Leaving the cave behind, we followed through a valley that had a lot of cliff like ridges running here and then. Navigating our way around them, we ultimately encountered two muscle heads arguing.

“A punch of roaring velocity, packed with destructive power. When the chips are down, Megapunch is the ultimate attack.”

The other musclehead was going on about Megakick in a similar fashion. I decided to do what I normally do with these two clowns and choose Megapunch. Megakick has similar output damage/accuracy wise, but it’s much lower accuracy makes it rather unfavourable for reliable combat. Also, if I remember correctly, it had a lower PP as well.

So I agreed with Megapuch guy. Nidoking was the only one that could learn it, but it was a rather nice early game move. So I went ahead and replaced his leer attack with it. Once again, there will be better alternatives to leer later on. Also, now he had some nicely rounded attack types. Normal, Fighting, Rock and a semi-flying attack.

“Now we are brothers in the way of punching. You should go, before you are seen by the misguided fool who trains only his silly kicking over there.”

Oh the ignorance of one musclehead calling another musclehead stupid!

I left the Megakick guy alone, since i did not really have use for that, especially right now.

Further down the valley, we picked up a TM05 - Roar, which I also saw little use for.

Climbing down some of the smaller cliff faces, we were finally able to follow a road. Back to civilisation! Or whatever masquerades as it in these parts.

Finally, we arrived at Cerulean city. The first thing we did of course, was to pay a visit to the pokecenter to freshen up dem’ pokeballs.

Next, I made a beeline for the Water gym. I wanted to get that out of the way.

The inside of the water gym was like some giant indoor swimming pool that took up the space of the entire building. There was also a strange floating and winding path leading throughout the center of the pool, all the way up to the gym leader.

With Robin trailing behind me, we advanced. As is tradition while traversing the path, it was littered with cannon fodder. The first of which challenged me.

“I’m first up, let’s do this!”

Swimmer Lois brought out his level 16 Horsea. Of course I lead with Magikarp for XP, since I was quite desperate to level it. I would have to refrain from seconding with Nidoking in the water gym, his half ground type, would be risky. So I will start fights off with Magikarp and then end them with Bulby for his high level and type advantage.

Nidoking will have to lose out this time, but to be fair, he will get his turn at the electric gym that’s up next. Probably won’t even have to bring Bulby out at all there.

I switched to Bulby and let Horsea get his free attack in. Even though I wanted to keep my health full, I would not be seeding most of these pokemon. Vinewhip should be able to one-shot all of them at this point.

Lois switched to Shelder and myself, back to Magikarp. Then I once more switched in Bulby, taking a free hit. Or not, Shelder’s tackle missed for some reason. Oh well, one-shot again. Moving on then.

“What, you? I’m more than good enough for you! Misty won’t have to be bothered.” This was from Picknicker Diana? For some reason?

Oh, nice! A level 19 Goldeen! I switched out and received a confusion status from Goldeen for my trouble.

Tried a vinewhip, but just hurt myself from confusion. However Goldeen wasted an attack on watersport. No fire pokemon here sucker! Finally got a vinewhip in, but it didn’t quite manage to finish it off. Goldeen then responded with tailwhip, which wasn’t really going to mean much at the end of the fight.

I basically finished it off with two tackles.

“Now then.” I cracked my knuckles. Misty was for some reason standing on the first place of a podium.

Robin whispered to me with a worried expression, “Be nice!” She stressed her words.

I simply chuckled, “No promises!” And faced Misty.

“Hi, you’re a new face! Only those trainers who have a policy about pokemon can turn pro.”

What is this a life coach?

“What is your approach, when you catch and train pokemon?”

Do I have to answer that?

“My policy is an all out offensive with water type pokemon!”

You, my dear, will not be turning pro with that losing strategy.

A level 18 Staryu came out first. I switched to Bulby and Staryu chose to harden. Which was fine with me, all my attacks would be SP based grass vinewhips.

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Although I would probably seed all of the pokemon, to keep Bulby’s health up, just in case and also because I don’t think I will be one-shotting any of these higher level pokemon.. That being said I would be vinewhipping from start to end.

As luck would have it, Staryu evaded my first leech seed, but fortunately kept hardening. Something he kept doing throughout the fight. In the end it only got one tackle in and my health was pretty much the same as when I started.

At which point, Ivysaur rose to level 22 and learned razor leaf. I did not hesitate to replace vinewhip. It had double the power, twice the PP and only sacrificed 5% accuracy. Not to mention it had a high critical chance for some reason.

When Misty sent out a level 22 Starmie, I switched back and forth my Magikarp and earned myself a face full of water pulse.

I decided to try my hand at one-shotting him with the more powerful razer-leaf. Unfortunately, Starmie had other ideas and managed a swift attack that also managed to take me out with a crit hit. It took away most of Bulby’s health. In exchange however, I did manage to one-shot him.

Magikarp reached level 15 for that and managed to learn tackle. Not that I would be trying to win many fights with that weak-ass pokemon, tackle or not.

And, Misty was down, so I earned myself the… Cascade badge??? Like WTF? Why not Water badge?

