Pokemon Sun LP, Part 8: Aether Conspiracy

Last we left off, we showed up in Team Skull Town, beat the crap out of the lowlifes, fought Guzma's piddly party of two big bugs, and returned to Aether House to deliver the kidnapped Yungoos back to the orphans... to which I find that, well, now it's Lillie that's kidnapped. I can excuse the kids, and maybe that Oranguru that's always in the back room just can't fit through the door, but Hau? Dude, you've got a psychic-electric surfing rat! Plumeria fights with a Golbat! How did they beat you up? Actually, from the sound of it, Hau actually seems to pussy out of the fight entirely. Man, Hau, you're honestly just kind of shit, aren't you? If not for the scenes that followed after this, I would've pegged him as one of the most useless characters in Pokemon lore.

In any case, Gladion randomly barges in and rants about how they've gotten their hands on Cosmog and that's pretty fucking bad, and he just attacks me. Honestly, Gladion feels like a more traditional rival character, and despite the over-the-top 'cool anime guy' mannerisms and dialogue from Gladion, I like him a fair bit better than Hau. Gladion's got a Golbat and a Sneasel to back his signature Type: Null up. I, on the other hand, have a party with a recently beefed-up movepool with TM's and some newly-learnt moves. So yeah. Gladion stood no chance.

Apparently Gladion knows that Team Skull has brought Lillie and Nebby to Aether Paradise, because of course. It's already built up to be so squeaky-clean, yet just wrong at the same time. Especially Lusamine-who-is-totally-obviously-Lillie's-mom. I meet up with Gladion at the harbor of Ula'ula Island, and lo and behold, Nanu shows up. The weird deadbeat police dude. He introduces himself as the island Kahuna... so maybe Molayne is allowed to pick trial captains simply because Nanu's just a deadbeat cop?

Nanu is the Dark-type kahuna, and holy shit, his party is actually pretty fucking good. A Sableye with an unexpected Power Gem, a monstrous Alolan Persian that goes around Black Hole Eclipsing people and just spamming Dark Pulse and Power Gem, and... uh.... a Krokorok, I think? The third Pokemon just died very quickly. But it so happens that Dark and Rock actually is just perfect coverage that wipes out almost the entirety of my team. Ribombee, Golisopod and Decidueye barely got hits off before they get taken out, Lycanroc got taken out by the Z-move, Mimikyu can't do anything to them since he doesn't have a Fairy type move, and my Magneton barely made it out of the battle after tanking so many Dark Pulses.

But Nanu got beat down, and so I've cleared everything trial-related in Ula'ula Island. It's a bit of a weird and honestly semi-anticlimactic kahuna battle considering how Hala and Olivia are relatively built up in their respective islands, but different is good. Nanu gives me the Darkinium Z, and Hau later shows up and is all like 'hey, I got to man up and save Lillie'. Good on you, Hau. I mean, you're mostly useless and I do all the legwork, but at least you have some balls.

Gladion brings the three of us onto the docks of Aether Paradise, and the Aether employees are just patrolling around, attacking me just like old-fashioned evil team grunts. I really, really love how no two Aether grunt has the same Pokemon, though, and they pull out relatively exotic shit like Drifblim and Shelgon. It also appears that some of them are actual asshole grunts, but most of them are just dudes who're working security for what they believe is a nice organization helping Pokemon.

Cutest dragonslayer ever.

Also, my Ribombee Tatl is just a monster. She stays in the lead and just murders everything in her path with a combination of Dazzling Gleam, Pollen Puff and Psychic. She's going around one-shotting stage 1 pseudo-legendaries and shit, and she's not even over-leveled! I turned off Exp Share somewhere around Acerola so my team isn't stupidly overleveled and make the game a non-challenge like Pokemon Y was, and Ribombee is still murdering people, all the while being a cheery little bug-fairy.

After a bit of exploring around to get Zygarde cells and whatnot (that has got to pay off sometime, right? Where is Dexio anyway?) I bugger up to the top floor and is challenged by Faba and his stupid neon-green mega-goggles. He brags about how he's an a-dult and he's the last line of defense of the Aether Foundation and his Pokemon is... a lone Hypno. Like, I was expecting, I don't know... a Salamence or an Alakazam or a Conkeldurr or something that's remotely threatening when I saw that he has a single Pokemon. But it's a Hypno. Faba, you suck.

