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Reunion

As soon as I land in Anistar City, I receive a call from Professor Sycamore.  He wants to meet in Couriway Town, the next settlement on my route, to discuss recent events.  Understandable.  I’m curious to know his thoughts myself.  The road to Couriway Town features a diverse ecosystem of mountain Pokkemon for me to capture, including Torkoal, Graveler, Durant, Heatmor and Lairon, as well as Ariados in the abandoned mine that stretches beneath much of the area.  The mine is also inhabited by Noibat, a small, weak, purple bat Pokémon who seems utterly unremarkable aside from the fact that he is apparently a Dragon-type.  I’m… you know, I’m honestly not even sure what a dragon is anymore.  The mine, which is known as Terminus Cave, has a very deep and complicated structure, not all of which is open to me yet – only a Champion-level trainer can access all the tunnels.  I try bringing out Xerneas and telling the story of that one time when I, y’know, saved the Kalos region from the annihilation of all Pokémon and most humans all out of the ‘goodness’ of my ‘heart’, but the guard seems unimpressed, so I give up and return to the surface for now.  Goodness only knows what else is down there.  Probably awesome treasure.  The other notable feature of this part of Kalos is the home of a human Psychic named Inver, who practices a strange form of battle which he has named after himself (or possibly the other way around) – the inverse battle.  Thanks to Inver’s vaguely specified mystical powers, resisted moves become super-effective (finally, being a Grass Pokémon specialist pays off!) and super-effective moves are resisted instead.  The fact that these relationships can all be uniformly reversed by a single application of psychic power might go some way to suggesting that Pokémon types are meant to be regarded as fundamental forces, rather than just a descriptive framework created by humans (one of the debates I have with myself from time to time), but then again, since the whole thing is clearly just an excuse for a fun new battle format, I’d be cautious about reading too much into it.  The real question is… can Inver learn to make his powers apply only to some Pokémon, some of the time, and if so, can I recruit him for my imperial army…?

Dominated by a massive waterfall from which the locals collect and bottle crystal clear water, Couriway Town is a comparatively small settlement with a few houses, a Pokémon Centre, a railway station, and not much else.  After spending a little time gazing at the waterfall, I go to find Professor Sycamore, who has some interesting things to say about Lysandre.  He seems to think that Lysandre’s actions are at least partially his own fault for not taking action long before now to put his friend back on a somewhat saner path, and reiterates his belief that Lysandre could have been a great leader and done a lot of good for the world.  Apparently, by stopping his plans, I “saved” not only Kalos, but Lysandre himself – wait, wait, so he’s alive?  Have you actually seen him?  Or do you mean “saved” in more of vague, spiritual, “well, at least he died without the deaths of billions on his conscience” kind of sense?  Sycamore, to my irritation, declines to comment further.  I will have to look into this.  For now, though, he wants a battle!  Professor Sycamore has been practicing – his Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle have increased dramatically in level since my last battle with him, and have all reached their final evolutions, but he’s still not much of a trainer himself, and is unable to lead them to victory.  Ever gracious in defeat, Sycamore claims he left a ‘treasure’ in this town a long time ago, and invites me to search for it.  He then leaves to work on a ‘surprise’ for me and my rivals to reward us for our efforts against Team Flare.  I sweep the town with my dowsing rods, but the most valuable thing I find is a Prism Scale, and something tells me that isn’t what he’s talking about (I mean, it’s neat, but I already have one, and I feel like I should expect something more unique).  He might be talking about a more metaphorical ‘treasure’ – like an old friend, or a place he has fond memories of – but what, I have no clue.  Maybe something to come back to.  I have more important things to do, like get my last badge so I can conquer Kalos at last.

