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...
________________________
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.
_________________________
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
I had decided to open with Hippowdon to be safe--I knew that Froakles was going to do most of the "heavy lifting" for the match, but his frailty made me take pause from scouting with him. I knew Hippo' would be able to take anything that she could throw at me--so I started her against Malva's Pyroar. The exchange was quick, but it left my sandhippo with low health.
