Obscure flash movie references aside, Sophocles is in a room that looks half science lab, half basement hang-out spot. He says that we may as well just call the totem Pokemon right from the start, and uses a special machine to do it. This is apparently a machine that also receives mysterious sounds picked up from space and then plays them back to Pokemon that can perceive them. I don't think it was made clear if this actually does anything, but I'm curious to see if it ever gets mentioned again later on. So he activates the machine and runs some kind of security system, and then the power goes out. Apparently to restore power, we need to answer an audio quiz and then go through a door during the short time that it's open. Not sure I'm understanding the purpose of this (seems about as necessary as the weird force field thing at the end of The Phantom Menace), but alright.
The first audio quiz is the healing jingle from the Pokemon Center. After answering that, a Grubbin shows up. Oh no, a first-stage Route 1 bug type about halfway through the game, what will I do. (To be fair, Grubbin is leagues beyond stuff like Caterpie, but it's just kinda funny to think about.) After beating it, the door apparently closes before we get a chance to move through it, and then a somewhat ominous cutscene plays with some kind of Cheerios Bug (hopefully you get that reference, because I'm not explaining it) heading towards the Observatory.
This happens a few more times, but replace the sound with the Rotom Dex noise and Charjabug's excellent cry, and replace the Grubbin with two Charjabugs. After the third one, Sophocles says "Fool me once, shame on the door. Fool me twice, shame on the security system. Fool me thrice, shame on me, I guess...", to which I say "Fool me four times and you're officially that guy" ... you know the rest. The fourth and final audio quiz is the Totem Pokemon approaching music, which I intentionally get wrong and discover that this shocks Sophocles in the process. Not the best design there, gotta say. So I get it right and the battle begins, with the identity of the Cheerios Bug being revealed as a Vikavolt, Charjabug's evolution. It starts the battle with a +1 buff to all its stats and I immediately recognize that this could get really hairy if I let it.
My first move is to switch from Laylee to Aleene, whose Ground type nullifies its Spark attack. It calls a Charjabug for backup, which is more dangerous than it sounds at first because of the Battery ability, which boosts the ally's special attacks by an additional 30%. I use Hypnosis, which luckily manages to hit despite the Charjabug hitting me with a Mud-Slap and lowering my accuracy earlier on that turn. With the main threat asleep, I switch out to Lubba and use Ancient Power. The Charjabug uses Thunder Wave, which is apparently blocked by my Shields Down ability. Pretty neat, I didn't realize it did that. I manage to get off a second Ancient Power without it waking up, but I don't expect this to last much longer, so I go for the Z-move Continental Crush on the next turn. It does ... not nearly as much damage as I was hoping, getting it down to the low yellow HP but no further. It wakes up on that turn and nearly KOs Lubba with Spark. I know there's no point in wasting a turn switching, so I hit it with one last Ancient Power (still not knocking it out) and Lubba takes the fall.
At this point it's pretty much just cleanup duty, so I send in Crazy Bus to finish off her evolved form, then switch to Dreemurr to beat the Charjabug for no reason other than trying to spread experience. Crazy Bus learned X-Scissor after levelling up, and I also ended up getting a few things' Affection up to four hearts in the Refresh session after the battle. (Later on I'll go through the rest of my Pokemon and do the same for them to make everything even.) So with the battle done, I get the Electrium Z and get to witness Sophocles's derpy little maneuver to activate it. After doing so, he says "I was fine when the power was off. Geez... Now that you can see me, I feel all nervous... I'm not sure what to say." That'll happen when you do Power Rangers poses, I guess. Man Molayne also shows up and explains that he was the one who appointed Sophocles, his cousin as Trial Captain. Usually the kahuna appoints the trial captains, "but there are some, er, unusual circumstances here on Ula'ula". Again, kinda curious what those are. He also gives me the Steelium Z, which is sort of unexpected, as well as the "Professor's Mask" item to deliver to Kukui back down in Malie Garden. Dis gun be gud. Oh, and there's "a star globe depicting the universe" in this room. The whole universe, you say? Either the literal Pokemon universe is much smaller than ours, they have a much higher level of technology than we thought, or the game designers (or main character, depending on how you look at it) doesn't know what that truly means.
Before going to Malie Garden, I check if the gate blocking the exit of Route 11 is still there and if it can move yet. It can't, so moving on. I wander into some kind of kerfuffle going on in the garden, and Kukui uses his classic "Four turns!" line complete with necessary pose when talking to some Skull Grunts. Honestly I'm not even sure what they were doing there, but none of that matters once their boss Guzma shows up. This is a character I've heard of before but haven't gotten to see in action yet, so I guess I'll be seeing what his deal is pretty soon. He talks smack a bit about Kukui and the island traditions in general - "We've got no need for a Pokemon League. After all, everyone already knows who the strongest Trainer is on these islands!". He also says that Kukui is weak because he's not even a trail captain, but he responds by saying that he could have become a captain if he wanted to, he just had other dreams to follow. Then he kind of shoehorns me into this conversation for no real reason.
Guzma asks me why I'm taking the island challenge, and one of the options is pretty honest - "That's what I'm wanting to find out". After choosing that one, he reacts appropriately (basically saying that there's no point to any of this) and then starts a fight with the oft-quoted line, "Wanna see what destruction looks like? Here it is in human form - it's your boy Guzma!". I'm ... not really sure why it's quoted that much, to be honest. It was kinda funny I guess, but so far I'm not seeing the big deal with this guy yet, at least not in terms of characterization. The battle against him on the other hand... he has only two Pokemon, and one of those is an Ariados, not exactly a major threat. That said, his only other Pokemon, a Golisopod (the evolution of Wimpod), managed to deal some pretty significant damage to my team. Once defeated, he swaggers off and the nearby trainers seem fairly impressed. Kukui gives me the Decidium Z, and does so with some oddly formatted text: "Oh yeah! I almost forgot to give you something super important! Here you go, cousin. This is the Z-Crystal for Decidueye... The Evolution of the
[awkward line break]
Rowlet you chose!"
