Opelucid City Pokémon Gym Leader: Drayden "The Spartan Mayor"
Opelucid City Pokémon Gym Leader: Iris "The Girl Who Knows the Hearts of Dragons"
Pokémon Black and White
The Opelucid Gym is designed like a thin maze, with switches to open up the correct path. These switches cause dragon statues' heads to move, creating new paths for the player. After the switches have been hit in the right order, the path will lead the player to the Leader. Behind the Gym Leader, there's a warp tile the player can use as a shortcut back to the entrance.
Clyde tells the player about the mechanics of the maze, although he says there are only two dragons, when there are actually three.
Pokémon Black 2 and White 2
In the two years between Black and White and Black 2 and White 2, the Opelucid Gym was remodeled to hide the DNA Splicers.
The Gym now features a whiteB2/blackW2 dragon vertically on a wall and a blackB2/whiteW2 dragon which the player can control to move to a certain position by stepping on the buttons appearing on its head. The Trainers of the Gym are on four different levels; the player must defeat at least one Trainer from each level to be able to proceed to the next level. On the topmost level, the player will meet Drayden. The DNA Splicers are hidden within the Gym. Because of this, Team Plasma freezes Opelucid City after the player has defeated Drayden.
Appearance
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The Gym debuted in Drayden Versus Iris: Past, Present, and Future!, where Drayden battled Iris there and won. Afterwards, it was revealed that Drayden was considering Iris to replace him as the Opelucid Gym Leader one day.
In JN065, Iris invited Ash to the Opelucid Gym for a World Coronation Series battle. Upon arriving, Ash and Goh were shocked to learn that Iris had become the Unova LeagueChampion. Ash and Iris decided to make their match a battle between Dragon types to follow the Gym's type theme. Eventually, Ash's Dragonite and Dracovish succeeded in defeating Iris's Dragonite and Haxorus, allowing Ash to advance to the Ultra Class.
In the anime, the Gym is a stone building with two stone dragon statues lining the entrance to the building. Inside is a dimly lit battlefield with statues of Druddigon, Haxorus, and Hydreigon overlooking the field near the ceiling.
Drayden used Druddigon as his second in his Gym battle against Iris. It battled Iris's Dragonite, and after a very tough match, finally emerged victorious with its Dragon Tail attack, winning the match for Drayden.
Druddigon was shown to be very strong, being able to withstand Dragonite's super effective Ice Beam and intercept it in the middle of a Dragon Rush.
The Opelucid Gym appeared in The Cold Hard Truth and A Cold Reception, where Drayden held a press conference in front of the Gym. He announced that the date of the Pokémon League tournament had been pushed up, being held in one week instead of the originally planned three months. Inside the Gym, Drayden explained Kimi, his secretary, that the decision was made in order to lure Team Plasma out of hiding.
In Mr. Perfect, it was revealed that Iris had been made the new Gym Leader of the Opelucid Gym, although Drayden mentioned he had plans to reclaim his position at some point in the future. As Iris had inherited Alder's Champion title by the time of Deduction Time, it can be assumed Drayden had taken his Gym Leader post back by then.
Druddigon is Drayden's only known Pokémon. It was first used to battle Iris's Fraxure, where it easily defeated its opponent. When Drayden was speaking to the press in front of his Gym, Druddigon roared at the crowd to get them to quiet down. During Drayden's Gym battle against Black, Druddigon went up against Black's Brav. With its speed, Druddigon proved to be a powerful foe, but was defeated when Brav opened a door to let in a blizzard, freezing Druddigon in place and making it defenseless from an attack.
Iris and Drayden's teams are identical except for their genders and the Ability of their Druddigon and the Ability of their Haxorus. Iris's Pokémon are all female and Drayden's are all male, Iris's Druddigon has Sheer Force and Drayden's Druddigon has Rough Skin, and Iris's Haxorus has Mold Breaker while Drayden's Haxorus has Rivalry.
In Black 2 and White 2, the Veterans' Japanese names are all based on the word "dragon" in different languages: Ryūsei, Tatsumi, and Tatsurō are from the Japanese words ryū and tatsu, Drake is a term sometimes used to refer to European dragons, and Long is Chinese for dragon.