Faba also drops very strong hints that Gladion ran away from Aether Foundation, though, and, well, Type: Null had to come from somewhere, right? There's also talk about how Team Skull is actually working for Aether Foundation and all that.

Faba is all cooperative and shit suddenly, and lets us down to the basement. It's a bit of an idiot villain ball until I realize it's supposed to be a trap. I'm confronted by these three dudes with weird masks that make them look like, oh, Iminata or whoever her name was from XY. Afterwards I go around fighting more Aether grunts, find out that Cosmog was experimented in the basement... was being the operative keyword. There are lots and lots of backstory in the science logs, including references to Professor Mohn (who the what now?) discovering an alternate dimension beyond the Ultra Wormholes, and apparently Cosmog is the key to opening these Wormholes. If stressed enough, Cosmog will cause the wormholes to break open and, well, Aether seems to really want to hurt Cosmog in their desire to summon Cthulhu into this world. I mean Ultra Beasts.

A crime to fashion

There's also a bunch of records about Type: Null's creation, about how it's created by Aether Foundation as a weapon against Ultra Beasts, and it's actually originally called Type: Full, but the three Type: Fulls went berserk, and the masks are placed onto their heads to suppress their powers, but this kind of disables their RKS system powers or whatever, causing them to become relatively underwhelming Type: Nulls. They're supposed to be cryogenically frozen and whatnot, but apparently Gladion stole one. There's also a weird series of blog posts by Faba talking about how to succeed in office work without actually telling about the details in Aether Foundation, but ends up ranting about how his boss's family stole something whose credit belongs to him. Huh.

Wicke then shows up shortly after that, addressing Gladion as 'young master' and it's at this point that I realize that, oh my god, Gladion's actually just like Lillie -- a child of crazy Lusamine who stole something belonging to Aether Foundation and escaped. It's a plot twist that I didn't actually see coming, and kudos for Pokemon for keeping a relatively anime-tropey twist like this hidden until a sufficient point.

There is a gauntlet of battles against Aether grunts, and finally a double battle against Faba again, where he's packing three Pokemon... but when your ace is a Hypno, you're no threat to someone who hangs out with a ghost owl archer. Faba sucks, man.

Gladion, Hau and I go to another clearing where Team Skull grunts are lounging about, and after taking down several grunts, the last few grunts are just like, man, we don't wanna get beaten up. Guzma apparently has totalled Gladion off-screen, and he introduces himself as the big bad Guzma who destroys all things. He's actually somewhat scary this time around, with four Pokemon. Pinsir and Golisopod are the heavy hitters, and Masquerain actually got a couple scary Air Slashes against my poor Decidueye. The Ariados... I'm not sure what it's trying to do. It's actually a decent challenge with Guzma knocking out my Decidueye and my Ribombee and putting a couple others in yellow. But fall he does, and that's another villain vanquished.

I'm... not that big of a fan how Team Skull just gets folded into basically being Aether Foundation's cronies. They have such an insane personality going on about them, and while the grunts are mostly pawns, Guzma himself seems to be an interesting character who ends up getting mostly reduced as Lusamine's big thug, and that plus Lillie's passivity are my two complaints about this whole big plotline.

How does she
even do that hair?

After an army of Aether grunts, Aether masked scientist things, Skull thugs, the branch chief of Aether Foundation and the big bad leader of Team Skull, I think this might actually be the most epic raid on an evil team's headquarters I've ever had. Team Plasma Frigate in B2W2 would kind of be cool if it isn't 80% annoying puzzles, and neither Silph Co. in RBW or the Team Aqua/Magma Hideouts in RSE really felt threatening due to everyone mostly having the same couple of Pokemon and only the bosses being any kind of challenge. This was very awesome. The combined usage of characters we've met through the journey, very different Pokemon used by the grunts, the backstory about Gladion, Type: Null and Cosmog, and the general urgent feel of rescuing Lillie and Nebby...

I barge in on Lusamine and Lillie having a mother-daughter moment, and Lillie kind of just get shot down by her mother, who's intent on using Cosmog to summon the Ultra Beasts for her to save. And, well, Lillie isn't going to do anything without a Pokemon of her own, so I head into the deepest part of the Aether Foundation after Lusamine, where she... has a very, very morbid collection of flash-frozen Pokemon as her collection. Holy fuck and I thought putting 700+ Pokemon in my box is heartless collecting.

