Following that Sceptile situation, I had Tatsumaki/Alakazam bring us back to Brightwick City before leaving the city's perimeter towards the next destination on our journey to Fortree City. Drafthill City was where I would win my second B-rank Badge and fourth overall, and the ground type Gym was our final stop before I would have to face my second Major Gym for my next S-rank Badge. It took us 9 days to make it to Drafthill from Brightwick, and since it was only 5 p.m. when we made it there, my first stop was the Drafhill Gym. We managed to make it to Hardfort at the beginning of the fifth/final week of the month, and as luck would have it I managed to snag myself a date before the 21st month rolled out, though it was on Kyoday, so literally the last day of the month.
That gave me 4 days to prepare for the Gym Challenge/Battle. This Gym being one that specialized in ground types would have made it a no-brain choice to face the challenge with my various water types. However, the fact that Kun/Azuraid was currently the only one that was at the gold stage meant that the others were too strong and hence not an option, at least in my eyes. I was naturally excluding Squirtle in this since he was too weak. Still, tricky reputation or not, this was a B-rank Badge, and even though I had registered for the 3-star challenge, my sources which obviously referred to the net and the locals, assured me that I would be facing only gold-stage Pokemon throughout the whole challenge, Gym Leader Battle included.
Honestly, due to my hope that using them would push them past the final hurdle, I chose to go with Kun/Azuraid, Luna/Clefable, and Thor/Raichu again even though they got to battle during the Brightwick challenge. I compensated the others by allowing them to choose something they wanted which resulted in them rewatching Lilo & Stitch while Kun, Luna, and Thor did some extra training for the Gym challenge. Interestingly enough, Mars/Ursasol was the one that ended up advancing to the (high) dark gold stage at the end of the regular post-lunch training session. I felt like that because his advancement happened a month earlier than I expected, though that was a welcome miscalculation on my part so I was not complaining.
Mars had been rather pumped during the training since he was looking forward to watching the next episode of Lilo & Stitch. That he had already seen the episode once and hence knew what happened did not curb his enthusiasm for the series; In fact, he was not the only one like that since pretty much everyone else was behaving the same way. Honestly, it was even distracting the training trio a bit since I did catch their eyes occasionally flitting toward the sky where the episodes were being projected to. Still, since that did not interfere with their training I did not stop them. Either way, Kyoday eventually arrived and I could be seen making my way to the Drafthill City Gym at 11 a.m.
After waiting for a little less than 10 minutes, I went up to the battlefield and got to face the first Gym Trainer. The crowd could not believe their eyes when I sent out Thor, an electric type, as my first Pokemon. Their surprise only grew when Thor went and took down all three of the Gym Trainer's ground types. While it did take a lot out of Thor to do so, that was exactly what I wanted, so I was pretty happy with the result, unlike the lady I beat, whose frustration at losing against Thor did not slip my senses. I briefly considered whether I should say a few words to console her, but then I decided against it. Losing was literally part of her job description after all, so I was sure she would get over it.
The second Gym Trainer suffered the same fate, though he got to face Luna, which seemed to be more acceptable to both him and the crowd since the hubbub from the crowd and the frustration coming from the Gym Trainer at being swept were much smaller compared to the lady from the first battle. I did have to admit though that I had not expected the Sandaconda he sent out at the end, so that was a pleasant surprise for me. I honestly had a hard time resisting the urge to go up to Migel after I had beaten him and requested that he allow me to observe/study his Sandaconda; In this case, I actually meant that literally.
Nearly all people that had seen a Sandaconda had only seen one in its coiled state, which to be fair was pretty much the species standard "form", and I really really wanted to see for myself how long Sandaconda would be when it stretched out its body. The average length that Sandaconda was known for was around 4 meters, but that was in its coiled state. I suspected that Sandaconda's actual length was anywhere between 12 to 20 meters, but I was not sure. It was actually shocking how rare the data that I found on this was but the ones that I could find all fit into this with the exception of a single case where a 48 meters Sandaconda had been measured/documented, but that Sandaconda was a confirmed Alpha, so its length was not unreasonable even if that kind of length probably made it eligible for the title of Kaiju.
Nonetheless, I pushed my curiosity to the back since I had to face the Gym Leader first, though I made a mental note to approach Migel after I had earned the Badge. Anyway, after Migel vacated the battlefield, the Gym Leader finally got his intro, and once the emcee was done hyping Lukav Toprak, and Lukav was done with the usual Gym Leader babble, I got the fight that I came for. I sent out Kun and the audience was rather surprised that I used a Pokemon that was not only not at a disadvantage but actually had a rather notable advantage.
