets it in the specials as she accidentally walks right into him. Peering down at the boy's twitching form, Anti says "Oops" and crouches next to him to open his backpack and rifle through his stuff. She's really got a hankering for some trail mix.

Instead, she comes up with something else: a pair of Go-Goggles.



She's about to chuck them over her shoulder when she gets an idea.

Mere minutes later, Anti's blazing through the desert on Route 111 on her Mach Bike, wearing her brand-new Go-Goggles. Now that she can see through the Sandstorm of Linearity, Anti finds that there were other trainers hanging out here the entire time. After she beats the first kid she comes across in a Pokemon battle, she yoinks his goggles and hands them off to Spaz, because he wants to look cool too.



Now the coolest Treecko in the region, Spaz happily prances about. He prances left, he prances right, he prances straight into a hole.

Leaving her bike at the top, Anti jumps down the pit to rescue her Treecko. Sliding toward the bottom, she sees Spaz flailing wildly, the sand about to suck him into the waiting jaws of a very hungry Trapinch!



Since the shifting sands are too treacherous for Anti to call Spaz back into his ball, instead she whips out Toadstool and commands her to Headbutt the Trapinch. Toadstool quickly obeys, spinning in freefall and scoring an epic critical hit directly between the Trapinch's beady little eyes. While it's stunned, Anti whips out another Poke Ball and throws it, catching the Trapinch in one try.

After using Somnolent's telekinesis to get out of the pit, Anti checks out her latest capture. Despite her gigantic gnashing jaws of bone-crushing bloody painful death and maiming, the Trapinch is actually quite Docile. Thinking those teeth could come in handy, Anti names her Dicey, and continues through the desert.

Teaching Dicey how to Dig via TM on the way, Anti goes north to Fallarbor. That Meteorite she nicked from Maxie is taking up space she needs for Poke Balls, Soda, and whatever she's stolen from Brendan, so she returns it to Professor Cozmo. He freaks out over the rock for a bit, then hands Anti a Return TM for her trouble. Wondering how much she can get for it, she stuffs it in her backpack to save it for a financial rainy day, and leaves.

On the way south into Rustboro City, Spaz pops out of his ball and starts living up to his name for no reason Anti can immediately discern. Anti picks him up in mid-run and tries to figure out what's up while her Treecko wriggles.



Then it hits her. "Oh! You wanna go break stuff, right?"

Spaz nods eagerly and grins. "Kyamo!"

Recalling the unfinished Rusturf Tunnel project, Anti takes a tiny detour east of the city and sets her Treecko loose in the cave. After she has Toadstool drug all the Whismur into hallucinogenic submission, of course. While the evil pink rabbits are seeing technicolor ponies, Anti catches up with Spaz, just as he's winding up to Rock Smash a couple boulders with his tail.



Anti returns her dazed Treecko to his ball as a dude wearing a dusty karate gi approaches her with a big grin on his face.

"Thanks, kid! Now I can see my girlfriend anytime I want!" Said girlfriend immediately dives right into his arms, having waited there possibly months for the tunnel project to get finished. He takes a few seconds to hand off HM04 to Anti, then he and his girl proceed to suck face. Anti runs back to Rustboro before she totally pukes.

She teaches the HM to a still-woozy Spaz, adding Strength to his field repertoire, and goes back to Rustboro to see the Devon president. Deciding to leave out the part where Steven said he didn't want anymore spam mail, Anti confirms that she finished her errands, and the president cheerfully thanks her. This time, she gets an Experience Share out of the deal.

"A Pokemon wearing that doesn't need to battle to gain experience," the prez comments. "I think you could put it to good use."

Anti decides not to ask exactly what he means and leaves the building. Using the Exp. Share on Spaz would mean easy and pain-free levels for him, but it wouldn't do either of them any good if he didn't want to battle anyway. She decides to leave it in the bottom of her bag and forget about it.

Getting back on her light-speed bike, Anti heads directly for the Trick House; she's got a couple more rounds to go through with this time. First, Floorswitch Rave! Quite unwilling to take much time out of her busy schedule to legitimately solve the puzzle, she has Somnolent position her other five Pokemon onto the switches, walks to the other side of the room, and calls everyone back into their balls before going to rub it in the Trick Master's face.

Trick Master makes another hole in the roof and returns right back to his living room to meet Anti for the next challenge he's got lined up. This time, it's Doorswitch Hell, and the switches don't work quite the same as last time. After getting a hand shut in one too many sliding picture doors, Anti makes the honest human error of commanding Dicey to Bite through every screen to the end of the maze. Happens to the best of us, right?

If Trick Master took any notice of her perfectly innocent methods, he doesn't get the chance to express his (dis?)approval, because Anti continues south on her Mach Bike to Slateport, and hops onto Briney's boat with no further preamble.

Mr. Briney jog-shuffles up to Anti, his beloved Peeko perched on his head. "Oh, finish your errand already?"

Anti looks up from strapping herself to the deck with a roll of extra-strength duct tape and points forward. "DRIVE," she commands.

The tape barely manages to hold against the insane force of Mr. Briney's boat engine, but Anti and her team make it back to the outskirts of Petalburg in one piece. Before going into the city proper, however, Anti stops to consider all that has taken place since the beginning of her journey.



After she finishes considering, she enters Petalburg City, and goes to the Pokemon Center to rest for the night. Tomorrow, she will face her father.

*Team Anti*


Toadstool (Shroomish F), L.30 @Miracleseed
-Headbutt
-Mega Drain
-Leech Seed
-Poisonpowder

Somnolent (Kadabra M), L.32
-Psybeam
-Recover
-Reflect
-Thief

Chester (Skitty M), L.29 @Blackglasses
-Faint Attack
-Attract
-Doubleslap
-Assist

Bipolar (Nosepass F), L.30 @Hard Stone
-Rock Slide
-Thunder Wave
-Block
-Rock Tomb

Dicey (Trapinch F), L.26 @Quick Claw
-Dig
-Faint Attack
-Bite
-Sand-Attack

And Smashing Spaz!

Next time: the gym I really hate! D: