Well, we were planning on heading to the pokemon center after our fateful gym battle, but we end up waylaid by Juniper’s girlfriend instead.
Intrigued where this could be going, we follow Fennel into one of the apartment buildings that we were snooping around in yesterday when we were looking for the gym leader.
Without waiting for us to answer, she grabs Sin-kun by the wrist and drags us upstairs into her evil MILF laboratory.
Yeeees….? where are you going with this?
Ah. Um.
Hmmm…. 😳
Juniper’s feeding teenage trainers to her evil science girlfriend! We should have known.
…Oh. Help how?
Okay, that’s great. But We hope that she explains the difference between a TM and an HM now, since you can apparently re-use TMs multiple times!!
The HM she gives us is inevitably HM 01, “Cut”
Alright so that’s the same. Anything else?
So what, we can’t replace HM moves once they’re learned? That uh.
That fucking blows. Sin-kun never liked using an “HM slave” pokemon, preferring to spread them out over his usable team. So this presents a difficulty.
Oh here come the science crimes.
Ah, no, it’s nothing. She just wants to send us crawling around the rusty nails and broken glass factory. Well, we were going to do that anyway, so sure thing.
Wait, what? Sin-kun’s blase attitude dissolves when his brain catches up to what Fennel is saying. “Game Sync”? “Save Files”? So is the world of pokemon actually a game after all? Has he been sucked into a universe that actually plays by video game rules?
He asks her to back up and explain more about what that means, but Fennel acts like she hasn’t heard him and immediately changes the subject.
Sin-kun tries to ask again, but Fennel just smiles and chats happily away about trivialities about the pokedex, no matter waht he asks.
What was this about save files and game syncs?
Save file… Is that how he managed to return to the past and challenge Cress again?
Sin-kun finds himself unsettled as we make our way out of the building.
At least nothing stops us from hitting the pokemon center this time.
First thing’s first, we have to decide what to do about cut.
We get rid of Arsene’s sand attack, and give him Cut instead.
With that out of the way, no we can head back to the abandoned broken glass factory dream yard.
Here it is. Our nemesis. An annoying shrub.
Damn right we would! Arsene does the first useful thing of his career in our team and cuts down the offending small tree, giving us access to the factory.
But the second we try to go inside….
Bianca body checks us at high speed from behind, and Sin-kun nearly falls over.
She goes in ahead of us.
Well.. whatever. We follow her inside.
She stands there mumbling to herself while we explore.
Well, as we try to explore, anyway. There’s nothing particularly interesting to the west, though we manage a peek further into the building.
The second we try to go to the entrance, we hear something *weird*, and before we can follow up on it, Bianca grabs our hand again.
We tell her that we did, and in typical Bianca fashion she’s eager to check it out.
We head in first and let her follow us.
This must be the pokemon that Fennel was talking about.
It immediately fucking flees, because of course it does. We follow after and…
Oh no, who the hell invited the cosplay creeps?
Didn’t these guys say they wanted to protect pokemon from humans? This seems way more like harassing some random pokemon.
Bianca wasn’t there for the big stupid speech, so she has less of a clue what’s going on than we do. We’re about to fill her in when the guys start in on their own spiel.
Tired of their bullshit even just having met them, Sin-kun asks what their fucking deal is.
They tell us that Muuna and it’s evolution emit some kind of dream mist that let people see their dreams.
Before we can even have a minute to sit with that mask off, bald faced evil shit, they start slapping the fucking pokemon.
These guys suck. At least Team Rocket didn’t pretend to care about pokemon!
They start verbally harassing the poor munna as well, until Bianca cuts in.
You took the words right out of our mouth, Bianca. Well. Admittedly our version would have included a lot more swearing.
The plasma grunts aren’t upset by being called mean, however, if anything, they double fucking down on being huge assholes.
More like we’re going to kick your asses, right, Bianca?
…
…
Well, that’s sweet, Bianca, thank you. But we’re gonna kick their asses.
The grunt that comes after Sin-kun leads with a Patrat.
Because of course he does.
The stupid plasma grunt leads with leer, rather than attacking while Ganon turns up the heat, repeatedly using Ember.
Three embers, and the thing is toast, without ever getting a hit in.
And…
All he had was the Patrat.
They immediately start in-fighting. Dumb fucking mooks. That’s right, you are next!! Bring it on!
This one’s got exactly one fucking pokemon also, and its a purrloin. We let Ganon kick it’s ass, too.
It least this one manages to scratch us. For a grand total of four points of damage.
Sin-kun tells the grunt his mom’s fake nails do more damage than that.
At least Sin-kun got a level out of it.
Unfortunately, even with their asses thoroughly kicked, these two won’t stop harassing this poor fucking pokemon. One of the grunts starts kicking it AGAIN right in front of us.
Sin-kun is starting to think he is going to need some direct human-on-human violence here.
Biance is clearly as pissed off as we are, and the two of them make eye-contact, ready to use “tackle” all on their own together and show these creeps a thing or two.
However, before they came make their move, someone else enters the scene.
… Where the hell did you come from, old man?
….!!
There’s TWO of him now? Hello? What? are we seeing double?
He vanishes and reappears.
Fuck, fuck, FUCK. This is bad. This guy is some kind of a wizard.
At least the grunts are just as fucking piss terrified of this guy, mumbling about how this isn’t the Ghetsis the recruiter, or Ghetsis the tricksy speech maker.
This is Ghetsis when he’s pissed the fuck off.
Wonderful.
Sin-kun is really expecting to see these two get force lightening’d by Emperor Get-patine here.
…
Instead they run the fuck away so fast we barely even see it, and Ghetsis disappears in a flash.
While Sin-kun is trying to come to grips with what just happens, another pokemon comes out of the woodwork.
The fuck if we know, Bi!!
Who the fuck knows at this point??
…maybe????
We have no idea what Bianca was planning to say unfortunately, because we’re assaulted from behind by a suspicious science MILF.
Uhuh, yeah you totally weren’t stalking us through the bushes, right?
Donno, doc! You tell us!
The pokemon talk to one another for a minute and then they leave. Sin-kun sure can’t blame them for getting the fuck out of there!
DONNO DOC! YOU TELL US!
Bianca brings Juniper up to speed with the whole situation.
Fennel explains that Musharna saw Munna in trouble, and conjured a dream-illusion of Ghetsis in order to scare the Plasma grunts away and save Munna. At least that makes sense. A little bit of our unease creeps away.
The guy isn’t a wizard, it was just normal pokemon magic.
While the doc is musing, she notices something laying on the ground.
… Yeah, sure, doc, whatever you say.
Random??? Well, it was sure something alright. One thing’s for sure, those Plasma guys proved that they are bad fucking news. Not that we really needed proof of that.
Bianca suggests that Sin-kun should head to Fennel’s house.
As much as we want to argue and also poke around with her in the bushes, Sin-kun feels like he needs to sit down for a few minutes and think about… everything.
We head back to the pokemon center.