"Dangit, looks like the samophlange has gone out again... Gimme just one quick sec and I'll have it fixed RIGHT up... *BZZZZZTTT* OW! Fergot ta shut it off first... *BZZZZTTTTT* Dangit! Fergot ta shut it off again... Hand me that thar wrench... Hey, whar'd ya go?"

Edwin Sparks, known as Sparky to everyone at the academy (except for Principal Felinduce, who insists on calling him Mr. Sparks) is in charge of the daily maintenance and upkeep of the academy. It's his job to make sure that the facility is kept in tip-top shape, and his burden to clean up the messes that the young academy students invariably cause.

In many ways Sparky comes across as a bumpkin, but this couldn't be farther from the truth. Although he's a fairly simple 'mon in most aspects, the one thing he does excel at - mechanics and engineering - he does so with unsurpassed skill. There's nothing he can't build, dismantle, or repair.

Sparky's pride and joy, his "baby" as he calls it, is the school's official arena gymnasium. The facility is state of the art, able to configure into all sorts of simulated terrain and challenges with surprising ease and speed. Sparky spends most of his free time tinkering with the inner mechanisms of the arena, like a mad scientist huddled down in his lab with his abominable creation. Some psychic Pokemon swear that the arena itself has a literal mind of it's own.

Sparky has an open challenge to any team that can complete a grueling and brutally tough obstacle course in the arena known as the "Gauntlet". In all his time at the academy, nobody has ever succeeded. Those who try emerge from the trial with looks of horror in their eyes, haunted by the cackling of a tool-wielding electabuzz who some say has taken just one too many shocks...