Also thanks to the badge, I can now ‘use cut outside of battles’, because… reasons.

Also got a water pulse TM03, which I would save for now. It would be wasted on Magikarp, his attack stats are far too low and Gyarados would eventually learn a powerful water move of his own. As soon as Magikarp evolves he will already start learning moves of a similar power, just not water type. Not yet.

So I would wait and see, who the most appropriate would be for this TM.

“C- congratulations on winning your badge.” Robin said in a strained voice. She looked back to Misty, who was now sitting on the podium instead, glaring at me.

“Well at least I only one-shotted one of her pokemon this time.”, I nervously exclaimed under Robin’s questioning gaze, “So I wasn’t, that, mean?”

Robin just sighed, and then gave me a big encouraging smile as we left the gym.

I chuckled. Now that’s my Robin!

We then went around town doing the rounds, seeing if we could scrounge up anything useful.

“You're making an encyclopedia on pokemon? That sounds amazing.”

“Why are there so many trainers obsessed with filling up their pokedex!” I complained to Robin.

“Doesn’t sound like a problem to me though, in fact it sounds wonderful!” Robin responded with glee, “wouldn’t it be helpful to have all the pokemon?”

“Not especially, what would you do with so many pokemon? You can only have six on you at a time and training that many up to decent level is basically impossible to begin with, so only your core pokemon will ever be useful”

Besides I am definitely not a completionist.

“I suppose you’re right.” Robin responded, sounding rather dejected. “You’re really good at crushing people’s hopes and dreams, you know.”

A little later, a random boy:

“If that slowbro wasn’t there, you could cut down the small tree.”

“That way, you could get to the other side.”

“I think there’s a way around it though.”

I suppose for sake of not glitching the game out any further than I already have, I shall not forcibly remove the Slowbro.

Also If I really wanted to, I could just jump the fence next to the damn bush.

The slowbro girl:

“Come on, Slowbro, pay attention!”

“Slowbro, withdraw! No! That’s wrong!. It’s so hard to control Pokemon!”

“Your pokemon’s obedience depends on your abilities as a trainer.”

She seemed as useless as her Slowbro.

We encountered a bike shop, which got the two of us really excited, until we found out that they wanted to charge 1,000,000P for the things.

Obviously some events will happen and we will eventually receive the bicycle for free or at an affordable discount. This game's linearity is annoying sometimes!

We talked to an old man that wanted to exchange a Poliwhirl for a Jynx. And while that was tempting, as I had done in previous playthroughs, I A) did not have a Polywhirl on me and B) eventually gave up on using Jynx in favour of other more rounded pokemon for my team.

Jynx is awesome, I had a lot of fun with her in the past. The combination ice and psychic attacks were devastating, especially when combined with her high SP attack output. But her paper thin defences really hurt if she faced a bad type or order matchup. So, not this time around.

We talked to several other trainers that all insisted we should trade pokemon with someone called Bill who was an avid trader. But I seriously couldn’t care less about this Bill character.

I could of course ask now that I’m inside the game, where to find this Bill if I were so inclined, but I didn’t really care and would end up talking to everyone anyway.

We also found someone that would explain about the different badges (don’t care) and someone who would make shit out of our berries (don’t have any).

Lastly, there was an Officer Jenny guarding the entrance to a house:

“The people here were robbed. It’s obvious that Team Rocket is behind this most heinous crime!”

“Even our Police force has trouble with the Rockets!”

Our final stop for the town, aside from the exit (a bridge), was the pokeshop.

There a kid ‘helpfully explained about the usefulness of ‘Repel’, which I rolled my eyes to, since after crossing through that fucking cave, I was infintely familiar with the usefullness of Repel, or not letting me purchase it for that matter earlier on in the game!

Another girl explained about rare candy, well subtly at least. But I already know you can use it to level your pokemon, hence why I am gonna save all of them! For when it gets too difficult to level them.

At the shop, I bought two repels and a super potion, just in case. Also, two burn heals since, I would encounter Gary again soon and he’d actually have some fire attacks this time. The rest of the potions I basically had stock off.

Glancing around the store, it didn’t have anything useful to us survival wise, no more pokemon food or onigiri or anything of the sort. Was the thing with the first pokeshop a fluke or some weird glitch?

Either way, I would have to monitor the situation, but we still had a stack of onigiri to munch on for now.

However, water was a more pressing concern, I was seriously thirsty and dehydrated by this point.

“So, uh, I don’t see them selling anything to drink in store. Shall we go collect some water by the river?” I asked Robin, curious if she even gets thirsty or not.

“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea, I’m also pretty thirsty.”

So she does.

We made our way over to the stream and I filled both my and her empty potion bottles that we had collectively used so far, with water. I did not exactly trust drinking water from a river like this, but figured that there would either be no dangerous shit in the water here in this game, or that we could just heal it up with health potions… hopefully.

We both refreshed ourselves with the cool water gleefully and finished stocking up on our water bottles. Now off to face Gary once more. But first, there was one pressing matter I needed to resolve.

I really needed to take a shit! And I don’t recall the pokeshop selling any toilet paper!