New question, Old problem

[V_Translanka]

Why doesn't Gato count again? I'm pretty sure those people don't say that line about her inventions always blowing up or w/e in the retrans...

The Pendant reacted to the Telepod and that initial Gate appeared. The Telepod and the Gate Key open Gates, not the Pendant. What's hard to understand about that?

[Mr Bekkler]

Why doesn't Gato count again? I'm pretty sure those people don't say that line about her inventions always blowing up or w/e in the retrans...

That's the wrong kind of question to be asking 
Really, because when you're at Level 1 the difficulty is pretty high, and it never changes, so as soon as your levels go up at all, the difficulty is incredibly low. It would have been difficult to demonstrate how Gato "didn't work". He even goes screwy in Nuumamonja, but I hate bringing that up because it's not canon.

The Pendant reacted to the Telepod and that initial Gate appeared. The Telepod and the Gate Key open Gates, not the Pendant. What's hard to understand about that?

The Telepod didn't open the gate with just Crono. It did it for Marle and the pendant.  Then for Crono and the pendant. It wasn't the Telepod or the pendant, but the combination.

[V_Translanka]

Regardless of whether or not Gato is easy to beat, the creation of him at all is impressive...Perhaps the invention the people see as blowing up is something akin to her Disposable Explosion Blast Pistol (the weapon she uses to bust Crono out of jail)...All scientists have failures anyways, that's the core of the scientific method!

The Pendant's reaction is what caused it to appear, the Telepod is what opened it. Obviously they thought the Pendant was important (possibly even necessary to have a returning Gate appear), so Lucca says to hold on to it...Obviously it's not necessary to open the Gates because as you said, Lucca didn't have it and she opened the then preexisting Gate with just the Gate Key...