Striaton City

As soon as you exit the Gym, you'll be approached by a rather odd character named Fennel. She has something that Prof. Juniper wanted to give you or something like that, so she takes you back to her house and then takes you upstairs... There's some weird contraption hooked up to a bed there. Yes, this sounds rather peculiar, but all becomes well when she gives you HM01, which teaches your Pokemon Cut. Now that you have the Trio Badge, you can use it outside of battle, too. Woohoo!

Anyway, she tells you some stuff about needing to catch or get a Munna or something before you can do something, and then you can do something else called a Game Sync. Hmm, odd. Anyway, she'll then just sort of leave you up there. Talk to the other girl in the room and she'll introduce herself as Shouro. She's a lot like the Bill, Lanette, and Bebe of the older generations. She puts her name on the box menu now, so it'll be "Shouro's PC" now rather than just someone's. She also tells you about the new Battle Box feature, which can be used to store your team of Pokemon in for quick and easy access to battle, for battles from the menu screen (before hitting Continue) and probably some other battles.

If you get a Munna anytime soon, you should bring it back to Fennel. If it has this one ability, then you'll be able to activate this special place called the Dream World, I think.

So now that we have the HM for Cut and the badge it goes with, where should we go with our newfound powers? Well, on the northern part of Route 2, there's a shrub you can cut that leads you to a Super Potion and a Great Ball. That's kinda cool. But where you really want to check out is the Dream Ruins. Yeah, you know you totally saw that shrub blocking your path earlier, so go heal your Pokemon and check it out, Trainer!

Oh, also, while you're healing your Pokemon, you might want to take a peek at the Poke Mart items available. They're now selling Great Balls, Super Potions, Escape Ropes, status healing items, and Repels.