The Legend of Blah Blah Blah Blah

I think I was a little vague in my last post with reference to the major plot of the game and I admit that this reveals how terrible I am at stressing the importance of things.  Surely the plot of a story is the thing that should be explained in the most detail and not, as I have done, in one terrible run-on sentence?

So here it is in greater detail, and hopefully with fewer grammatical errors:

As I made it to the lowest sub-basement of Lysandre's Cafe Teleporter Maze-O-Madness, I happened upon Lysandre himself and a mysterious man I had seen only once before.  Lysandre was obviously holding the eight-foot-tall man captive (the electrified fence gave that away) and the captive launched-into a monologue describing the 3000-Year Legend:
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Three thousand years ago into the future, back when everything was in black-and-white and there was a lot of film-grain and text on the screen explaining what the actors are doing (fine, I'll stop), there was a man who loved his Floette.  His Floette went off to fight in a war between two nations.  Floette never came back.

The man was apparently so angry that he used science and magic, but mostly science, to resurrect his Floette with a machine he built, but to power his machine he killed scores of other Pokemon in the process.  As it were, all those strange stones around Geosenge City are gravestones of these pokemon, which is just creepy enough to be totally awesome.

After this, he was still really really angry, so he modified his resurrection machine and made it a doomsday weapon, which he used to kill a whole bunch of people and pokemon, ending the war.  A little bit of an overkill, but most definitely effective.

Then his Floette left him anyways.  It's times like these where I wish I knew the definition of irony...

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I am about 100% certain (you read that right) that the old giant in the prison cell was that man from 3000 years ago and if he isn't then he definitely thinks he is--because he all but admitted to it during his monologue.  I am very curious, however, how the legendary pokemon Yvetal relates to this.

Professor Sycamore told me earlier that there was a destructive pokemon called Yvetal linked to the 3000 Year Legend, but this pokemon was not mentioned even once...  Maybe the answer can be found in Geosenge City.

Team Flare Makes a Move

No sooner had I left the gym than I got a Holo-message from Lysandre, the fellow with the lion's mane who introduced himself to me as the villain near the start of the game (which was nice of him I guess).  Apparently, he was sending this message to trainers everywhere that he was ordering Team Flare to kill everyone in the entire world.

I guess I kind of forgot what was going on in this game and this message reminded me that there was still a story in this thing--and now it is most certainly the time for me to figure out what is going on. 

I pursued Team Flare to Lysandre's Cafe in Lumiose City and found the secret entrance hidden behind the bookcase in the back guarded by two Team Flare Table-Waiters.  This seems familiar...
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Another one of the things I really loved about the earlier games is that they would tell you what to do (or not) by making you put the pieces together yourself.  Pokemon White (and, to a lesser extent, Pokemon Sapphire) spent far too much time talking about what was going on and where you should go.  Go to the Dragonspiral Tower, which is where the legendary dragon pokemon are found, Now go to the Relic Castle to get Zekrom, No, Zekrom isn't here, go back to the City with the Swamp whatever it was called in that game.  That game could not stop explaining things to you and I just felt dumb having to deal with its constantly condescending dialogue.  Not to mention the dialogue was shit to begin with.

This game is kind of a happy middle-ground.  I was shown Lysandre's Cafe earlier in the game in a scripted story event where I met the Professor (on my second tour of Lumiose City), so I knew where it was and that Lysandre owned it.  My fellow Pokemon Thief gang-member (and game Rival) Serena told me that we should look for Team Flare's HQ.  All I had to do was put these two pieces together and I found the place.  Not quite as difficult as curing cancer (and most certainly not as hard as figuring out the opposite-day logic that you needed the Pokeflute to get into the Silph Co. Building), but it was enough to make me feel good about using that fancy Graduate-School education I've been neglecting for the past two years.

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After battling Lysandre himself (he had a Pyroar, go figure), I made my way through a conveyor-belt/teleporter maze, trying to find the administrator with the lift key (yup, definitely been here before).