To get to Snowbelle City, I have to cross a deep valley with a murky swamp at the bottom.  I encounter only one Pokémon I haven’t met before here – Gligar – which may well be a first for my travels in Kalos, so I very quickly move on to the rope bridge that spans the chasm, where I am met by Shauna.  To my immense surpise, Shauna wants to battle!  I haven’t fought her since she started out with her Froakie – hell, I wasn’t even aware she was capable of battling, but she has three Pokémon now, and at a respectable level too.  She opens with a Delcatty, who survives Pan’s Seed Bomb and slows his assault with Charm – and then switches out.  Shauna sends in a new Pokémon I haven’t seen before: Goodra, apparently the evolved form of Sliggoo, who is at last recognisable through her slimy coating as a true Dragon, if a soft-edged and friendly one in the tradition of Dragonite.  Goodra intercepts my next Seed Bomb and absorbs the attack with Sap Sipper.  What?  Shauna is competent!?  What is this sorcery!?  I briefly consider summoning Xerneas to blow her dragon away, but feel that wouldn’t be sporting under the circumstances and instead send in Orion… who gets crushed by a Sap Sipper-boosted Earthquake.  Okay.  Now she’s asking for it.  I have Xerneas hit Goodra with a Moonblast, then go to Ilex to finish off her Delcatty.  Her final Pokémon is her starter, who was a Froakie when we last met – now a swift, sleek warrior frog called a Greninja (Gren- presumably from the French word for frog, grenouille)… but still a Water-type, and still vulnerable to Petal Dance.

Our battle over, Shauna is keen to reminisce, but we have company – Tierno and Trevor, who are also, it seems, in a fighting mood.  Wait, you guys know how to battle too!?  Has Serena been giving you lessons in secret?  Tierno challenges me first, and I open with Pan – right up against a Talonflame.  Clearly this isn’t going to work, so I switch to Odysseus, who suffers some nasty Acrobatics hits before bringing it down.  Tierno’s next Pokémon is a Roserade, so I switch in Ilex to soak up the incoming Petal Dance and hit back with Sludge Bomb.  That leaves Tierno’s partner, Crawdaunt, who, again, is still a Water-type.  Trevor kindly heals my Pokémon before our battle, sabotaging his only real chance at losing with dignity, then opens with his Raichu, who seems to have no better option than Thunderbolt against Pan and doesn’t last long.  Then, out comes… wha- where the hell did you get an Aerodactyl!?  I know Trevor’s good with obscure stuff, but wow.  Kid’s actually made me jealous!  I won’t willingly leave Pan in against a Flying-type, so I switch to Odysseus, who takes a Sky Drop relatively unscathed and blasts back with Surf.  Finally, Trevor sends out his partner Pokémon, Florges.  Odysseus does heavy damage with a well-placed Crabhammer, but can’t handle the Energy Ball that Florges sends back.  Florges is now in no shape to defeat Orion, though, and falls to a Shadow Ball.  In the aftermath of our battles, my rivals feed me some of the standard lines about how wonderful it is to travel with Pokémon.  I can’t help but feel a little swell of pride; they’ve managed to acquire some pretty strong partners (hell, I don’t even have a Goodra yet; I’ve been clued in on Sliggoo’s unorthodox evolution method – rain in the overworld, and at least level 50 – but the moment Pytho hit level 49, Kalos was swept by an annoyingly mysterious drought) and might even make decent lieutenants in my new regime.  Tierno and Trevor mention that Serena is in Shalour City training at the Tower of Mastery (perhaps the next time I see her one of her Pokémon will be able to Digivolve… her Absol, maybe?), make their excuses, and leave.  Shauna also has a parting gift for me: the Waterfall HM.  It’s no good to me until I have the Snowbelle Gym Badge, though, so let’s get on with it!

Ridiculous quote log:

“Do you see that hiker running back and forth across the bridge?  He’s been doing that for the last few days.  I wonder if he’s okay.”
“Come to think of it, I’ve been standing in the same spot for the last couple of days too!”
The drones are becoming self-aware!  Quickly, initiate quarantine protocol six-three-eight-alpha!  The contagion must not be allowed to spread!

What would your moveset look like if you were a Pokemon? Would you set up spikes? Try to sweep? Stall with toxic and protect? Would you want a moveset based on competitive functionality or for theme and flavor? You could talk about which 4 moves would you like or possibly what you would learn as you leveled up

Rest because f#$% mornings

Teleport because f#$% walking

Hypnosis because f#$% social interaction

Hyper Beam because f#$% everything

What if Dialga has a less control oriented relationship with time? In Mystery Dungeon Time and Darkness, the games sorta explore the different relationships the Legendary Pokemon have with the world. *Spoilers* we see later in the game a world where Dialga has reverted to a “primal” state and “time has stopped.” Yet time in certain senses continues, things can happen, nature, the planet, falling rocks, are frozen. Furthermore, time being disrupted caused Dialga to go bad not Dialga ruining time.

