I bought the Shadow Claw TM from the TM merchant in Konikoni City and taught it to Fellana. I looked at some of the other TMs that were for sale, but none really stood out as being useful except a couple that none of my team members could learn. I could probably buy Double Team and teach it to Laylee, then Baton Pass the boost to be a complete prick, but I don't think I care much for that strategy. I actually haven't been using the Baton Pass strat at all lately, so I may eventually drop that. I also bought the two Fossils, as mentioned last time, so I went to the Jurassic Park dude to have them revived, so Shieldon and Archen are now part of the collection. Yay.
Moving on, last time I was instructed by a floating mustachioed moai head that Olivia wanted to meet me at the Ruins of Life, so I started to head over there, only to get blocked by some nonsense. Apparently Team Skull has managed to steal a single Slowpoke, which is an all-time high for them. I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually just a wild one anyway. With the amount of times that Ash and company tried to stop Team Rocket from "stealing" wild Pokemon even though that's kind of a major point of the entire franchise, I've just come to accept that if you're part of an organization with a uniform, you're not allowed to do anything that other people do.
But yeah, they acquired a Slowpoke, and the Aether Foundation ain't havin none of that for whatever reason, but they also don't want to engage them in battle because ... it's not really clear why. The person with the giant bug-eyed goggles mentioned that he was "the last line of defense" and wouldn't risk getting hurt. But he's also perfectly content with having me, a total stranger, battle them, so yeah. After chasing them off, bug-eyed dude says to meet him at Hano Grand Resort later on. That's fine with me, but good luck getting there. I've heard tales of a man riding a giant dog that has taken control of that part of the island. I wouldn't want you to get involved, after all, you're Aether's last line of defense! ... Yeah, I dunno.
So after running through the next area, I head into the Ruins, only to be stopped by a character I know from the demo - a female Team Skull admin who has long strands of pink and yellow hair and some kind of weird belly tattoo. This is Plumeria, and she doesn't do a whole lot. Her pre-battle speech just kind of rambles about how stupid her Team Skull minions are, but also calls them cute. I'd argue that acting they way they do, with all the random gesticulating and whatnot is about as non-cute as you can get, but then again, I seem to be in the minority when it comes to finding Team Skull painful to watch. So Plumeria uses a Golbat and a Salandit, neither offer that much of a challenge (as expected), and then she just sorta leaves. Well bye.
Finally I go into the Ruins, and guess what? More interruptions! Burnet shows up with Lillie, saying she "got lost again, so I brought her to you." Ok, good. I almost forgot for a minute that she's my responsibility and I can't leave her alone for more than five seconds or she'll hide in the clothes racks of Wal-mart and they'll have to call a Code Adam. Burnet also says that she's going to check out the Masked Royal, and is either joking about not knowing who he is, or she genuinely doesn't know. It's not very clear. Either way I don't really care, so go on. At last, the Grand Trial with Olivia begins!
She leads with a Nosepass, and I send out Malone. It hits me with Thunder Wave straight away, but I'm lucky enough to not get effected by this whatsoever while hitting it with a sequence of Power-up Punches. It goes down after two or three of them, I forget. Her next Pokemon, a Boldore, goes down the same way. Lastly she sends out a Lycanroc (Midnight Form), which is finally enough to stop my winning streak. I actually don't like to completely dominate fights like that if I can help it (usually I try to switch up my Pokemon rather than give the same thing experience repeatedly), but I couldn't really resist the stat boosts from Power-up Punch.
To finish the battle, I send out Skeeter, who does suffer from a Rock weakness, but survives the one Rock Throw used against him and defeats the Lycanroc with a single Scald. All in all, not one of the most challenging battles I've had. Rock-type leaders generally aren't, but I'm not even sure if it was because of the type affiliation, it might have just been an overly easy battle for this point of the game. I know this isn't a problem exclusive to Sun and Moon by any means, but I'm getting kind of tired of all the random trainers only having one or two Pokemon and the leaders having three. Not everyone should have a full team of six, but I feel like it could be stepped up a bit.
