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Chapter 9: Vs Team Rocket? Iono's Team Expectations!
🕑 Added 2025-08-09 17:59:09 +0000 UTCViridian City. Inside a rental apartment.
Kairos stared thoughtfully at the pile of new data displayed on his screen. Yesterday, while adding the gym storyline, he’d suddenly thought of another issue.
The original Emerald Kaizo had offered quite a few starter Pokémon options—you could choose from any generation’s starter trio without a problem. If you met certain easter egg conditions, you could even pick two!
Since his current game was even more challenging than the original, naturally, he needed to be more generous with the initial Pokémon selection. Combined with the newly launched voice system, he’d designed a simple easter egg: if players expressed to Professor Birch that they wanted a starter of a different type, it would activate this feature, randomly giving them a non-pseudo-legendary, non-legendary Pokémon of that type from the professor’s collection.
This Pokémon would have base stats no lower than 500—in some ways, a good deal for players, since they could freely choose their preferred starting type instead of being forced to pick between Water, Fire, and Grass.
To maintain game balance, activating this easter egg came with a price—certain rival battles would be replaced with battles against the Team Rocket trio!
That’s right, those three: Meowth, James, and Jessie!
And Kairos wasn’t designing Team Rocket to be pushovers. When players first headed to Petalburg City, they’d encounter the trio for the first time. Their Pokémon would be at the player’s level—a Koffing and an Ekans, both with perfect IVs, maxed EVs, and the right held items!
This battle difficulty would undoubtedly be more terrifying than any rival fight! As the game progressed, each encounter would make them even stronger.
Kairos included them because he’d always felt this trio should possess such strength. With their abilities, if they just stopped chasing Ash’s Pikachu, they’d succeed at whatever they tried... They could probably even steal Arceus’s plates if they put their minds to it.
Plus, they were some of his favorite characters from the original series, so why not slip in some personal favorites?
As for whether Team Rocket actually existed in this world... well, that was a whole different matter.
Meanwhile, in Iono’s livestream, as chat buzzed with heated discussion about Team Rocket, the game’s Jessie and James stepped forward, triggering the battle animation.
"Listen here, kid! Hand over all your Pokémon!"
[Team Rocket Trio wants to battle!]
With dramatic drums and a flash of white light, a Koffing appeared! It was level 11, same as Iono’s Mareep.
"Same level, two Pokémon? This might be a bit tough. But since they’re just NPC Pokémon, it shouldn’t be too difficult, right?"
Iono glanced at the screen’s corner display and muttered to herself, having Mareep use Thunder Shock. Lightning crashed down, and Koffing’s HP bar instantly dropped by half!
But before she could celebrate, Koffing spat out a glob of poison.
[Koffing used Sludge Bomb!]
[Critical hit!]
Mareep’s HP bar emptied completely!
Iono: ???
Hold up, what kind of damage is that?? Even with a critical hit, that’s way over the top! Since when could Koffing hit that hard?
While she sat there stunned, Jessie and James reappeared on screen.
"Hmph! You and your partner are too weak! The boss definitely wouldn’t want Pokémon like these."
"See ya later, kid!"
The screen went black.
[Iono is out of usable Pokémon.]
[Everything went dark.]
Seconds later, watching Iono’s character respawn at the Pokémon Center in Oldale Town, chat went absolutely wild.
[No way, these are Team Rocket grunts? Are you sure?]
[Since when is Koffing this strong??]
[The streamer got rejected by the villain organization for being too weak—they wouldn’t even steal her Pokémon. I’m dying.]
Iono snapped back to reality, finally understanding that this game’s “extremely high difficulty” warning wasn’t kidding around.
But challenging games are what make things interesting.
She immediately started strategizing. Koffing could one-shot Mareep because its move scored a critical hit. According to the game’s description, critical hits seemed to be a random chance mechanism that dealt double damage—something that wouldn’t happen every battle.
In other words, normally Mareep should be able to tank two of Koffing’s attacks. With first-move advantage, Mareep could survive one Sludge Bomb, then finish off Koffing with a second Thunder Shock.
But even so, Iono still faced another huge problem—the opponent had another Pokémon! A half-health Mareep obviously couldn’t handle the next opponent.
So... she needed to find a way to beat Koffing without taking damage.
After thinking for a moment, Iono opened her bag and checked Mareep’s info, quickly forming a plan. She had her character return to where she’d encountered Team Rocket. No dramatic music or announcements this time—straight into battle.
Instead of Thunder Shock, she had Mareep use a different move—Thunder Wave! Electricity flashed, and Koffing’s body sparked with current. An orange status icon appeared—it was paralyzed.
[Koffing wants to move, but it can’t!]
After some twitching, its first turn passed without attacking! Iono’s eyes lit up. Perfect!
She explained to her stream audience: "Thunder Wave paralyzes the target Pokémon, so I thought I’d try using it to restrict Koffing’s movement. Looks like the developer thought of this too! Now that Koffing can’t attack, Mareep can stay healthy while defeating it, then handle the second Pokémon!"
She looked confident. Chat was buzzing.
[Classic Iono, finding the solution right away!]
[That’s pretty broken—if Thunder Wave always hits first, isn’t Mareep invincible?]
[Kind of unbalanced, but it’s just a turn-based game. Perfect balance is tough.]
