I ultimately decided to take along Mona the Solosis to replace Betty. Training her was a bit of a pain, since she initially had Hidden Power grass as her only attacking move, but she learned Future Sight and Psyshock soon enough. The trip through Chargestone Cave could proceed.
And I'm starting to hate this cave. Further in, I stumbled across a Rotation Battle, where I lost Oliver to a Mirror Shot from a Ferroseed. And I was very lucky not to lose anyone else right there. So much for a team of six. And for not letting Oliver die.
Of course, just when I say that I hate this place, I run into another shiny. A Joltik this time. What's going on? I never, ever find shinies. And now I get two in one run? I'll have to take a look at it, once I reach the next town. Now that both of my bug types are dead, I may just add it to the party.
I managed to get out of the cave without any more dead Pokémon, but I feel a little underleveled. I checked the shiny Joltik at the PC, but it's not what I need right now. So I left it alone for now and took out Tony the Sandshrew instead, since I still don't have an efficient solution against steel and/or electric types.
Just when I went looking for a good spot to level him, I encountered Professor Juniper. For the first time in the entire game!? Wow, that really is late. And she gave me the Master Ball. Just like that. Well, thanks. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to grind.
After I hunted down a couple Audino and battled the trainers surrounding Celestial Tower, I finally went inside to look for the professor. Unexpectedly, she was right by the entrance. And she gave me the Lucky Egg. Argghhhh!! Are you trying to tell me I could have just went in here immediately and get done with the training much faster?!
Not like I can change that now. I battled my way up the tower and it was just as unspectacular as in the first game. I don't know. For some reason, I always expect something to happen when I ring the bell. Whatever. Now that that was out of the way, I headed to the gym. The mechanics were weird, but I think I prefer this to the cannons.
Regarding Skyla, I didn't expect many problems. Bluebell crunched her Swoobat to death easily. Mimi was supposed to fight her Swanna, but it annoyed the heck out of me with Feather Dance, so I switched out into Mona to finish the job. I sent out Tony to deal with the Skarmory, but in the end, the Rocky Helmet did half the job, since I missed more than half of my Rock Tombs. In retrospect it would have been faster, if I had just let Sam take care of it. Either way, I got the badge with no problem. And with the TM Aerial Ace, I could replace that terrible Rock Tomb on Tony, that I actually just taught him for the gym. It probably wasn't a bad idea to have one move that wouldn't miss, even if it was relatively weak. But still... wasn't that scene around the TM the same as in the previous game? That seemed awfully familiar.
What happened next was unexpectedly delightful. Upon the professor's request, Skyla flew us to a small secluded place called Lentimas Town. Bell tagged along for the ride. There was an inactive volcano and, a bit off the roadside, I found an old house. I must say, they did a great job with this. The atmosphere was great and the hints of the ghost girl's story were touching. What creeped me out the most were probably the random trainers in the house. What are you doing in there?! Why do you challenge me to a battle when I barely just entered the room? Who are you anyway? Why would you hang out in that house?! Don't you think that place is strange? Not even in the slightest? Geez, I don't know why they seemed so creepy to me, but they did.
I took the Lunar Wing and saw that I got out of the house. Next stop, Reversal Mountain. Bell wanted to accompany me, so we explored the caverns together. It didn't take long until we found the right stairs, but I wanted to look around some more, so I led her off into a different direction. When I tried to leave through the other exit, she decided to stay there, however. Well, since there was another town right by the volcano, I bought some new repels and looked around a bit.
I tried to go to the next route, but Hugh stopped me and challenged be to a battle. And, well, what can I say... His Unfezant was quickly defeated by Bluebell, but then he sent out his Serperior. I still can't believe what happened next. Boris' Fly missed, allowing the stupid snake to Coil twice. The Venoshock wouldn't kill in two hits, so there was another Coil before it started attacking. Boris got hit with a critical hit Slam and died. Hoping that Bluebell would be faster to finish it off, I sent him out. Unfortunately, I forgot that the rival heals up his Pokémon. So, Return barely scratched it.
The Serpiroyal was then faster and killed Bluebell with a Leaf Blade. Mona was my last hope, but she died to another crit. Mimi, Sam and Tony were all slow and weak to grass, so Hugh had an easy time sweeping my whole team. They all died.
Well, that was really dumb. That never actually happened to me before. I never lost my whole team against a single Pokémon or even in a single battle. I'm going to continue, since I want to play through the game and I don't use the Game Over when you faint rule, but I need to think about what to do now. With the more recent catches I have a bit of a variety, so I guess I can get a new, balanced team. But for now, I'm going to stop here and cry a bit on the inside.