Okay.  So.  Time supposedly flows with the beat of Dialga’s heart.  No word on the direction of causality involved there, though.  Does Dialga’s heartbeat cause time to flow, or does the flow of time cause Dialga’s heart to beat?  It’s a trick question, of course, because human conceptions of cause and effect function within a ‘normal’ time stream (whatever that means) – if neither one can possibly come ‘first,’ then neither one can be the ‘cause’ of the other in the sense that we understand the word, so it seems that they just happen together.  If Dialga is alive, time flows, and vice versa.  Any action taken that hurts Dialga is, by its very nature, harmful to the natural passage of time, and anything capable of altering the flow of time is, again by its very nature, harmful to Dialga.

Time, from a human perspective, is basically a way that we have of measuring change.  We invented ways of measuring time in order to keep track of the movement of the earth around the sun.  If time ‘stopped,’ though, every means we could possibly have of measuring time would stop with it, including our thoughts, so realistically, how would we ever know?  It very well could have happened sixteen times before I had breakfast this morning!  Unless there’s some objective way of keeping time which is standard throughout the universe, doesn’t rely on local frames of reference, and keeps changing regardless of any disruptions, the idea of time ‘stopping’ is meaningless anyway.  Dialga’s heartbeat could be that perfectly objective timepiece.  Of course, that would mean that Dialga never really ‘travels’ through time at all, because time itself is defined by Dialga’s lifespan – he’s just aware of, and experiences, every moment of his own existence simultaneously.  Nor does he ‘control’ time, any more than humans can ‘control’ the beating of our hearts – it’s just what he is.

Do you think making water pokemon weak to poison type attacks would both improve game balance and be thematically sound? I believe it makes sense since pollution tends to muck up a water’s flow and is a great danger to sea creatures (which most water type pokemon are). And for that matter, why isn’t steel weak to electric? It’s conductive just like water, and it would give electric types more uses and balance out steel’s massive defenses.

On Water/Poison, I agree that it would make at least as much thematic sense as any of the other type matchups in Pokémon, and if you had asked me this a year ago I would have said yes without a second’s thought because Poison-types needed more love (I think I may actually have suggested this change myself at one point).  Today, though… well, Poison has already gotten a boost from being strong against Fairy.  Likewise for Electric/Steel, it would have made sense, but Steel’s just been nerfed by losing its resistances to Dark and Ghost attacks, while Electric-types have just been given immunity to all forms of paralysis.  I’m not prepared to say that these are bad ideas by any stretch of the imagination, but I want to let the new changes settle and rethink my priorities here before I start commenting on more adjustments.

Life and Death

I have Tereus drop me off in Geosenge Town and take a look around.  The ultimate weapon is really quite spectacular: a glassy blue-green flower, several stories high, with three long triangular petals that seem to have knocked over several buildings as it bloomed.  I head for the megalithic structure to the northwest of town, which is almost certainly the entrance to Team Flare’s secret base, and enter the building with Serena to confront Lysandre.  The elevator drops us in a sort of control room, where there are a few Team Flare members standing around, apparently uninterested in fighting, and some scientists performing last-minute calculations.  We overhear some of their discussion – the weapon is powering up, drawing energy from the hundreds of Pokémon they captured using stolen Pokéballs, but most of its power is coming from inside the facility itself.  We approach the front of the control room, where Lysandre is staring intently through a plate glass window at a chamber several levels below us.  At the bottom is… a tree.  An old, dead, white tree, hooked up to a complicated machine.  Xerneas’ tree.