Is "evolution" supposed to be capitalized? It was in the text there... eh, whatever. He also takes the mask to "deliver back to the Masked Royal" and heads off to Lanakila to check on the progress of the League. Lillie and Acerola show up for about five seconds, don't do anything, and then leave to go shopping. I like these meaningful interactions. Gotta remind us that characters exist, you know. And speaking of meaningful interactions, I head on to Route 12 now that I can get past the gate, and immediately upon my arrival, Hapu shows up and gives me access to Mudsdale as a Ride Pokemon. Apparently she meant to do this earlier, but "[she] was just so taken aback by Lillie and how lovely she was that it escaped [her]." Y'know game, you're not helping the fanbase from looking too deeply into the text when you keep doing stuff like this. Unless you intend to actually go there, you shouldn't say stuff like that.
On this route, I caught the new Xtreme Eyebrows form of Geodude (which I rather like the typing of, but won't be using it since it's not a completely new Pokemon), Torkoal (who now has Drought as an ability), Chansey, and Elekid. Chansey wasn't something I was actually aiming for, since it's an SOS encounter, but it showed up when I was trying to catch Elekid, and I figured I might as well. It didn't go down without a fight though. I luckily still had False Swipe on Fellana's moveset (I forgot to replace it with Shadow Claw), so I was able to use that to get its HP low, but it kept healing through Softboiled, and it used Minimize to max out its evasion pretty early on in the fight, so it was pretty rare for me to actually hit it enough times sequentially to get its health low before it healed again. Probably used a good 20 Balls on that thing. The only other real thing of note on this route (aside from the random rocky terrain that you use Mudsdale to cross) was a trainer that had a Porygon, which is always cool. Specifically one in a Repeat Ball, if my eyes didn't fail me. And when I put it to sleep, it looked more pissed off than asleep, which was kinda funny.
The end of the route split into three different directions. To the south is the Secluded Shore, to the west is Route 13, and to the northwest is Blush Mountain. Two of those are dead-ends, so I'll be looking at them first. The Secluded Shore is pretty featureless and doesn't really include much beyond a couple trainers and some hidden items, but it does have some new Pokemon to catch also. Bruxish, the garishly-colored, pointy-toothed fish is here as a rare spawn while fishing, so I grabbed one of those after many soft-resets. As with most Water types before it, I wouldn't mind having this as a team member if there weren't already so many other good ones in this generation, so it'll get a pass. I also found a Pelipper here after surfing around for longer than I'd like, and it proved to be quite a pain to catch, actually breaking out of a Critical Capture while paralyzed and in the red. I did get it eventually, but still.
The other area, Blush Mountain, is a bit bigger in terms of actual size, but doesn't really have any more content than the beach did. There's a Geothermal Power Plant here, which I figured would be worth checking out after looking in the grass for any new Pokemon. The first thing to show up was a Charjabug. Obviously I already have one of those, but it's technically a new Pokemon in terms of catching one for the living dex, so I attempted to do so. Note how I used the word "attempted" there. I went into this battle against a wild Pokemon with a full team of six, all Level 31ish, all fully healed. This wild Charjabug wiped out my entire team and forced me to reset. I'm not kidding. The fact that it couldn't be paralyzed was a bit of an issue (even though I didn't have my own Charjabug at the time, so I couldn't Thunder Wave it even if it would work), because it successfully called for help every single time I beat its cohorts. I think during the entire process of me trying to catch it, I maybe got to throw two balls at it, and the rest of the time was just me trying to find the freaking things off. So yeah, that sucked.
Even better, I found out after resetting that I never saved after catching the Pelipper, so I got to spend another half hour (as a low estimate, it was probably closer to a full hour) finding one, then I went back up to Blush Mountain, ready to wage war against its inhabitants. The first thing I found this time was a Togedemaru, which I didn't even realize was in this area. I caught one with little difficulty, and I feel like I should point out here that at one point, it was a potential team member. Mainly because it's a Steel type, and I would have liked to have one, but I'm not the biggest fan of its design and generally don't use the Pika-clones out of principle. (The one exception was my Dedenne in X, where I used it specifically because it was probably the worst new Pokemon of Gen 6, though it honestly wasn't that bad.) But anyway, I caught that, eventually found another Charjabug, and then caught that with no incident whatsoever. I dunno what the hell happened in that first fight, but it's kind of making me like the stupid little green box a little less now, and I might consider evolving it when I get to the point of the game where I can do so.
Aside from that, this area didn't offer anything of use. There was a Geothermal Power Plant, but there wasn't actually anything in it other than a bunch of flavor text that I didn't really care much about (it's kinda like the Oceanic Museum in Hoenn in that regard) and a little event where a Magnemite causes a blackout and I got the Embargo TM out of it for unrelated reasons. Oh, and Samson Oak gives me the Lure Ball, meaning this is probably the last interaction with him other than going back and showing him a Garfielf. And with that, I'm done with this entry. Before I get to the trainer card, I'd like to make a poll regarding whether or not to evolve Crazy Bus. (If I do, I'll be changing the name, though I haven't completely decided yet what I'd change it to.)
http://www.strawpoll.me/11815345
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