QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
Before fighting Karen, I equip Suspicious with a Mysteryberry instead of the Amulet Coin it's had until now. I have a feeling it'll come in handy.
I step into the gloomy cavernous room where Karen stands pale and silent on the platform, and begin.
Bulky Umbreon, nimbly outsped by Suspicious, takes 25% from its super-effective Hidden Power, and chooses to start with Sand-Attack rather than attack directly. Doesn't save it. So far, so good.
Murkrow is up next. I stick with Suspicious to weaken it to start, then do a respectable chunk of damage with TotalClef before letting CPU claim the final blow. Its Faint Attack is hellishly powerful - Spiritguy falls to a single hit, while the others cling on with single digits.
Now then. Karen might say she likes Dark-types, but two of her Pokemon - Gengar and Vileplume - are not Dark-types, and the AI will be unlikely to switch to them over Houndoom given Poison's weakness to Psychic. Sure enough, once Murkrow faints, Karen opts to send out Houndoom next. Having already fought one, I've been dreading the second.
With an utterly devastating Crunch attack capable of OHKOing all of my team, Houndoom is an impenetrable wall of a foe. As ever, I've considered several options of how to overcome it. Boosting with X Items would have been ideal, but Umbreon and Murkrow both know Faint Attack, which easily 2HKOs all of my squad. Even if they didn't, Umbreon's use of Sand Attack and Murkrow's Whirlwind deter any attempts to boost up. So, once again, it looks like the only option is to use up all of Crunch's PP before mounting a counterattack. Crunch has 15 PP and I have a great many Revives, so simply rotating team members in and out seems to be the way to go. I duly do so until 15 uses of Crunch have elapsed, using up nearly all of my Revives - it's painful, but it's the only way.
With Pursuit, Flamethrower, and Roar remaining in Houndoom's moveset, it opts to seemingly use all of them at random. I guess the AI is somewhat stumped by the fact that each remaining move has an aspect that makes them desirable: Pursuit is super-effective but weak, Flamethrower is neutral but powerful, and Roar has a helpful phazing effect.
Suspicious is the squad member with the highest Special Defence (and HP, coincidentally) and can survive a Flamethrower, so I use up a precious Max Revive to get it to full health. Hydro, too, is just bulky enough to tank a hit - and by a nice coincidence, they're the ones I want. They can both also survive Pursuit (though Roar is what I really want Houndoom to be using, as it means I get to strike first). I send out Suspicious and tank a Pursuit before doing some respectable damage, reviving Cyberbear as Houndoom strikes again. Then Hydro gets a powerful hit in with Hidden Power Water, bringing Houndoom into the red zone: it strikes again with Pursuit and faints me, but I (max) revive Hydro once again the following turn and bring it back in. And at last, Houndoom stupidly uses Roar and I drop it with Hidden Power.
Gengar is up next. Thankfully, unlike the others I've fought, it has an utterly abysmal moveset I can work around. Lick does a workable amount of damage, and Hydro's Hidden Power does around the same amount; two hits have us both on 60%. No doubt thinking it's being clever, Gengar uses Curse and Hydro snipes the last 10%.
And finally we have Vileplume. Back to Suspicious, who should be fast and bulky enough to bring it down. It gets in an impressive initial hit, but Petal Dance does a tremendous amount of damage. Well, so much for that. Over to Cyberbear, then - otherwise utterly useless in this fight - who also outspeeds for the KO.
This speech is really hitting me differently right now.
Maybe.
Current team
Suspicious the Unown-A (Level 44)
TotalClef the Unown-J (Level 44)
Spiritguy the Unown-C (Level 44)
Cyberbear the Unown-G (Level 45)
CPU the Unown-I (Level 45)
Hydro the Unown-K (Level 45)