I was not sure if Kun's luck was just bad, but his first opponent ended up directly invalidating his water advantage. Still, Kun managed to beat Quagsire even after nearly half of his move pool became useless. When Lukav sent out a Whiscash next I knew he was messing with me. Okay, I had to admit that it may have been a logically sound decision, but that did not mean that I had to like it. Especially since his choice made Kun expend more energy than planned which put the plan for him to solo the Gym Leader at risk. When Lukav released his third Pokemon and I saw a Gastrodon appear before us I felt my eyebrows twitch.
I could not help but complain inside my head whether this guy was a water-type Gym Leader or a ground one. Like seriously, three out of four revealed Pokemon was a lot. Not to mention that two of them were immune to water damage. Nonetheless, I kept quiet and just let Kun take care of this. Gastrodon did put up more of a challenge than I expected since it seemed to love spamming Ancient Power and Mud Shot, but eventually, it fell to Kun as well, though honestly at this point my boy had expended a lot of stamina and energy so I was not sure if he would be able to take down Lukav's final Pokemon.
Yet, I knew that Kun wanted to give it a try, so I left him in instead of making use of my single substitution to finish the battle 4-0. Worst case he lost and I sent out Thor or Luna to tie things up, but I was perfectly fine with a 4-1 as well if it meant that my Pokemon were able to do their thing and get pushed as much as possible while we were at it. When Lukav pulled out the PokeBall of his final Pokemon I honestly expected him to release a Swampert or a freaking Seismitoad to prove his worth as undercover water-type Gym Leader, and that thought made me reflect on the fact that there was a startling amount of ground/water type Pokemon.
When I saw what Lukav actually released, I was not sure if I should be relieved or not. On one hand, Lukav ended up proving me wrong by sending out a Claydol, which caused a hubbub among the crowd since it was a very rare Pokemon; On the other hand, Claydol were rather annoying to face. Even though Claydol was not immune to water moves or resistant to ice moves, it was capable of using Teleport to move around/dodge, which made it just as bothersome to face, if not more so due to its psychic abilities which included levitation. What followed was a cat-and-mouse game between the two.
Kun occasionally managed to do some damage, but Claydol was dodging most of his attacks, and it sometimes did build up enough breathing room to boost itself, which made things harder for not only Kun but also his eventual substitution since it had become clear that he would not be able to take down Claydol, though that was definitely not for the lack of trying. As I suspected, Kun eventually ran out of juice, which left him open to Claydol's counterattack. The moment that happened, I forfeited Kun to avoid giving Claydol any extra time to boost itself more than it already had.
The audience gave a standing ovation for Kun and I let him soak that in for a few moments before I recalled him. Luna got sent out next, and her battle against Claydol was not easy; Mostly because of the number of boosts Claydol had undergone. Still, Luna made use of Gravity and Teleport to drag things out until she had performed enough boosts to get the advantage over Claydol. Eventually, Luna stopped focusing on evading, which told everyone that it was her turn to attack, and once she went on the offense, it took less than 5 minutes for Claydol to fall unconscious which was rather long considering that it had been facing a Luna that was trying to actively take it down.
With Claydol down, I was declared the victor, and Gym Leader Lukav handed me the Drafthill Badge. The Badge looked like the standard B-rank Badge, with the B on one side and the stars on the other; There were 3 stars in this case. The Badge was a light brown to indicate that the Gym was a ground-type one, though, after that Gym Battle, I honestly would have believed it if the Badge had been either partially or fully blue. I was obviously kidding, at least about the partial part Badges gained from Gyms with a type specialization had only a single color.
I naturally thanked Lukav for the Badge, and after Lukav nodded in acknowledgment, Migel, who had been standing beside Lukav, spoke up. He declared that the challenge was officially over and politely asked the spectators to leave. I had not forgotten the Sandaconda matter, so once I saw that Migel was done with the crowd, I asked him if I could take a closer look at his Sandaconda. Migel threw me a weird look that got even weirder when I elaborated and said that I just wanted to find out the length of his Sandaconda. It took me a moment to realize that my words could sound suspect/be misunderstood, and I just cleared my throat to hide a laugh before asking if he was fine with releasing his Sandaconda from its PokeBall right now or if he wanted to hand it to the PokeCenter first.
That was when Migel realized that I was referring to his literal Sandaconda and not whatever his confused mind had cooked up. I could feel his embarrassment, though outwardly he only chuckled awkwardly before saying that he did not mind letting me take a look at Sandy. He then released his Sandaconda and told her what I wanted to do. After getting their permission, I brought out a measuring tape and asked Sandaconda to stretch if she didn't mind. Thankfully, she did not refuse, and once she was done stretching, I began measuring her. I learned that Sandy was an impressive 17.6 meters long, and after satisfying my curiosity, I thanked them both before leaving the Gym.
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