Lysandre greets us as we approach him.  Serena defiantly proclaims our opposition to him, to which he restates his position: there are too many people in the world, and not enough resources; the only way for everyone to be happy is if there are fewer people.  People don’t share, Lysandre says – even Serena and I couldn’t share my Digivice.  “When there is only one of something, it can’t be shared.  When something can’t be shared, it will be fought over.  And when something is fought over, some must survive without it.”
“What about Pokémon?” Serena cries.  Wait, that’s a good point, actually.  Lysandre pauses.  He seems to be struggling to speak.  Finally, a tear rolls down his cheek and splashes on the floor.
“Pokémon… shall no longer exist.”

Wait WHAT!?

As long as there are Pokémon, Lysandre explains sorrowfully, people who can control them will use them to conquer and steal from others.  It’s better if they all go now.  He shakes his head briskly, as if to clear it, and walks towards us.  If it’ll take another battle to keep me and Serena from interfering with the ultimate weapon, so be it.  Lysandre’s Mienfoo and Murkrow have evolved now, into Mienshao and Honchkrow, which complicates things.  Odysseus and Pan have to tag-team Mienshao, and Pan is knocked out by its Acrobatics (I admittedly have… something of a blind spot for Flying attacks), but I manage to heal Odysseus and finish Mienshao, as well as Honchkrow.  Gyarados flattens Odysseus with its Outrage, and I switch to Orion, but this Gyarados isn’t falling for the same trick twice; he fights through his confusion and defeats Orion with a powerful Earthquake.  I have Photia turn his incredible strength against him with Foul Play, which brings Gyarados down in a couple of turns, and out comes Pyroar, who finishes Photia with a mighty Fire Blast.  Finally, I send in Pytho, dampen Pyroar with a Rain Dance, and drown it in Muddy Water.  Lysandre sighs heavily and asks why I bother.  “What are you really protecting?” he asks.  “A tomorrow that will only end up being worse than today?”  I glare at him, and something inside me snaps.

“You just don’t get it do you?  You think you’re some great visionary who’s seen the only way to peace and prosperity with your ‘how can I possibly save everyone?’ fallen hero bull$#!t, but you’re just taking the easy way out!   Any barbarian can unleash death to destroy a civilisation; it takes true greatness to build an empire of new life!  You think that as long as Pokémon exist, people will use them for war and theft?  Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet, bub!  So I’ll tell you what’s going to happen.  I am going to go down there.  Your ridiculous little paprika-flavoured goon squad are going to try to stop me, and they are going to fail.  I am going to attune to this precious legendary Pokémon of yours.  Then I am going to take a large, rough, jagged object the size and approximate shape of a Farfetch’d and his leek, and wedge it deep within your most private crevice, and when I have done that my Pokémon and I are going to conquer this silly backwards little region and rule it together, because that is what trainers and Pokémon do.  We destroy our enemies, protect our friends, and enslave our inferiors to build glorious monuments to our own greatness!  Now what is wrong with that?”

Lysandre and Serena are both staring at me, jaws hanging open.  In fact, so is practically everyone else in the control room.  I look around, shrug, and lunge at Lysandre.  He flinches, and I seize the moment to run for the stairs to the lower levels, cackling maniacally as I go.  Serena looks toward the stairs, then at Lysandre, then back to the stairs, then at Lysandre again, throws up her arms in defeat, and follows me.  Together, we fight our way through several Team Flare grunts and admins defending the stairwells and passages leading down to Xerneas’ chamber.  About halfway down, we are joined by Shauna, who… wants to cheer for us, I guess?  I grudgingly agree to let her tag along; she’s made it this far without being killed, after all – and she even manages to help out.  When we last saw Clemont, the Lumiose City Gym Leader, he gave Shauna a machine for solving puzzles, which she uses to hack into the security door at the bottom of the last stairwell and get us inside.  That… is an incredibly powerful and potentially mischievous piece of technology she’s been toting around all this time.  Too bad it breaks after one use.  As we step through the door and behold the ultimate weapon’s power system, pulsing gently as it leeches energy from Xerneas’ tree, a group of six Team Flare admins materialise from nowhere and attack us.  Shauna panics and flees, chased by two of them, and Serena runs to help her, leaving me to deal with the other four.  Photia hardly breaks a sweat turning their minds inside out, and they flee to gather reinforcements, leaving me alone with the tree.  I call to Xerneas, and it cries out in response.  The tree glows with a brilliant light, and the rainbow stag bursts forth in all its glory, shattering the machine binding it.  It doesn’t want to be enslaved to Lysandre.  It wants my help – but first, as always, we have to battle.

