The next morning there was a palatable excitement among my Pokemon during breakfast, but who could blame them? We would be starting our first Gym Challenge in a few hours after all. Unsurprisingly, the upcoming Gym Challenge was the main conversation topic during breakfast. While the predetermined team led by Mothra/Butterfree would be facing Stephanie and her Pokemon, the other dark gold stage Pokemon in our family would get their turn against the Gym Trainers I would have to face during the Gym Challenge.
I had no concrete idea how many I had to beat to earn the right to challenge Gym Leader Stephanie, but I did know due to past challenge records that previous challengers had to beat 3 to 6 Gym Trainers before they got the chance to battle Stephanie Stone. I did not mind facing more Gym Trainers if I had to, to be honest since it would give more of my Pokemon the chance to take part and earn some experience.
Depending on how many Gym Trainers I would have to face, I could be battling anything from 4 to 20 or so Pokemon, which would allow as many of my Pokemon to take the stage since I was planning to let each one battle once to give as many of them the chance to battle as possible.
I was naturally going to stream the whole thing, so everyone who would be able to witness the challenge, and I was expecting a surge in enthusiasm during everyone's training for the next week or so following the Gym challenge. Forget about the period following the Gym Challenge, everyone was already super enthusiastic during our morning training session, which was fine for the others, but I had to warn the dark golden ones to take it easy since they had an important battle ahead of them, which meant that they were only allowed to do what amounted to warm up exercises.
It was 11:24 a.m. by the time we were done with breakfast as well as our morning training and I chose to stay inside Utopia until 1 p.m. to spend some more time with my Pokemon before I had to leave to deal with the sand model and the Gym Challenge. Munchlax stuck to me during all this as well, just as he tended to do whenever I was in Utopia. I did not mind him doing that since he was quite young and I enjoyed seeing him marvel whenever he watched the training that the others did.
The few instances where he mimicked the movements he saw the others perform were quite cute and I mentally added them to my "cute moments I could tease my Pokemon with" folder. Naturally, there was nearly always a snack in Munchlax's hand while he hung around me since he always asked for more. The periods where his hands were empty were quite rare, so rare in fact that I had trouble thinking of such a moment from the top of my head.
Still, I had no problem with Munchlax's snacking habit since the snacks were actually good for him. Besides, we did not even have to worry about him becoming fatter than what was healthy for a Munchlax since he was moving quite a bit while he was following me. Granted there was a lot of leeway involved when one talked about being too fat once a member of the Snorlax/Munchlax line was involved, but the amount of movement Munchlax did while accompanying me was enough to keep him reasonably fit for a well-fed stageless Munchlax.
Anyway, we spent the next 90 minutes watching videos. First on PokeTube and then on PoryTom. Naturally, videos uploaded by Jessie were included in that. It was always nice to see that she was still uploading good performance videos, and I noticed Munchlax perking up whenever Lickilicky appeared in her videos, probably because of its looks, which was why I went ahead and streamed a few videos of grown Snorlax performing impressive feat.
Munchlax was mightily impressed by those videos and I was happy to see him behave like that since I wanted him to want to be like that. It would certainly make our future training easier if he trained with the goal of becoming a super-strong Snorlax. Regardless, before long it was 1 p.m. and I had to leave Utopia. I directly made my way over to the Beach/Surf Club and informed them of my arrival.
One of them accompanied me to my sand model and thanked me once again for allowing them to display it for the last few days. He left once I stored away the model and I followed suit since I had no reason to stay at the beach. I headed to one of the restaurants on my foodie list for lunch, and while I was eating my fill there, clone-me was accompanying my Pokemon for lunch inside Utopia.
There was still an hour until my gym challenge when I left the restaurant, but with nothing better to do, I made my way to the Gym in advance. I took a seat in the lobby and closed my eyes, pondering who I should start with against the first Gym Trainer. Mothra/Butterfree, Enji/Arcanine, Mars/Ursasol, Ignis/Gyarados, Stan/Gyarados, and Ryujin/Gyarados were the main team and would face Stephanie, so they were out.
That left Horus/Xatu, Seb/Nidoking, Gaia/Nidoqueen, Nyx/Umbreon, Osiris/Skellibra, Hera/Pidgeot, Parvati/Beedrill, Manami/Lapras, Abzu/Milotic, Tiamat/Milotic, Jade/Gyarados, Medusa/Gyarados, Abyss/Gyarados, Moka/Crobat, Shino/Yanmega, and Hashirama/Venusaur. Oh, wow, now that I was listing them like this I had to say that I truly had a lot of dark gold stage Pokemon.
