Our hero Sig starts off with his buddy Rex the Rhyhorn in the small town of Pallet. His trainer's journey is pretty conventional, obtaining a Caterpie and an evolution-refusing Pikachu from Route 2 and Viridian Forest (respectively). Brock falls to Confusion, and Sig continues on to fight the trainers on Route 3. With that complete, he happily scoops up a proto-Gyarados from a sleazy salesman and begins the long... long... process of training it.
Along the way, he defeats several foul thieves attempting to take his rare Rhyhorn from him. Upon exiting the cave, Rex proceeds to demonstrate his value by soloing Sig's rival. Bolt the Pikachu, who was flattened by the rival's Pidgeotto, embarks upon a courageous training montage to make up for its initial weakness. Along the way, they pick up an incredibly lazy Abra who refuses to fight, even to evolve. Oh well. At least it has Teleport.
After fixing a horrible scientific abomination, Sig receives a cruise-liner ticket and a bucket of brain bleach. Hoping the cruise will finish the job of wiping the sight from his memory, he exits Cerulean, only to be assaulted by a paranoid thief. The fiend's dastardly Drowzee hypnotizes and confuses all Sig's Pokemon, blowing through them like a fell wind, until... Mal the Magikarp summons the power within and brings it down. Yes. Really. That isn't a euphemism for evolving into Gyarados. Somehow the Magikarp defeated Drowzee when everything else became stunlocked by sleep and confusion. Sig scratches his head and heads to the Gym, hoping a new Badge will help reality start making sense again.
The battle with Misty is eventful, with Bolt first taking out Staryu, then falling to Starmie in its turn. The courageous Pikachu managed to paralyze the beast, however, and Free the Butterfree struggles mightily to bring it down. But it, in turn, fails, and all seems lost... until Rex comes in and rends from Starmie the last bit of its HP! Sig exits the Gym victorious.
Several battles and a new Bellsprout later, Sig finds himself on the verge of defeat, as his best prospect for taking down a Spearow is Mal... and the Magikarp pulls out a win, completely unassisted, with a sliver of health remaining. Reality continues to be weird as Sig, after healing, heads to Diglett's Cave... and meets a Dugtrio on his first encounter. Well, there went any semblance of a difficulty curve.
Onboard the S.S. Anne, Mal finally evolves, and the ever-obnoxious and unhelpful rival is chased offboard by an angry Gyarados. The captain rewards Sig for his community service with HM01, and the ship hastily sets sail before Professor Oak's bratty grandson returns.
Sig enters Lt. Surge's legendary Gym, only to find out that it suffers from a terminal case of false advertising: the first switch was located beneath a can near the entrance, but the second switch was under the one in the upper-left corner. He repays Surge for his lying by introducing him to Rex.
After a great deal of bumping about in the dark, Sig emerges from Rock Tunnel into the land of endless creepypasta. He doesn't stick around for long, and departs for the west. In a touching scene, he bids farewell to his Bellsprout outside Celadon, for it was never much inclined to battle and has decided to put down roots with the local prosperous plant community. He works off his angst by battling the local gangsters, then having a friendly match with the human fans of the local plant community.
Well... "friendly" if you don't account for Wrap. And Wrap. And Wrap. Both Mal and Lance the Dugtrio fall before Victreebel, with Free hastily finishing it off. Sig discovers, to his bemusement, that Erika's Tangela apparently knows no Grass moves - Rex knocks it out of the part. Then Free returns to battle Vileplume, but faints from poison and Vileplume's assault... Whereupon, as soon as Rex enters the field, Vileplume defeats itself in confusion! An unexpected end to the match.
Sig makes a contract with the local representative of Pidgey Airlines and flies back to Lavender. There, he meets once again with his rival.
Mal defeats Pidgeotto, but is sleeplocked by the rival's collection of sentient eggs. Lance serves Exeggcute the notice that it is no longer Easter, and Bolt takes down the enemy Gyarados. Rex proceeds to stampede the frail Kadabra, and nearly pulls out a win against Charmeleon. Alas, the cheating wretch failed to get the notice that healing-items-during-battle are banned in this challenge, and thus Lance had to return to put out the lizard's fire.
Somehow ghosts can't be touched by slashes, but they are deathly afraid of shovels. Thus Lance exorcises absolutely all of them with Dig, except for the ghost of Cubone's mother... which really just needed a PokeDoll, apparently. Aww. The Rockets are exorcised without too much more difficulty.
Snorlax, upon being awoken, trips and falls on a Pokeball. After Hyper is added to the team, Sig recruits Tri the Doduo... only for tragedy to strike as Mal yearns to return to the open sea. Sniffling, Sig bids farewell to his faithful rampaging monstrosity.
In Fuchsia, he challenges the Gym, and promptly struggles to defeat everyone except the Gym Leader. Known for blowing up his final Pokemon while the challenger is safely underground, Koga instead opts for a different variety of incompetence and has his L43 Weezing defeated by a L25 Butterfree. As Sig celebrates his new badge, the dissolute "ninja" resolves to lay off the sake, reform his life, and, if that fails, foist the job off on his daughter and hope to get kicked upstairs. But that's a tale for the planned spinoff series.
The Safari Zone goes well, with Sig acquiring a sentient mushroom (with bonus crab), a new HM, and somebody's dentures. Before his inventory can go any further on its journey towards resembling a bad point-and-click adventure game, he trades them in for a new HM. Whew, now he's only carrying around candy, a fossil, vitamins, a chunk of gold, Pokemon steroids, a musical instrument, a few ropes, and other respectable and normal items that every young boy should have on hand at all times. Teeth, however, were just too weird.
We end this update at Saffron, where Sig stands ready to battle the mother of all hostile takeovers.