Anyways, I got the Rockium Z. Olivia claims that the hip movement is crucial for the pose on this one, and given the game's track record for emphasizing that particular part of her anatomy so far, I fear the worst. The pose doesn't involve anything of the sort though, so I guess we can avoid angry moms calling Nintendo for now. I will point out that Lillie has an excellent sort of :D face going on while this is happening though.
There's a bit of dialogue between the two of them for a while, as Lillie explains that she's traveling with Nebby to try and find its home, since it's not originally from this world. Before anything more can be said about this, Hau shows up and is jones'n for a battle. He also mentions that "this weird green guy from Aether" told him to come to the Grand Resort also, so three guesses where we're going next. Lillie is hesitant to go with, in a moment that might be slightly mysterious if we hadn't already seen her run away from them after stealing Nebby in the opening cutscene, but I suppose that's out of character knowledge.
So off I go to the Grand Resort, which is at long last not being blocked off by a large doge. This hotel is ridiculously fancy, even moreso than the previous one that was also pretty over-the-top. There's a Pikachu out front relaxing on a beach chair, and according to the guy next to it, this is apparently "Master Chuuster", who's a big star and is taking his first vacation in three years. I can't help but feel like this is a reference to something, but I'm not sure exactly what. It's not an anime reference as far as I can tell, because that's been running far longer than three years and even then, Pikachu's not really taken a "break" from the show anyway.
I ignore the actual hotel itself, as expected, to check out the beach near it. Here I find my worst enemy still riding his Stoutland, but thankfully he's not preventing me from exploring the area. He also hasn't done a good job clearing this place of items yet, as I find some Pearls and Soda Pops and the like. But much more importantly, there's a weird shuffling spot in the sand here. I save in front of it and soft-reset a few times until...
Aleene joins the party! These shuffling sand spots usually spawn Staryu, but can also contain Sandygast, the haunted sandcastle Pokemon. This is such a weird concept I can't help but love it. So after a few resets, I manage to encounter a female one and nab it in a Timer Ball (mainly just for variety, the ball itself isn't really relevant) and name it Aleene. The name is kind of a personal reference of mine, as I was friends with a guy with a similar name when I was a kid, and his last name was similar to "Castle". Aleene is also the name of an old lady who had her own set of craft supplies and a tv show called "Aleene's Creative Living"... I'm aware of this because I was subjected to it quite a bit when I was a lot younger. I can kind of picture her Tacky Glue being used to make something similar to Sandygast here as some sort of summer-themed craft project.
Aleene is Lax and has a Sturdy Body, which makes sense with the "Water Compaction" ability (raises Defense when hit by a Water move). I immediately feed her a rainbow bean from Poke Pelago, which raises Affection to level 3 instantly (the same as the rest of my team), and proceed to battle the trainers in the area to get some experience.
With all that out of the way, I head back to the hotel and check it out. The crazy goggles dude from earlier is named "Faba", and he wants to take me to a place called "Aether Paradise", a man-made island out in the ocean. If this was anything but a Pokemon game I'd immediately be getting some pretty kidnappy vibes here, but I'm sure everything's good. I do want to hold off for now though in order to finish exploring the area.
The two main things worth seeing in this area are some kind of funky trainer battles. The first is against two female golfers that are totally harassing some Machamp that they hired as a caddy. I try to rescue it, but it turns out that it was just a guy in a costume all along, and he was perfectly happy to have the attention before I ran them off. I don't think there's anything else I can say to make this funnier, unfortunately. (Also, he gives you the Attract TM.) The other one is a battle against "the sound-making machine that can make the hits of the no-so-distant future." The dialogue here is pretty great, especially since he asks if you've heard of him, and both options you get basically say no. When he asks for a battle, you get the choice to say "I'm fine not knowing you". Good stuff. I do eventually fight him though, and got the Metronome from beating him.
And... that's it! I'm not actually progressing the story any farther yet, so that'll happen next time.
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