Xerneas, the embodiment of life, is an extremely powerful Fairy-type mixed attacker with an ability, Fairy Aura, that gives Fairy-type techniques like Moonblast additional power.  Like many legendary Pokémon, he comes with a signature move: Geomancy, a two-turn boosting technique that raises special attack, special defence and speed by two levels (slap on a Power Herb and this thing is Quiver Dance on steroids!).  I command Ilex to wear him down with Nature Power and disable him with Sleep Powder, then start throwing Pokéballs.  It doesn’t take long for one to stick.  I walk over to the Pokéball lying on the ground, dismissing Photia back to the PC network, and pick it up… and everything changes.

I’m… alive.  Xerneas’ power is intoxicating; his presence makes me feel like a veil has been lifted from my eyes, almost like I’m seeing colour for the first time.  Xerneas can see and feel life itself, vibrant and glorious, and his supernatural senses are flooding my mind.  Although my back is turned, I know that Serena and Shauna are back in the room – I can feel their lives, radiant amongst the glimmering pinpricks of the microbes in the air.  I feel like if I focussed I could feel every living thing in Kalos.  I decide to try.  Dimly, I hear a voice.  “What a startling development!  I never would’ve thought you were really a chosen one!”  It’s Lysandre.  He has built his own Digivice in the form of a finger ring, powered by some monstrous contraption – three buzzing metal insects, tethered to a brass gauntlet, all wired up to an electronic visor.  None of it is breathing, none of it is alive; I quickly lose interest and return to my attempts to expand my mind.  Lysandre continues talking – he is disgusted with Xerneas for wanting help from a mere human, and seems to be unwilling to admit defeat yet.  I pay little attention, still curiously testing the limits of Xerneas’ senses, trying to touch the lives of absent friends… until he says one thing: “I’ll be taking the Legendary Pokémon back now!”  Wait… what?  My mind snaps back to the room we’re in, focussing once more on my physical senses.  He wants to take Xerneas away from me?  Oh, dear… what a stupid man.

I thought I knew what it was like to work together with a Pokémon, but the sheer joy of fighting with Xerneas is something else.  He seems to respond as much to my thoughts as to my words, striking down Lysandre’s Mienshao with Moonblast before it can take a single step.  As he calls on his Honchkrow, I command Xerneas to tap into a nearby ley line with Geomancy.  I feel the sting of Honchkrow’s Steel Wing as it slices at Xerneas’ hide, threatening his concentration, but he fights through it and blows the bird Pokémon away with another Moonblast.  Pyroar’s fire repels the lunar onslaught for only a moment before he suffers the same fate.  Finally Lysandre calls upon his Pokémon partner, Gyarados, using his technology and their bond to let it Digivolve into an even more monstrous and terrible version of its former self – to no avail.  One final Moonblast finishes it.  I walk forward to stand by Xerneas and rest my hand on his flank as we return to dreaming of the life of Kalos.  Somewhere in the background, I am aware of Serena and Shauna’s voices.  They are encouraging Lysandre not to give up on his old life, to go back to helping people and build a better future for everyone.  I’m no longer sure it matters.  Joy, suffering… it’s all still life, isn’t it?  Isn’t life all that’s important?  Or… is that Xerneas talking?  I shake my head, trying to clear it.  Lysandre is still speaking.  He wants to use the trickle of Xerneas’ energy left in the weapon.  “Let us live forever… that’s right!  I shall grant you eternal life!  I’ll give you the pain of endlessly waiting for a beautiful world to finally be built!”  That… that doesn’t sound so bad, actually… An eternity basking in the radiance of life with Xerneas, my mind floating amongst all the living things in the entire world… I ignore Serena and Shauna’s protests and let myself drift off.

