The Great Eight Fate

            Are heroes are finally in site of Sootopolis Island and Ash’s final gym badge battle in Hoenn.  The first thing they see is fire works.  They decide this must mean a festival is going on.  May and Max run off, followed by Brock.  Ash is bummed – he wants to go after his gym battle, but it turns out it is a good thing he goes with them.  The “festival” is actually the unveiling of a new piece of water art.  And the one doing the unveiling is Juan – the Sootopolis City Gym Leader!  He and his water pokemon put on a dazzling show complete with bubbles and a rainbow.  May believes that Juan could have been a great coordinator.  Team Rocket interrupts the show with his chimecho’s call. Juan is impressed by Chimecho’s tone and says it must have been raised well.  He believes they must be famous performers.  Ash and co. warn Juan that Team Rocket will steal his pokemon.  He finds that hard to believe… until they throw a net over the pokemon and electrocute them.  Juan’s pokemon are more than capable of defending themselves though, and his mylotic sends them flying with a single attack.  Ash takes the opportunity to challenge Juan to a gym battle and they head toward the gym.  May says that Juan’s performance was awesome and he says that he used to be a coordinator and actually won the grand contest.  He believes there should be art in everything he does – even in battling.

            Juan like water pokemon because they are sleek, and because they are weak against electric attacks.  He seems to have developed a method to protect against electricity.  That could prove difficult for Ash.  They soon reach the gym where they are greeted by Sebastian –the butler.  He leads them into the battle arena.  It is a swimming pool with many small platforms.  Major advantage to the gym leader there.  The rules here are a little different.  They will each use 5 pokemon.  The first round is a two on two battle – the challenger may substitute a fallen pokemon, but the gym leader may not.  The second is a series of one on one battles.  Juan chooses sealeo and seeking for the first round.  Ash chooses Pikachu and snowrunt.  Juan uses horndrill to reflect Pikachu’s first attack at snowrunt.  The next time Pikachu is forced to protect snowrunt from the ricochet.  Sealeo attacks with blizzard and Ash has snowrunt use icy wind to freeze it.  When Juan has his pokemon break the resulting iceberg Ash has his pokemon jump on the ice.  Then a hyperbeam knocks snowrunt out.   

Outside the gym Team Rocket is preparing to sneak in. And James is disguised as Juan.  He actually looks pretty good.

            Ash replaces snowrunt with corfish.  This doesn’t seem to improve matters much.  A clash results in seeking fainting and Pikachu and corfish disappear.  They soon resurface only to be met with sealeo’s iceball.  This attack grows in power each time it is used.  Surprisingly Pikachu deflects the final iceball and corfish knocks sealeo out. 

            It is time for the second round.  For this round they switch boxes and the field is changed.  This field has a lot more land.  For this battle Ash chooses Grovile and Juan chooses lovedisc.  Ths is one fast pokemon, and grovile can barely dodge at first.  Grovile gets hit by a sweetkiss which puts it under a veritable spell.  Will it shake it off and attack or just let lovedisc cream it?

            Location: Sootopolis Island

Notes: All that time getting to the town to catch the ferry and we don’t even get to see it!

            The end is in site!  Maybe we can ditch May and Max soon… or maybe we can ditch the whole series!  I love this show… but it’s getting old…

            Wow, that’s a lot of buildings… and they’re really close together.

            Juan is freaky looking…

            That gym looks like a mansion to me!

            The Hoenn gyms have an order you are supposed to go in?

            Juan is annoying.  And the English voice they chose isn’t helping.

            I hope Ash did some training on his own time… otherwise snowrunt is gonna be in big trouble.