The next morning, our 'heroes' headed to the western gate of Celadon to take the cycling track, that they read about on TripAdvisor, down south to Fuchsia City. However, as they approached the gate, they were confronted by a large sleeping Pokemon.
"A snorlax," Tene announced, "We'll need to wake it up somehow or we'll never get past here."
"Maybe you should sing Tene," Gray smirked, "That'll surely wake it up."
While Tene smacked Gray on the back of the head, Yob suggested that the snorlax would need an up-beat, joyous melody to awake it, yet keep it in a good mood, and volunteered himself. He took out the PokeFlute that Zombie had given him and said, "All I must do is picture my idol, the great Prof. 1ce, and my sweet tunes shall flow."
Yob started to play but was horribly out of tune. Gray and Tene had to block their ears. The horrid screeching sounds, that Yob made, awoke the snorlax in a rage, who started letting off wild hyper beams. One blast went straight through the route gate, causing half of the building to collapse. In its rage, the snorlax was rolling all over the place and Tene saw this as their chance, signaling the trio to sneak past and onto the cycling track.
"I don't know what went wrong," Yob spoke, "I guess my style is not for everyone."
As the trio went to progress, they were immediately stopped by a bike gang. The leader approached them and said in a brutish voice, "Ey, what are you doing on this track without a bike. Bikers only on our turf. And...and...what did you just do to our gate?!"
"We're just passing through, the gate was an accident. We don't want trouble," Tene replied.
"Well it seems you're asking for it and now that you're here, it's our business so let me introduce myself. The name's Luckylucario, but people call me Lucky, cuz I'm lucky."
"What's a lucario?" questioned Gray.
"Your mum! Now turn around and get on your way, I'm feeling nice today so I'm gonna let have a head start back to Celadon, I don't want to see your stupid faces again!" Lucky said, while turning away.
"Aw, that's a shame," Gray responded, "We wanted a fight so we can train our Pokemon."
"Is that a threat?!" Lucky turned back around, before summoning a grimer.
"Urr, yeah, I guess that might have been. Oops," Gray said before sending out his diglett.
Yob and Tebe we're annoyed at Gray but saw that they weren't getting out of this and that Gray was right, they did need to train their Pokemon. As the bike gang members sent out their Pokemon, Yob sent out his ghastly and Tene, her drowzee.
The two sides fought for a while, with the trio managing to beat most of the gang's Pokemon, which were mainly grimers and koffings. Yob's ghastly took out the final grimer and began to evolve into a haunter. Yob was overjoyed until the haunter started licking him all over.
"Now I know how Parasect feels!" he called before returning Haunter.
Before Lucky could say anything about their defeat a call was heard from above.
"HeheheheHEHEheheHE!" a voice called that could only be identified as Python.
Everyone looked up to see Team Rocket descending in their balloon.
"We looked for you fools at your secret Celadon base when we sacked it!" Gray called.
"Oh, we're field agents," Sweaty replied as the balloon came to a halt, "We don't mess around with those weak grunts. We're above that and are now going to steal your Pokemon with the help of our friends here. You see, we used to be part of this bike gang before we joined Team Rocket. Now boys, take them down, if you please!"
"You know,I don't think we will," Lucky responded to Sweaty's surprise, "You seem to forget that you were kicked out of our club because you went around bragging about it and telling everyone our secrets for your own pride. The first rule of Bike Club, is you don't talk about Bike Club!"
Lucky told his grimer to used acid and it shot a blast of poison at the balloon, melting a hole in the side and causing the whole thing to fly off wildly into the distance.
"Team Rocket's blasting off again!" *ping*
"You lot are pretty tough," Lucky complemented the trio, "Since you don't have bikes, my boys will give you a lift to Fuchsia City."
The trio thanked Lucky and were underway, flying down the cycling track on motor bikes, Gray sticking his tongue out in the wind and accidentally getting hit in the face by bug Pokemon. When they reached Fuchsia City, they asked the gang members where a good place to train would be and they replied that there was an island south of here, called Seafoam Island, with tough ice types. After healing at the Pokemon Centre, the trio decided to go there, once again being towed by wartortle, and entered the cave. The gang members were right, there was a huge amount of tough ice types and the trio trained against them for hours, moving further into the cave, at a very slow pace, however, due to the unfairly difficult rock puzzles. Eventually they made it to the lowest floor of the cave.
"I'm fre-fre-freeeeeezing," complained Gray.
"We're not leaving yet," responded Tene, "We need to train more if we want to stand up to Team Rocket, or the local gym leader for that matter."
"No, you need to train Tene. I'm a Pokemon ma-ma-masterrr."
The group carried on, walking up to a river system. Gray sent Wartortle out for a swim but it instantly froze solid and had to be returned with a cursory 'oops'.
"Hey what's that?" Yob said while pointing out a small island that had what appeared to be a blue bird Pokemon asleep in a nest of icicles.
"I think if we've learnt anything, it's not to fight birds," Gray cautioned, "I think it's time we got out of this co-co-cold ca-ca-cave."
As the trio turned and began to walk quietly away, Gray stopped.
"Guys, I've got this strange voice inside me telling me that I've got to catch 'em all."
"I think that's called schizophrenia," Yob responded.
Gray took an ultraball from his belt, turned around and threw it at the bird Pokemon, capturing it inside. Gray was about to let out a triumphant call of success but the ball shattered into pieces as the Pokemon broke free. The bird Pokemon began to hover in anger, with the trio now recognising it as Articuno and proceeding to run, not wanting another zapdos incident where they all nearly died. Articuno, who was apparently very annoyed, started chasing the trio, letting of ice beams in their direction. One beam managed to land right behind Yob, causing him to fall on his face. He notice that one of his feet had been frozen solid in a large chunk of ice and called for help. His friends ran back and dragged him to the ladder that led up to the next floor. They hauled him up as Articuno came in for an ice beam on the three, who were moving too slow up the ladder. In desperation, Yob summoned his haunter, who immediately used scary face, poking its eyes out of its sockets and waving its tongue wildly. This shocked Articuno for a second, giving the trio enough time to haul Yob up to the next floor. Yob thanked Haunter, who then gave Yob a big lick on the face. Gray told his butterfree to temporarily seal off the entrance to the lower floor with string shot, to stop Arcticuno from pursuing them for now.
"Well that nearly went as badly as the last time we ran into a legendary," spoke Tene as Articuno let off bird caws below.
"I could have taken this one but I can't even fe-fe-feel my fa-fa-face," responded Gray.
The trio made their way back out of the cave and headed back to Fuchsia City. Yob's foot eventually thawed out and the group was ready for more much needed training...after lunch and a day-nap of course.
