- After looking at the map, it looks like the way to Mossdeep is to Surf to the East from Lilycove. Works for me.
- Sailed for a weirdly long time without having a wild encounter.
- The water Pokemon the swimmers are using seem like they're good targets for Annie to get XP from.
- Found a small island with a house on it. Hunter's house, according to the sign next to it.
- Looks like he's the Diving Treasure Hunter. He has an interest in Shards, particularly red ones.
- Apparently, this house was just a touch West of Mossdeep, so now I'm where I was looking to go.
- I touched down on the shallow part of the Southwest coast. I'm going to look around in a minute to see if this is just a giant island. The map says that it is.
- Went into an old man's house. He said he used to be a trainer and now his main source of amusement comes from watching young trainers battle. I don't know why, but after this bounced around in my head a bit, I had the thought that if I got old, I'd probably enjoy seeing new, younger players trying Pokemon games and learning more about them.
- A woman in the Pokemon Center tipped off that the local gym has two leaders. I already knew this from looking it up, but I'm glad that the game wasn't trying to save that information as some kind of big twist that I spoiled for myself.
- Then again, there was that Torkoal with Attract back at Flannery's gym. There's still plenty of room for me to be surprised.
- A guy wandering around got a King Rock from Steven but didn't know what he needed it for. He offered it to me and called me weird when I said I'd take it. Rude! He gave it to me anyway.
- The sign in front of the gym stated clearly that Liza and Tate were the gym leaders. So them being a pairing and this being a double battle wasn't really meant to be hidden.
- A man in a house said that Annie really likes green PokeBlocks. Seeing as I've never used them, I don't know how he would know or how Annie would even have a preference in the first place.
- The woman sitting at the table basically said that he's the guy to talk to in order to figure out which PokeBlocks a Pokemon likes best. That's probably useful for reasons I don't yet understand.
- One house that looked like all the other houses had Steven in it.
- He gave me Dive! Hell yeah!
- Talking to him again, he reveals that there's a cavern between Mossdeep and Sootopolis.
- Apparently, this island that's totally disconnected from Hoenn's mainland has a space center on it. Sure, I guess?
- Walked into some fisherman's house and he gave me the Super Rod.
- I should probably try fishing here. I want a Pokemon that isn't Slapkins to teach Dive to.
- Decided to check out the Space Center.
- The first guy I talked to found a Sun Stone on the beach that he didn't need and gave to me.
- One scientist talked about the successful launch they just had. Maybe the rockets take off from a smaller island some distance away, but this still feels way too close to a city for them to be doing rocket launches.
- A scientist on the upper floor gave an actual good reason for the space center being here. Weather! That's very important for rocket launches.
- Decided to go fishing.
- It took me a few minutes to figure out what I was doing wrong with fishing, but I eventually figured it out.
- I got a Wailmer on the hook. Annie managed to get a critical Mach Punch that got its health low. It used Rest before that and was still asleep because of it. I used a Net Ball that I found on the way up to the Space Center.
> Caught: BERTHA [F]
- At level 37, Bertha is ahead of all the Pokemon in my party except for Slapkins.
- Wait, hold the fuck up. I just caught a second Water type Pokemon. Even though it's a Psychic gym (based on the flavor text of the gym's sign), the leaders use Rock/Psychic dual types. I know this because I researched it!
- I think there's an argument to be made that this is dishonest gameplay, but from an in-universe perspective, gym leaders would be public figures with careers revolving around Pokemon training and battling. What Pokemon they use would probably be public information anyway.
- I need to check Bertha's Summary page.
- She has an ability that prevents attraction. That would have been really helpful for one gym in particular.
- It has Astonish, Water Pulse, Mist, and Rest. Astonish is a Ghost-type move that would be super effective against Psychic types. Water Pulse would be super effective against Rock types.
- Okay, I wanted to get more levels on my party first, but fuck it. I'm going to get cocky and just try the gym with Slapkins at level 39 and Bertha at level 37. This is too low for the gym, but not by much. I want to see how it goes!
- Oh, right, forgot to mention that I put Billy in the box to make space for Bertha.
- After defeating the first trainer, I realized I should give Sredsa the Exp. Share. She's still only at level 29.
- One trainer battle resulted in Slapkins reaching level 40 and Sredsa reaching level 30 at the same time.
- Slapkins worked his way through all the trainer battles without issue.
- There's one I didn't get to because I put the switch in the right position before going that way.
- The gym leaders are twins and that's why there's two of them. Makes sense to me.
- Both of their Pokemon are level 42. Slapkins managed to get to level 40, but Bertha is at 37 and I don't have any Pokemon that are high enough in levels to be a great backup plan.
- I was worried about this fight, but it went very smoothly considering that Slapkins had questionably low-level support. Lunatone kept missing Hypnosis, which probably helped a lot.
- Sredsa reached level 31 and learned Slash. Having both Screech (two stage defense reduction to opponent) and Swords Dance (two stage attack boost to self) is basically redundant, so ditched Screech to let Sredsa have more than one attack.
- Got the Mind Badge and the ability to use Dive outside of battle. I guess it's good I didn't try that before.
- They also gave me Calm Mind (TM04).
- Took the Exp. Share from Sredsa. With the next gym battle being Water, it's time for me to get Annie leveled up. My goal is 40, but I'm not doing all of that tonight.
- Tentacools are not good for Annie to go up against and I'm not fishing anything up on the coast. I think I'm going to call it for tonight.