UPDATE:
Sunkern has managed to hax his way to the champion!
After beating Aaron and Bertha without a scratch (These battles weren't too eventful, mostly the opposing Pokémon fainted itself with confusion or fainted from leech seed damage.), sunkern went up against flint. As the striped seedling stared into the eyes of rapidash, the force that had stomped the poor kernel into the ground so many times before I felt a surge of unexplained excitement, as if I knew that this was the match that I would finally win.
The battle started with rapidash firing off a sunny day (Which did sunkern a favor by doubling it's speed.) Sunkern retaliated with a swagger which caused rapidash to hurt itself. I used this opportunity to use a toxic and than selected protect. Rapidash hurt itself once again and sustained poison damage. On the next turn rapidash hit sunkern through confusion with a solar beam.
Sunkern managed to survive with about 77% of it's HP remaining and seeded the flaming steed. The next few turns consist of rapidash's health being whittled (Flint uses a full restore once.) away by toxic and leech seed while I spam protect. Rapidash's health is in the red and should faint from one more round of toxic so I decide to go for a protect, thinking that even if it fails, rapidash can't KO the kern as it has been fully healed due to leech seed.
Then it happens, The words:
Rapidash used flare blitz! Appear on the screen. Hoping that sunkern can survive the hit my heart races, only for it to stop when I see that there is no way it can. The words:
A critical hit! appear and sunkern's health drops faster than the beat at a Pokémon musical. But instead of fainting, sunkern glows with a white light. The text:
Sunkern hung on using it's focus sash! Appeared in the box. Rapidash, realizing that it's mission had failed, succumbed to recoil.
I quickly use a potion (As I have decided to use healing items, though only default potions) and swaggered his steelix, knowing that it would be a challenge to take down due to it's immunity to toxic. Luckily, a combination of steelix hurting itself over and over, it's already high boosted attack stat, and leech seed danage are enough to take it down. Sunkern is now at about 3/4 health due to leech seed, and I attempt to toxic + swagger stall the drifblim that he sends out. Amazingly, sunkern manages to faint the drifblim after it misses with will-o-wisp three times and only hits once out of two consecutive attempts at ominous wind. It attempts to double team hax me, but only wastes turns and succumbs to poison. Next out is lopunny, an easy opponent as it only uses mirror coat and charm.
This strategy doesn't faze sunkern as lopunny is fainted by a combination of leech seed and swagger. (Toxic is at 4 PP and I don't want to waste it.) I use an ether on sunkern (Yet another allowance of items) while flint sends out his infernape which goes for Mach punch. Sunkern takes little damage from it and swaggers the fire monkey/ape/goku simian. Infernape hits through confusion with thunder punch which doesn't do too much to sunkern. I use a potion to be safe while infernape hits itself once. I toxic while infernape uses thunderpunch. On the next turn I protect and infernape attempts an earthquake. Sunkern uses leech seed while infernape breaks out of confusion and uses flare blitz. Sunkern would not have survived if not for leech seed recovery and the potion I used earlier. The recoil from flare blitz and the effects of toxic take infernape out for the win.
Sadly I did not have enough time to continue on to Cynthia just yet. I will update the thread when I do face Cynthia.
Cynthia will be the biggest challenge yet, Being (in my opinion) the second hardest champion in Pokémon.
(Steven was really hard for me for some reason :/)
Seed you next time!
(R.I.P 17 sunkerns)