Lusamine wants to let the Ultra Beasts run amuck in Alola because... reasons? I don't quite get her motivations, but it's clear that she's crazy and determined, and neither Lillie nor Gladion can really talk her down, as Lusamine sees both of them as useless shits that can't do anything and disappoint her by running away from home. So she's got the crazy-agenda thing and the shitty-parent angle going on for her as a very interesting villain. Lusamine has Nebby stuck inside a weird casket thing, and apparently the UB-01 jellyfish that I fought earlier in the game was summoned with part of the leftover dust.

Now Lusamine focuses all the power and aims it into the sky, and wormholes just start tearing Alola apart. UB-01 shows up again, and I thought it's just going to be a simple local fight... but then the cutscene continues to show black clouds covering the skies of all the other towns in Alola, and it briefly cuts back to the show going on in Aether Paradise. I thought it's going to be an implied global incident that we only really see a part of, just like in XY, BW and DPP where there are implied chaos going around elsewhere in the region but since we're stuck in the bad guy base we only get to see the things before us.

-insert badass background music-

But we then get a full-blown cutscene where Hala is taking a stroll and is straight up attacked by UB-02, the giant muscle mosquito robot who probably has a name that I haven't looked up yet. Hala doesn't give a shit, and straight up gets ready to fight with UB-02, who looks awesome and I want one. Like, I don't think your Makuhita and Crabrawler can really do much, but then a lightning blast slams down between them and TAPU KOKO! It's like a part of the epic legendary battles in the Pokemon Adventures comics where the legendaries actually fight each other, and, man, Tapu Koko just looks badass in that pose, and the tiki guardians are actually earning their keep as guardians of their respective islands.

Also, the music that goes throughout all of this is just... holy shit. They really outdid themselves, and music was never Nintendo's weak suit.

And then apparently Gladion fights UB-01 and Hau has to handle Guzma off-screen (good on you, Hau!), while I fight Aether President Lusamine. She's a bit tougher than Guzma, but since I happen to have a fair amount of type effectiveness against her team (I don't have Fire or Flying to really deal with Guzma's bugs) she felt like less of a challenge. After the battle there's a bit of a trippy fade-in-fade-out where UB-01 apparently fades back into the Ultra Wormhole, Lusamine rants about catching the beasts with a certain special pokeball, and Lusamine just... disappears. Guzma is all like swaggering and shit as he follows Lusamine into the wormhole, before he too fades in and out and disappears into nothing.

Nebby isn't dead, though, and apparently has transformed into a new form, which I know is Cosmoem. Gladion talks about going off to the other dimension to rescue Lusamine (why? She's psycho and just disowned you) and all that

The next day, Lillie shows up with new clothes and a ponytail, swapping out the Nebby-prison bag for a backpack, talking about how she's going to get stronger too and whatnot. Good for you, girl. I mean, you probably should get that lonely Litten from Professor Kukui, because your Cosmoem is kind of in a coma or whatever, but hey. Gladion gave me a Master Ball, and we exchange words for a while before he drives me to the final island, Poni Island. Hau apparently wants to split off to train and be stronger, which is good. Shoo, Hau.

The first town in Poni Island is Seafolk Village, which is a small, little coastal town with lots of docks and apparently people live in houses shaped like Magikarp, Whiscash and Gyarados. That's a bit funny. Apparently Seafolk Village is the only real populated place in the entirety of Poni Island according to our edgy-emo buddy Gladion, so it's going to feel different to the first three islands.

I head back to Melemele to see if I can catch that muscular mosquito Ultra Beast, though, and somehow I stumbled into Ilima's house, upon which he's all like happy to make a friend and challenges me to a battle. My team is... hopelessly over-leveled for his weak level 18 Gumshoos and Smeargle to even do anything against... so does that mean the Trial Captains are all battle-able? Ilima gives me an Everstone, kind of a crappy reward, but he's nice. I mean, his father builds him up as this super-dedicated battling genius, and he's honestly not that good if he's fighting with a Gumshoos, but he's nice. I think I'll take a break from Poni Island and just go around re-fighting the other trial captains.

So yeah, we're cooling down a bit from the whole Aether Foundation/Lusamine/Team Skull mega-plot, but there seems to be some ways to go and it's not quite the climax of the game yet. It's very cool. This might actually be my faovurite plotline of all the Pokemon games so far, with maaaybe only Black/White's story matching up to this and I wasn't actually all that keen on the whole Ultra Beasts and very rookie-esque trial thing. But man, this is a very fun storyline.