I had yet to earn my first badge and I already had 22 dark gold stage Pokemon on my team, with only 6 of them being at the (mid) dark gold stage, while the other 16 were at the (high) dark gold stage. Frankly, it sounded absurd and honestly, it kinda was. I doubt that anyone, myself included, would believe this if he or she heard about it without being presented with proof. The thing was that this was not even the end of the matter since I was pretty certain that 5 to 6 of my current gold-stage Pokemon were going to break through to the next stage before the end of my Hoenn journey.
I was going to say it as it was, I was genuinely lucky that I had Professor Oak and the Aura Guardian Order on my side. I did not want to imagine the scrutiny and prodding I would have had to endure if not for having them in my corner. Heck, I would be interested in finding out how I managed to train up so many Pokemon to the dark gold stage in such a relatively short time if I were them.
Admittedly, I would not have dared to show my hand, at least Pokemon-wise, if I had not been convinced that the Order and the Professor would keep everyone from going too far. If not for my trust in them, I would have shown/revealed 3, 4, or at most 5 of my dark gold stage Pokemon. Well, my trust in them and my ability to hide inside Utopia if necessary. I knew even now that if sh*t truly hit the fan, I would/could say to hell with it, grab my parents as well as friends and hide inside Utopia for a few years if not decades.
I was certain that Rose, her parents, Jessie, Kinji, Erza, and probably Yoruichi would follow me to Utopia without any hesitation. The others may hesitate a bit due to their families, but to be honest, they would probably be perfectly safe even if they stayed outside precisely because of those families, so that was fine. Speaking of which, Kinji would most likely be fine on his own as well considering the strength of his Pokemon, but I was sure that he would still agree to join if I asked him to.
Anyway, my thoughts really strayed off-topic there and went off the deep end. I had yet to decide with whom I would start, so it was better to focus on that instead of worrying about some bad end scenario. In the end, I decided to go with Osiris/Skellibra as my first Pokemon and tentatively put Tiamat as the second one since I was assuming that the first battle would be against someone using only 2 Pokemon.
Decision made, I began to think about all the steel types I might face during this challenge along with their strengths and weaknesses since I still had to wait close to an hour until the start of my challenge. It was only at 2:50 p.m. that I opened my eyes and left my seat. I headed to the reception desk and I informed them that I was present though I doubted that they had failed to notice my presence until now. I mean, it was a bit hard not noticing someone sitting in the lobby for close to 40 minutes.
They asked me to wait for a moment and a minute or so later someone came to lead me to the challenger/waiting room. My guide showed me the door that would allow me direct entry to the battlefield and told me that I would be called onto the battlefield over the speaker once everything was ready before leaving. Considering how many Pokemon I was planning to use in this challenge I decided to put on a waistbag so that it would look as if I was taking out my PokeBalls from there.
This way my Pokemon would be able to watch the events through the livestream until it was their turn. Clone-me would simply recall them whoever I needed when I needed them and I would then take out the ball from Utopia while my hand was inside the waistbag. No one would find that suspicious, especially once it became clear why I used a waist bag to store my PokeBall instead of the standard trainer belt. Oh, and I was not worried about the carry limit thanks to my position as a Junior Professor, so if anyone brought that up, I had a legitimate justification at hand.
Regardless, I didn't have to wait long, just 3 to 4 minutes before I heard myself being announced over the speaker, so I stood up and made my way out of the door. I stepped onto the battlefield and saw a man in some kind of gym uniform waiting across from me. There was a crowd in the stands and I saw two displays showing the battlefield, which meant that there were cameras as well, though that was not surprising since there was battle footage online.
Honestly, as far as I knew, cameras recording and streaming Gym Battles was a pretty standard thing, though one could notify the Gym staff in advance if one did not want one's own battle to be recorded and/or streamed online. The only thing one could not block was the live audience since that decision was left entirely to the Gym.
Anyway, once I took my position, the referee began his spiel and I found out that this was going to be a 2 vs 2 battle without any substitutions. When he asked us if we were ready, I gripped Osiris' ball tighter and nodded, as did my opponent. The referee then began the countdown, and as soon as he gave the go, we released our Pokemon.
Osiris appeared on my side, while an Aggron appeared on the other side. Osiris' appearance caused some excitement as well as wonder, and I heard a few shouts of "Who's that Pokemon?", which brought a smile to my face. Nonetheless, both Pokemon ignored the crowd and performed their opening moves instead.
I saw Aggron release some sparkles, which I suspected could either be Rock Polish or Autotomize, though personally, I was hoping it was the latter since that would reduce the danger of Heavy Slam, which I was sure Aggron knew. Meanwhile, Osiris performed a Dragon Dance, and while the strength boost would be less useful due to Aggron's obscene physical endurance, the speed boost would certainly come in handy to keep the speed advantage, especially if the other side kept boosting its speed.
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