While chat discussed, Iono confidently selected "Thunder Shock," having Mareep attack. Electricity flashed again, and Koffing’s HP dropped to half.
"Great! Just need to do that one more time."
But just as she was getting excited, electricity flickered across Koffing’s body without causing paralysis. The next moment, poison spewed from its mouth, hitting Mareep again.
[Koffing used Sludge Bomb! Critical hit!]
[Mareep fainted!]
[Iono is out of usable Pokémon.]
[Everything went dark.]
Seeing this message, Iono froze completely. Wasn’t Koffing already paralyzed? How could it still use moves? And why another critical hit?? This thing’s critical hit rate is way too high!
After respawning at the Pokémon Center, instead of immediately re-challenging Team Rocket, Iono opened the menu to check the in-game tutorials. Sure enough, she quickly found the explanation for status conditions.
"Oh, so paralysis lowers the opponent’s speed by half while giving them a chance to be unable to use moves." She had an “aha” moment.
If status conditions worked that way, it made sense. Otherwise, paralyzing opponents who could never act again would be completely broken.
She found herself impressed with the developer. Not only were the Pokémon abilities and moves faithfully recreated, but even these status conditions were reasonably implemented!
That said, this battle would probably take several attempts to win.
Understanding this, Iono restarted the Team Rocket battle. This time her luck was excellent—after being paralyzed, Koffing failed to act for two consecutive turns, easily defeated by two Thunder Shocks.
Team Rocket’s second Pokémon was an Ekans. The moment it appeared, Mareep’s body flashed red, accompanied by a game notification.
[Mareep’s Attack fell due to the opposing Pokémon’s Intimidate!]
But seeing this, Iono breathed a sigh of relief, explaining to chat: "Great! This means Ekans doesn’t have Shed Skin, but Intimidate instead! If it had Shed Skin, that would be trouble—it would automatically cure paralysis due to its ability. But since Mareep is a special attacker anyway, losing physical attack doesn’t matter. This should be easy!"
Looking supremely confident, Iono had Mareep use Thunder Wave to control Ekans again! But the next moment, Ekans struck first.
[Ekans used Crunch!]
[Mareep flinched! It can’t move!]
Watching Mareep’s HP bar flash red...
Iono: ...
She clenched her fists. "It’s fine. Let’s go again!"
After seven or eight failed attempts, Lady Luck finally smiled on Iono. In this battle, neither Ekans nor Koffing landed critical hits. After both became paralyzed, neither successfully attacked once.
Even so, when Mareep achieved victory—having only been hit once the entire fight—its HP bar showed just a sliver remaining. This showed just how difficult the battle truly was.
After winning, Team Rocket retreated several steps.
"Curse you, kid! Just you wait—we’ll be back!"
"What a terrible feeling, meow!"
They threw out their parting words and disappeared into the distant grass.
Iono let out a long sigh of relief. At the same time, she noticed a strange feeling welling up inside her.
While this was technically still Pokémon battling, what she’d experienced in this game was completely different from the real world.
This experience of understanding mechanics through repeated attempts, challenging the same fight over and over until success—that was something impossible to feel in real-world Pokémon battles!
After all, in real Pokémon battles, you usually only get one shot. If you want to try again, you have
to wait. Pokémon need considerable time to recover their strength and energy, but in games, after one failure, you can immediately regroup and try again!
The feeling of finally succeeding through repeated attempts is often the most captivating!
Iono was becoming more and more interested in this game. She didn’t even realize that just this one NPC battle had already quietly drawn her in.
After defeating Team Rocket, she continued toward the next city without hesitation. The following gameplay was straightforward—reaching Petalburg City, touring the gym run by the player’s father, helping a boy named Hikari catch a Ralts as his starter, then leaving Petalburg for the forest above.
This was a vast green jungle inhabited by numerous Bug-type Pokémon. Before long, Iono encountered an Electrike! She immediately threw a Poké Ball after the battle, successfully capturing it for her team.
She then began addressing her stream audience with a smile: "Ta-da\~ Iono’s Electric-type classroom is now in session!
We all know Electric-type Pokémon have fast speed and strong attacks, but they also have weaknesses. Everyone knows Electric-types’ biggest weakness is Ground-types—Electric moves are completely ineffective against Ground-type Pokémon.
Besides that, Grass, Rock, and Dragon types all pose significant challenges for Electric Pokémon. Grass and Dragon types resist Electric moves, while Rock-types, though not resistant to Electric attacks, commonly know Ground-type moves that threaten Electric Pokémon!
This game’s main quest should involve challenging different-type gyms to collect badges before taking on the League. If we want to build a team specializing in Electric Pokémon, we need to overcome these type disadvantages.
Like this Joltik—it’s also Bug-type. When facing Grass-type opponents, it won’t struggle as much~"
Throughout the rest of the game, I’ll build my team around this concept until we’ve covered all of Electric-type’s blind spots!"
Chat erupted in approval.
[Classic Electric-type Gym Leader—the knowledge is definitely there!]
[Yeah, even just playing games, she stays professional where it matters!]
Iono glanced at chat and smiled: "I don’t think we’ll encounter Dragon-type gyms this early in the game. So... that leaves just Ground and Rock types. Surely the very first gym won’t be one of those two attributes, right?"
She stretched. "Alright, let’s keep going~"
