Badge #5, Pt 2: Apophyll Island

Welcome to Apophyll Island! It's a sandy ashen island around a volcano, with nothing but endless waves of pollution lapping at your feet. This is one of the Reborn Region's natural wonders.

You can fight some Pyukumukii on the beach, or you can be more productive and get another Department Store sticker! Make your way up to the academy to the north of the beach (curse you, lack of diagonal movement!), then go through the front entrance and back o ut through the front exit.

Inside the inner part of the academy there are a series of stairs on both sides which lead to individual rooms. Go up the stairs at the bottom left and talk to the girl inside; she wants you to bring her a TV. (Wow, this is dated.)

Your heist target is immediately upstairs; interact with the TV to steal it. Bring it back to the girl to get your fifth sticker. You can also get a Meditite here. There are four NPCs standing in front of bookshelves across the academy top floors. If you talk to all four, they will spout some quack shit about zen and auras or similar; then talk to the lady standing on the top left rafter (go out through the left upper doors in the main buildings) who will give you a Meditite.

Let's just advance the plot; go straight south from the academy to find a summoning circle. Talk to the suspiciously pink woman (Kiki) to warn her about the PULSE machine that's being set up on her island. Go back to her room (the very furthest back room of the academy) and talk to her again for another cutscene. She explains her philosophy about being calm before refusing to give you the next TMX that you need to progress.

From here, you have a choice to battle either Victoria or Cal (who's disappeared up the mountain) Practically speaking, you're going to fight Victoria. You might have already fought Cal, which lets you skip this battle. If you still have a Fearow from Shade's gym battle, Victoria's team goes down pretty easily.

Here's Icky Vicky's team:

And here's Cal's much harder team:

Your next challenge is to battle Kiki herself to "graduate". This is essentially a mini-gym battle, being on a custom field and also a 6v6 battle. A few tips:

• Go back to the Slums and find a Primeape; with Rage Fist and the awesome Fighting/Ghost type after evolving into Annihilape it destroys her team easily.
• If you picked Fuecoco as your starter, it also puts in major work here.
• Really, any Ghost or Fairy type does well here.

Cue a few cutscenes... Kiki doesn't have Strength. Rats! It's time to go to Azurine Island instead.

Welcome to Azurine Island! About half of the items on the floor here are real, and the other half are Foongus or Amoonguss. The green lilipads in the water are walkable and form the basis of the route you need to follow.

Follow the blue arrow to find TM83 Infestation, and then the red arrow to a ledge that you need to jump down from.

Again, follow the red arrow to another ledge.

Follow this set of red arrows to find... a Light Shard? Uh oh. Then a battle with the silly duo of Eclipse and Aster, who give you the hint you need to know about how to find the hidden door in the building you've just found (I'm not drawing another arrow. There's only one route.) It's the machine at the back left of the building. There's inexplicably a TM vendor on this island, selling Gen 8 and 9 TMs.

Waltz your way in, heal your team, and go straight upwards to fight Taka again and rescue the Sex Pest.

After some more bad cutscenery, accept Cain's offer to walk back (yuck) and you'll be transported back to Apophyll Island. Great detour.

Once you return to Apophyll Island, heal your team in the academy and head to the right and downwards to the entrance to Pyrous Mountain. Once inside, Victoria will be your partner throughout the dungeon.

There's four paths here; the left-most one has some breakable rocks that spawn a Magcargo. The middle left one is blocked off by a ledge. The middle right is blocked off by a lava lake. That leaves the right-most path! The goal through here is to drain the various lava lakes into lower levels of the map by breaking rocks... sort of.

Take the right-most path down to B1F. The path to the right here is also blocked off by a lava lake... so take the path down and to the left to floor B2F. You'll find TM108 Dig and a breakable rock down here which will let the lava drain from B1F. Go back upstairs and into the former lava lake; the bottommost stairs takes you to an area with a Heatmor and a Fire Stone. The rightmost stairs leads to a Strength rock (make a mental note here)... and the conspicuous hole in the ground leads to a Flame Orb and the Arcanite.

Break the breakable rock on B1F (to the right of the forked path with the two grunts) and go back upstairs where the lava lake has now receded.

Don't fall into the conspicuous hole here, but proceed up past the double battle to the next floor instead. Likewise, don't fall down the conspicuous hole but continue onwards upwards to the third floor - which, once again, has a lava lake blocking you. Jump down the ledge to make it to the other side of 2F which has another breakable rock on the left side of the room. Go down the ladder to the area before the ledge on the first floor and jump down to break the final rock, allowing the lava from floor 3 to flow all the way down. (You may have to go back down to B1F and B2F and break the rocks there to let the lava flow properly.)

You can now climb to the top of the mountain and exit; walk towards Cain for a short cutscene and a battle with Sirius... and his Level 75 Garchomp. Yeah, you're not beating this one legitimately. Use Perish Song on your Murkrow and sac three Pokémon to win this battle. Losing this battle will stop you getting the good ending eventually, and you'll have to replay the whole game. (You also gain a whole load of relationship points here, if you care about it).

After beating him (or losing, if you disregarded my repeated advice, this is one of those rare losable fights), you get another cutscene and Kiki fucking dies. This is an adult game for adults!!!!! Then, another long cutscene; and it's time to go to the Byxblysion Wasteland. There's another PULSE there.