Kierans Pokemon Challenge: Episodes two

Having completed the trainers school at the end of my previous session I was ready to continue my challenge and was trying to be a bit more positive, thinking the tediousness was behind me. However, I was mistaken as following healing BA Baracus at the Pokemon Center I was approached by the owner of the Poketch Company telling me about their offer for anyone who can find the three clowns in Jubilife City, I was going to skip this as I only ever use it as a step counter for eggs but thought I could manage without it this time. So I headed east to leave the city and head to Orburgh City and my first gym battle, instead I was confronted by a man who insisted that I take part in the offer. Trying my best to get out of this I headed North to route 204, which turned out to be quite handy for levelling up my Chimchar BA Baracus in the long grass as ember made quick work of the Budew and the trainers there. Whilst in this area I was a bit nervous of the long grass as I wasn’t sure if I’d encounter a Machop which wouldn’t be Ideal before evolving BA as it’d mean I’d have to give up using him. I finally got to the Ravaged Path only to find that I couldn’t advance any further in that direction until I could use Rock Smash. I didn’t let this dishearten me in my attempt to avoid the clowns (even if this was taking longer than actually finding them), so I headed West only to find another dead end, an old rod that would be useless because of my challenge, and defeat in my attempt to avoid the clowns.

I reluctantly spoke to the clowns who fortunately all had the correct answer  in the right place that my frantic tapping the B button didn’t result in an endless loop, and I could finally head East toward Orburgh City. this time the man didn’t stop me and I headed out onto route 203 and my first battle with my rival The Boss (I named my character Big Boss after the Metal Gear character so it made sense). His Starly wasn’t a problem only managing to hit one quick attack before my ember took it out, but I was a bit worried about his Piplup although I had four levels on him my attacks of scratch and ember weren’t going to be great against it and it would know bubble. I was pretty lucky though as The Boss only seemed to want to growl at me, and I was able to chip away with my attack to the point where he throws out an awesome Star Wars reference with, “Don’t get cocky Kid!” and then hitting me with pound which took me uncomfortably low in hit points. So I resorted to using a potion just in case but found that he went back to growling which was fine with me as i scratched my way to victory.

I continued on to route 203 and encountered my first Shinx and Kricketot, the four trainers were easy enough and the XP I gained brought me tantalisingly close to level 14 and the evolution. I headed into the tall grass to grind out the last bit of XP to get BA to evolve into a Monferno, the encounter music starts and disaster… I found my very first shiny Pokemon! There it was all sparkles and everything a shiny Starly, it might as well have been taunting me. I tried to console myself with the knowledge that at least it wasn’t a Machop and the end of me using BA but it wasn’t working. I stared at it and thought would it really matter if I caught it I mean who would know right? I could just not write about it and ignore the encounter, but if I caught it in those circumstances I wouldn’t be able to tell anyone about it either. I knew what had to be done, I hovered over the command for ember trying to think of a work around, and then I pressed the attack and watched as the critical hit wiped away my new dream of owning a shiny Staraptor. I tried to be content when I saw that at least it had tipped the XP meter over to Level 14 and my Chimchar became a Monferno but in my grief I managed to bungle again as I rushed through the text only to accidentally forget scratch instead of leer when learning mach punch. I contemplated switching off without saving, that’d mean that the shiny Starly had never really existed and BA would still know scratch, but remembered those damn clowns…