From: Susan (dragon0313@aol.commies) Subject: [PW!] Thunderstruck Newsgroups: alt.games.nintendo.pokemon Date: 2000/03/17 Last time Mandy befriended (sort of) an electric trainer in Surge's gym, now she's back to win the badge. ____________ "Hey, Dave!" Mandy called across the gym to the electric trainer. He turned to see everyone, everyone being Mandy, Ron and Ember the Ponyta with Ivy the Eevee and Amaranth the Oddish scuttling around Ember's hooves and Shadow the Gastly hovering above her head. "Geeze, you brought the entire Russian army!" Dave exclaimed, walking over to them. "You want me to get you in now?" "Well, yeah. By the way, this is Ron Avery. Ron, this is Dave Hibson." The two exchanged greetings as he led them to the back room where Surge was finishing up with a short kid's Pidgey. "Dumb kid," the mound of muscle matter muttered (that's fun to say aloud) as the kid left, whining. He looked over at the door where the next trainers were supposed to come in and saw the three humans and their pokemon standing there. "Heh. Are these guys any better than the ones you've been sending me for the past hour, Dave?" "The Ponyta beat my Electabuzz. I'd say so." "Heh," the big man chuckled, "we'll see. Who's first?" Mandy stepped forward, a bit irked by the man's attitude. The loudspeaker played the standard one-on-one battle rules. Surge sent out his Raichu. Mandy leaned into Ember's ear. "Are you up to it?" The Ponyta twitched an ear, annoyed that Mandy would even have to ask her that. "Okay, if you think you'll be all right." In a louder tone she added, "Same as you did against the Electabuzz, Ember. You can do it!" "Raichu, thunderbolt!" The air crackled and sizzled as the Raichu started the move, but it never finished because it was met with a sharp stomp aimed at its little foot. "Chuuuuuuuuuuu!" (Translation: *#@!%^!%#&^) The pokemon in the room all blushed at the language. "Body slam!" Of course that didn't work. The Ponyta neatly sidestepped the charging mouse and twisted her head to aim an ember attack at its tail. The Raichu looked a bit like a Charmander as it spun 'round to glare at Ember. Surge yelled something, but it was clear that the Raichu wasn't going to listen. Ember aimed a firespin at the Raichu to finish it off, but it ran through the attack before it could set in and raised its little arms to start a thunder attack. Mandy gasped in a totally uncharacteristic show of fear. Ember heard her and shouted not to worry, she had it covered. She spit a stream of fire at the Raichu. It was finally down. The thunderbolt attack, however, was unfinished and there was a cloud of static electricity in the room. Ember sighed in relief, at least the battle was over. Then she turned around and looked at the humans in the room and sweatdropped, everyone had Einstein-style hair. Surge recalled the Raichu. "I gotta hand it to ya, that Ponyta 'a yours is pretty good. Raichu's a tough match." He reached into a pocket and threw something to Mandy. A point on it stung her hand as she caught it. "Here's your thunderbadge." He walked back to his spot. "Okay kid, you're next," he said to Ron. "Magneton, go!" "Hmm. I guess I'll use..." he mentally went over his list of pokemon. Ivy was too young, Flipper the Lapras was out of the question, George the Caterpie was holding off evolving, but so was Cloe the Weedle. The two had decided that they didn't want to be cocoons for a while. But George's string shot was perfect for bringing down a Magneton. He just hoped George wouldn't evolve during the match. "George!" As the caterpillar materialized on the floor, Ron yelled "Use string shot to bring it down, then tackle it!" "Thundershock!" The Magneton hovered in the air above George. George shot out a strand of filament at a very bad time, the thundershock traveled down the strand and was very effective. George saw staryus, but kept shooting strings at its target, tangling its tines. As much as the Magneton yanked, it couldn't budge. "Thundershock again!" "Pull it down and tackle it!" The second thundershock was weaker and didn't do much damage. George pulled the strings, but the Magneton was struggling now. Suddenly George leapfrogged over the Magneton. "What was that?" Mandy asked Ember. "The Magneton twisted around. George was still attached, so he went flying," Ember stated matter-of-factly, providing an easy explanation for a mini-plot bump. "Oh. Ouch." "Keep pulling!" Ron yelled. George finally managed to reel the large magnet in. He immobilized the Magneton by making some of the strings stick to the floor. Releasing the strands, he walked away from the pile of goo. Ron was stunned. "What's going on?" The Caterpie explained, Ember translated and Mandy translated for Ember. Surge pulled a metal box out and seemed to be listening to it. "He doesn't want to hurt it," Mandy said. "He says that it's not fair. Good for you, George!" "Magneton can't fight," Surge boomed, "so it goes to the Caterpie." He took another badge from his pocket and tossed it to Ron. "Nice going, kids." "Than- Hey, look, George is evolving!" Ron said excitedly. George was almost enveloped in the Metapod shell. Ron picked George off the floor and shifted him into a comfortable hold. "Cloe will be evolving soon then." Whatever Mandy was about to say was interrupted by Dave. "You guys need to go now, we've still got to get a lot of people through." "Okay then. Thanks for helping us out," Mandy called as they walked out. "No problem," Dave called back. After a bit of walking Mandy stopped dead in her tracks. "Ember, that attack you used... Was that flamethrower?" Ember nodded, startling Shadow, who was hovering millimeters above her. "So you've forgotten..." "Ponyta." "Firespin isn't much of a loss. You did really well out there." Ron, who had walked about ten meters ahead before realizing that half of the team wasn't there, turned around and stomped back. "Are you coming or what?" "Yeah..." "Race ya!" TBC? -Susan, Jedi Hamster Official WDTSF Spontaneous Vocalization Specialist; Director of Unexpected Screaming. "Trust me! After all, I'm the floating glowing guy!"-Gennai, from Digimon