Along the way, I encountered battles ranging from easy to absurdly difficult.  Of special note was a Malamar which kept boosting its own stats while using Superpower (due to its ability, which raises stats instead of lowering them) and one particularly hairy match against a high level Drapion, who used Acupressure two consecutive times to luckily sharply raise its Attacking power and Speed.  That Drapion tore me apart my first attempt.

At the end, I was treated with a story that I guess was supposed to explain all the "3000 year legend" references people have been making this whole game, but which in reality just made matters even more confusing.  The story was about a guy whose Floette died making a machine that brought it back to life at the cost of the lives of many other pokemon.  Team Flare made it perfectly clear that their doomsday machine is the same machine as this one.

After I failed to stop Team Flare from activating the machine, I was pointed in the direction of Geosenge City again.

Current Squad:

GRENINJA/Froakles/lvl.41
VENUSAUR/Venus/lvl.40
FLAREON/Hotfoot/lvl.42
SCRAFTY/Scrappy/lvl.42
HIPPOWDON*/Leviathan/lvl.40
AERODACTYL/Scarydactyl/lvl.40

On Rotation: Pikachu, Gardevoir, Lucario

Rocky Road...Heh Heh

On my way back through Ambrette Town I resurrected my two fossil pokemon from the Sail Fossil and the Old Amber to get Amaura and Aerodactyl.  Normally I would take the adorable Amaura over Aerodactyl because I am a five-year-old girl at heart, but I always wanted a team with an Aerodactyl since Red version, plus I wanted a flier.  So I tearfully (or not so tearfully) condemned Amaura (along with Doduo) to join the legions of pokemon in my PC, never to see the light of day again.

Route 8 to Cyllage City was a cliff-side beach, and the only pokemon I were able to find were from fishing (Luvdisc, damn) and from using Rock Smash (Dwebble, also damn).  I finally got Ralts to evolve into Kirlia, and, not to be outdone, Flabebe evolved into Floette.  This is fortunate because they were both really starting to fall behind in terms of reliability, but tough on me because I was THIS CLOSE to cutting my team down by one.

After screwing around with the Item-Finder looking for buried treasure (of which, I was surprised, I found TONS) in the sand, I finally found the city--a city built into the side of the cliff overlooking the shallow seas (and I apologize for that absolute monster of a sentence).  I have to applaud the geography of this game--as Nintendo is DEFINITELY taking advantage of the 3DS' unique ability to put images discernibly into either the foreground or the background of the screen.

But enough of that nerd talk, let's fight some pokemon.

Exploring ahead I caught a Golett and of course I caught an Eevee, forcing me to make yet another ridiculously hard team decision.  It's a good thing you gain exp by catching pokemon in this game cause I don't think I've defeated a wild pokemon since Viridian--erhm--Santalune Forest.

In the end, I chose Flareon and promised myself that this would be the last pokemon I would put into my squad without taking someone else out first.

The advantage to having nine pokemon on rotation in my squad (ten if you count my HM slave/pickup whore: Zigzagoon) is that as soon as I found out that Cyllage sported a Rock-Type Gym, I immediately deposited Hippopotas, Pikachu, and Flareon in preparation for the upcoming match.  Pikachu is historically bad against Rock types (technically Ground types, but I'm not taking any chances), Flareon is outright weak against rock attacks, and Hippopotas' ability to generate Sandstorms strengthens all Rock pokemon on the field (ouch).

And with my team of Rock-destroyers handy, I set off to challenge the Gymleader Grant, the Rock Jock.

Rock-Destroyer Squad:

FROGADIER/Froakles/lvl.19
IVYSAUR/Ivy/lvl.20
KIRLIA/Empath/lvl.20
FLOETTE/Pixie/lvl.20
SCRAGGY/Scrappy/lvl.18
AERODACTYL/Dactyl/lvl.20

On Rotation: Flareon, Pikachu, Hippopotas