The battle begins — and Falkner opens with a pidgey.
But Faris comes out swinging.
I guess fire clips wings almost as good as electricity, huh?
Damn you. We’ll see how your smelly rodent deals with Pidgeotto!
This is the second of only two Pokemon Falkner’s got. It’s the last thing standing between us and the Zephyrbadge.
The good news is that even with Gust, Falkner’s pidgeotto doesn’t hit very hard.
Except when he lands a crits.
And we still don’t have any attacks that are super-effective against flying-types. A single potion is enough to keep Faris alive, though — long enough for the handful of Embers needed to bring Pidgeotto almost to his knees.
After a second Gust critical, I bring Edge in to finish the job.
And that’s all she wrote.
Not much of a challenge for our first boss fight. But I’ll take it.
You’re not the one who got batted around out there, chief.
Yep. That about sums up that miserable failure of a fight, Falkner.
My dad’s cherished bird Pokemon…
If you’re tight on space, you could always bury the birds in the same grave as your pops, kiddo.
…geez. Too far, man.
Just take this garbage and get out of here.
The Badge and a TM. TMs teach your Pokemon moves that they couldn’t learn otherwise. This one is Mud-slap, which apparently deals damage and lowers accuracy. “In other words, it is both defensive and offensive.”
All of our Pokemon can learn it, but I also don’t know what other moves they’ve got coming… I’m not sure if I should use the TM up. We’ll hold off for a bit.
Well, now that we’ve trounced Falkner and destroyed his father’s legacy, I suppose it’s time to move on.
The punk down south even lets us through without any more trouble.
Must have heard tell of how bad we beat Falkner’s ass.
Before we even get that far, though, our phone starts ringing. It’s Professor Elm.
What’s up, doc?
Hey, Cid. We discovered something about that EGG. My assistant is at the Pokemon Center there in Violet City. Could you talk to him? Great, thanks.
To the PokeCenter, then.
Elm’s man explains the situation: for some reason, the egg won’t hatch unless it spends some time with active Pokemon. He wants us to take it.
Actually, he doesn’t even give us the choice. He forces the thing on us and peaces out.
Okay, bye!
Route 32 awaits. We check our supply of BALLs…
And roll out.
So who’s up next?
Hahahaha oh my gosh. Is that a sheep Pokemon?
This is my favorite thing ever. Get in this PokeBall, you beautiful doofus.
Best day of my life.
We’re calling her Maria for the sole reason that “Maria the Mareep” is fun to say.
What else has Route 32 got in store for our wandering band of heroes? Well, there’s a few trainers to fight.
Some… more eager than others.
There’s also this gosh dang pair of poliwags that we can barely fight off because they put half the gosh dang party to gosh dang sleep.
And finally, we have a grand time with an old-fashioned mareep growl-off.
And all the while we’re bumbling around on Route 32 — well, remember that kid who we gave our phone number earlier? Yeah, he’s calling about every five minutes to pull a Navi on us.
…and to tell us which Pokemon he just almost caught.
That’s great, kid. But stop calling me. I’m doing important Pokemon-murder stuff!
