We have arrived at Koriyama City, a place that seemed to be much more happening and has more stuff to do than Anomi City. And considering we went through a forest, I thought the first thing to do was hit the Pokémon Center, and heal up.
Hey wait, that guy at the PC in the corner. He looks kind of...familiar. Wait a second....
Oh, you gotta be kidding me. It's Ash. Ash Ketchum. Ash Ketchum. As in, the protagonist from the anime series. He somehow knows who I am (How does he know who I am, anyway?), and he's announced he just beat the Gym leader here. Oh, that's cool. Any tips? That could be helpful to me in finding out how to beat the Gym leader. What element or elements do they specialize in? Turns out he was talking to his mother and his Sceptile. Did Ash ever have a Sceptile? I'll go check. *goes to Bulbapedia* Oh...he did. He had it since it was a Treecko, too. Okay. That checks out.
Wait a minute, why isn't Ash my "rival" here? It would make a lot of sense. Ash is a well-known character thanks to the anime, and it would be perfectly in character for him to travel around a new region like this, having adventures of his own and the like. Well, he says Serena is waiting for him, so he must be journeying through Kalos at this point.
The old man in the Pokémon Center said he was a member of a Pokémon Fanclub. And they have a building they regularly meet in. As such, he invited me to a meeting. Hey, I'm a Pokémon fan, this could be fun. So, there I went!
One of the members of the Fan Club, a little kid, offered me a Treecko. So, I figured, why not? And here it is!
The kid was not kidding when he said that the Treecko had an unusual ability. In my experience, Treeckos tend to have the ability called "Overgrow". But this one has the ability "Unburden". Basically, if you give it an item to hold, it's Speed will go up. That's kind of neat. One guy at the Pokémon Fanclub offered me a Haunter for a Rattata. I traveled all the way back to Route 1 to get another Rattata, as I was not giving him my Rizzo. Once I got the trade, it became a Gengar.
That is perfectly normal. Haunter evolves into Gengar by trading. Which leads me to worry. I have a Geodude on my team. Once it becomes Graveler, I can't trade anything with it, so it can't evolve completely into a Golem. Oh, dear...
The final Pokémon I got was an Egg from the fan club's president. Knowing my luck, it'll hatch into a Togepi or an Eevee or something like that. At least with Eevee, I can breed it to collect Eeveelutions.
With that business out of the way, I can go do something else. But what, exactly? Well, a kid at the Pokémon Center did mention a place called the Pokémon-vn Academy...so, why not go there next?
Huh. There's a cave right near there. I'll have to remember to check that out sometime. This academy is huge on the inside. Must use some of the TARDIS's tesseract technology on the inside. There's a library area, which is really neat. According to a student, someone who is the "Akiba Champion", a person named Luan, comes along to give lectures here. Is Akiba the name of this region? I have not heard the name of this region at all in the game, and the site doesn't say. I'm going to say this region is named Akiba from now on. Hope you all have been enjoying my journey through Akiba so far, folks.
Yeah...this game still has some issues with the grammar in the dialogue. The academy has a storage area, and a Battle Room, where I presume Pokémon practice battle techniques. I wonder how they do certain techniques like Surf or Dig in a place like that.
I went up the stairs to the Principal's office. He introduced himself as Larren, and I asked about admission. Turns out that there's only a certain time to do it, and there are a lot of rules and regulations. Huh. You have to do this yourself, it's to be seen to be believed. I don't think Larren is quite right in the head. There is also a lab in the Academy. It's not much, just the scientists doing scientist stuff. One of the scientists does provide some correlation to the region being named "Akiba", as he mentions he's working on an "Akiba Pokedex."
I checked my Egg, and it was moving around a bit. There's another house in town.
Yup, it's May's house. Can't go inside, though. Door is locked. I guess nobody is home. Maybe she's out exploring or working for Professor Birch. There are another couple of houses right below, and a man standing between them explains that his brother can give me something special. A man in one of the houses gave me some Mystic Water.
There's also another house just outside of town, that is abandoned. It's locked up, no going inside.
I'm betting the inside is a haunted house, or something like that. That would be awesome. And would be a great opportunity to add some Ghost Pokémon to my collection.
Elsewhere in town, I learned the Gym Leader here is named Trung, and he's also a popular Pokémon Cosplayer. It's funny, but it does make sense. In these games, Pokémon are so prevalent in people's lives, it makes sense that everything they do would revolve around them in some way. I can imagine that in Alola, Mimikyu is a popular Pokémon for cosplayers. They can make special little costumes for them.
I figured since there was a cave in town, why not explore it? And inside, I found this.
There's a Feraligatr! I'm going to catch it!
Ah, it's Trung in a costume. Makes sense, he is a Pokémon Cosplayer, after all. I wonder if that happens to him often, people trying to catch him because people think he's a Pokémon. And I'm wondering if that Feraligatr costume is a hint of something.
He gave me HM01 (Cut), which allows me to cut that tree that prevented me from getting to his Gym. I learned that his Gym specializes in...wait for it...Water types. Yeah, first Gym was Rock-themed, and second is Water. The idea this game was originally a fan remake of Red and Blue is gaining more traction in my mind. If it was intended that Trung's costume was foreshadowing of his Pokémon specialty, well...that's pretty clever.
Well, I'd better get some Pokémon ready to take him on, then. Join me next time when I face Trung for the second Badge!
Pokémon Obtained:
- Treecko
- Egg
- Haunter (Evolved into Gengar)
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