Team Flare at the Power Plant

With my fourth badge in hand I decided to take a moment to analyze the motley crew I call a pokemon team.  I found that the only real weak link was Floette--who has failed me as a special wall and also as a special attacker/supporter--so I tossed her out.  Team down to 10!  Woo Woo!

At this point, I felt that I hadn't fulfilled my necessary time quota of fucking-around-while-between-gyms so I went fishing all over the world with my newly acquired Good Rod.  This is when I came across Skrelp, a new Poison/Water type pokemon, who I caught and added to the team.  Back to 11. Damn.

I may not have gone with this guy so quickly, but his pokedex entry says something about building power while waiting for his evolution.  This seemed fairly auspicious to me so I can't wait for the grand unveiling of his "true power".  I bet he evolves into Garchomp.

Aaaand speak of the devil, I just caught Gible. 

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Route 13 is introduced as the "Badlands" and rightly so: it is a desert inhabited by Dugtrio, Gible, and Trapinch who actually burrow around underground towards you whenever you walk around in the sand.  After catching all of these ground types and trying to figure out if Dugtrio's pink mouth is actually a pink nose, I found a Team Flare member hanging-out near the Power-Plant.  He didn't outright TELL me where the Power Plant key was hidden, but be definitely sent me in the right direction if you know what I mean...

I expected the Power Plant to be a puzzle dungeon, possibly like the Mahogany Town Team Rocket base from Silver version--a maze-like structure with electrode traps running generators.  Instead, it was a gauntlet of 10 Team Flare members exclusively carrying Golbat and Houndoom (okay, maybe there was a scraggy in there somewhere too).  PikaPi keps getting itself knocked-out after causing massive damage on turn one, so my high-risk, high rewards strategy-thingie is safe, but he learned Thunderbolt recently so we'll see how much longer I wait to evolve him into Raichu.

The battle with the two Team Flare Admins went by without a problem and for my efforts, Kirlia evolved into Gardevoir.  After the match, Team Flare disappeared from the Plant, and somehow this magically turned the lights back on in Lumiose City, which is nice since it allows me to return to that mess of a city, but the implication is that the mere presence of Team Flare ruins technology.  An odd take on the villain dynamic: are they villains because they like to be the bad guys or are they villains because no one ever invites them to their birthday parties because they don't want the lights to turn off?

Current Squad:

FROGADIER/Froakles/lvl.29
IVYSAUR/Ivy/lvl.29
FLAREON/Hotfoot/lvl.29
SKRELP/Toxie/lvl.30
SCRAGGY/Scrappy/lvl.29
AERODACTYL/Scarydactyl/lvl.29

On Rotation: Gardevoir, Pikachu, Hippopotas, Lucario