Hands, dragging me… pulling me onto Xerneas’ back… carrying me away… up and out…

Some hours later, I wake up in Geosenge Town.  There is a huge crater where the ultimate weapon used to be.  Left and Right are standing over me in their superhero masks, along with Shauna, Tierno, Trevor and Serena.  While Serena, Shauna and I were below, the others had been fighting to free the Pokémon connected to the Geosenge menhirs.  Lysandre is nowhere to be seen.  Did he succeed in making himself immortal?  Or did he die in the collapse of the hideout?  Is he down there, buried beneath the rubble, broken but unable to die?  I can’t feel his life anymore; Xerneas’ magical perception has left me.  Once the others are satisfied that I am once again relatively sane and in no immediate danger, they disperse, suggesting that we all pick up where we left off in Anistar City.  Once I am the only one left, AZ approaches me.  He’s free at last, and means to return to his search for his missing partner.  I wish him luck as he trudges away.  Will the poor guy ever find his Pokémon?  Will we ever find out what happened to Lysandre?  And what the hell is this ‘intriguing stone’ Tierno gave me back in Shalour City?

As for me, the dizzying high of my first exposure to Xerneas has left me, but the world somehow seems brighter, more magnificent than ever before – making me more determined than ever before to conquer it, with my new legendary partner Pokémon by my side!

Ridiculous quote log:

“You fools!  You don’t even have suits!”
…yeah, because those white Team Flare suits make you look so classy.

“Not having a ton of money is really stressful, you know…”
Oh, I feel your pain, dude; it must be really hard to be a leader in an organisation with a ¥ 5,000,000 membership fee…

About Accuracy, in Pokemon, moves like Flamethrower are considered entirely superior to moves like Fire Blast because of the later’s chance of missing, but what if these moves balanced more? Take Flame Burst, Flamethrower, and Fire Blast… lets say Flame Burst has less power (50-60) and perfect accuracy, flamethrower has less accuracy (85) same damage, and Fire Blast has the same damage with 70 accuracy. Do you think this would have better trade-offs or be a worse set up?

Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.  I know that Flamethrower and Fire Blast have both been reduced in power slightly in X and Y, and I’m not sure how people are reacting to that, but in the older generations people didn’t consider Flamethrower “entirely superior” at all.  The way it’s generally seen is that by multiplying power by accuracy you can get an estimate of the amount of damage a move will do on average, and if the less accurate move is still stronger, it’s worth it.  Using the 5th generation  numbers, you’ll usually do more damage with Fire Blast: 95 x 100% = 95 for Flamethrower, but 120 x 85% = 102, which is a bit higher (contrast Thunderbolt/Thunder, where Thunder’s much lower 70% accuracy means that, on average, you’ll do more damage with Thunderbolt unless you have rain support – 120 x 70% = 84).  The 6th generation numbers give a similar kind of result.  The reliability of the 100%-accurate moves can be attractive, but more powerful moves also have a better chance to one-shot an opponent, which can be extremely important (and, of course, there are a couple of Pokemon who can learn Flamethrower but not Fire Blast, like Electivire and Zoroark, but they’re kind of a minority).  It’s also much easier to run out of PP when using Fire Blast, especially against opponents with Pressure.  As a result, Fire Blast is generally preferred, but there’s room for personal taste.  Honestly, I’m totally okay with this balance.

The values you suggest give us 60 x 100% = 60 for Flame Burst, 90 x 85% = 76.5 for Flamethrower, and 110 x 70% = 77 for Fire Blast.  Flame Burst is still so much lower that it’s not really worth it, while Flamethrower and Fire Blast get values that are much closer together, so it’s harder to pick a clear winner, but people would probably still use both.  I think making the ‘reliable’ option so much weaker would just make things much more frustrating, to be honest.

Did you ever watch Pokémon Parodies? 2nd question, did you watch pokemon parody don’t mess with Pikachu? What do you think of these parodies? lol

Well, I don’t know the one you mentioned, but this one is amazing.  I think it’s still going, but very slowly.  You sort of have to accept from the beginning that it’s not going to make a great deal of sense, but once you get past that, it’s… well, it’s an experience, put it that way.  The party dynamic is basically as follows: Ash is mildly retarded, Pikachu is a psychopath, Brock is an incredibly creepy potential rapist, and Misty is the only sane person in the entire world.  Chaos ensues.  People who consider themselves completely mentally stable should stay well away.  Anyone else should jump right in.