CH40 (270), Visiting the Riolu Habitat

The whole thing went pretty swiftly, Mr. Burns confirmed everything accepted the eggs and send me on my way. I then went to the secretariat and they were expecting me, so once I gave them the necessary information for the official bank account my parents opened up for me, the secretary directly transferred the money over.

A quick online check confirmed the arrival of the money, and yes, it worked that fast. I thanked her before leaving the academy to head home. Well, my return went as expected, mom crushed me in a killer hug and fussed over me. Dad had no chance to hug me since mom refused to let me go, so after hugging us both for a bit he settled on patting my head.

We moved to the couch, but mom still refused to let me go and had me in a side hug instead. They both repeatedly asked me how I was and how I felt, most likely wanting to make sure that I was fine after coming back from an extermination mission.

It took me the good part of 3 hours to convince mom that I was fine, dad on the other hand believed me after only an hour. I knew that because I could feel genuine relief from him at that point. Unlike him, mom only calmed down enough to let me go after 3 hours, but I knew that she was still a bit worried, so she was still clingy for the rest of the day.

I told them that I would be entering the Riolu habitat the next day, so they wished me luck when I left for the academy the next day. I had not mentioned the eggs to them since I had yet to decide what to do with them.

I settled on having them hatch first so that they could go through the Utopia treatment before I decided whether I would keep them as underlings of Moka/Crobat, or if I would give them away.

On that end, all three eggs were currently inside the nesting ground of Moka's habitat. The deviant egg needed another 12 months to hatch, while the other male egg and the female egg, needed 5 as well as 6 more months respectively to hatch.

Anyway, back to more important things. I had just arrived at Mr. Cameron's office and after exchanging greetings, Mr. Cameron called out his Gallade.

"He'll bring you to the Riolu habitat, and he will also be the one who will bring you back from there. Only those with the proper authorization can teleport to and from the habitat, so you won't be able to teleport from there without his help

It is currently 8:25 a.m, and you have until 6 p.m at most to find a Riolu willing to follow you. If you fail to do so until then you're out of luck, and you'll have to earn another opportunity to enter the habitat. I genuinely hope that it does not come to that, and in my time I have only witnessed that happening a scant few times. Hopefully, you won't be one of them."

When he said that I was mentally screaming, 'oy, don't go around raising flags, man!'

"If you want to return early, call the secretariat and they'll inform me so that I can send him to get you," Mr. Cameron finished, and then he told his Gallade to get going without giving me any time to say something.

Before I knew it I was no longer inside Mr. Cameron's office, but at what I assume was the Riolu habitat, seeing that I was outside, standing in a clearing. It took less than 30 seconds for two silhouettes to appear in my vision, and it took less than ten seconds for the two Lucario to arrive in front of us.

Gallade told the two that I was the youngling whose visit they had been notified of yesterday before he entrusted me to them and left. Once that happened the focus of the two Lucario shifted to me and I awkwardly waved at them.

"Hi," I said while being analyzed by the two Lucario. They seemed satisfied with what they saw since both gave a satisfied nod. I felt like some prospective match that was facing his future in-laws, who managed to pass the initial assessment.

"Follow us, we shall lead you inside the sanctuary and to the common area where you shall search for your future partner. You may freely wander around the common area and talk to any Riolu and Lucario there. However, your partner can only be chosen among the Riolu, and only this above 2-year-cycles of age may leave with you.

If your potential partner turns out to be younger than that, then you will have to wait until the Riolu reaches the necessary age before it may join you. We shall inform the Academy at that point and they'll send you here to reaffirm once more that you are fit for each other.

If that is still the case, you may leave together, if not you may search for another partner instead," the right one, who turned out to be a female, said, and I nodded before following them while we headed towards the place the Lucario had come from.

It did not take us long to arrive at a point where I could see the area we were heading to, it was in a much larger clearing than the one I arrived at. There were a few hills on the router area with some stretches full of trees, but the whole center area was mostly open, with a nice grass lawn and a stream going down part of the clearing.

There were a few places with trees and a few large boulders and some patches of sand, but to me, it was pretty obvious that those places were like that on purpose. Most likely as playing/meeting zones for the Riolu.

I could see that those places had the highest concentration of Riolu with a few Lucario being there as well, most likely acting as supervisors, or maybe they simply wanted to spend time with the Riolu, who knew.

We began walking into the clearing which was definitely part of the habitat, probably something like the public area where the Riolu/Lucario families spend time with others. The male Lucario, who had not said anything until now spoke to me a bit before we came close to one of the "play" zones.

"You should check out the activity areas first before moving around the clearing in search of your partner. The activity areas are generally the places where the highest number of Riolu gather, so you'll have an easier time finding a partner there.

You won't have to walk around to find a Riolu that way. You obviously don't have to listen to my advice, but I genuinely recommend starting there before resorting to randomly searching the clearing. You can do that if you fail to meet a partner among the zones."

"Thanks," I thanked him with a nod for his solid advice since what he said was definitely true. Only those too stubborn, dumb, or prideful would reject such logical as well as sound advice, and I was not dumb.

"Alright, go ahead and start your search," the female said, and they began leaving, but before they moved too far the male turned and added a slight warning to not get aggressive in my bid to get a Riolu to join me.

Trying to force one of the Riolu to join was forbidden and would result in immediate expulsion out of the habitat, along with being barred from reentering. The female added that the academy would also deliver punishments on top of that before she said that she did not think that I would act like that, but that they had to give this reminder to every visitor.

After that, I moved toward the closest activity zone. My approach roused the curiosity of a bulk of the Riolu there, seeing as they all seemed to be looking at me in curiosity. There were a lot of Riolu in this place alone, probably more than 60 and this was just one of the recreational areas.

Still, I could not go around just touching each Riolu and move on since that would be suspicious, so I began approaching the Riolu to play with them. I told them my purpose and I wanted to see if we were compatible, to that end I proposed that we all play tag.

I obviously used the contact during the game to check their status, and at the end of roughly 80 minutes, I managed to check them all. The worst potential I came across was yellow which was not that bad, especially if we considered that this was only the case for 4 out of 63 Riolu.

There were even 2 that had light blue potential, but the best one out of this batch was without a doubt the one that literally stood out from the very beginning. I had noticed the shiny Riolu right from the start but chose not to overreact since I was sure that it would not have been taken well.

Thankfully, she did not get treated badly by the other Riolu, but I did not expect anything else from the Riolu/Lucario line. If they had been mistreating one of their members badly just because it was different, I would have been seriously disappointed. Still, they did not disappoint me, so my worries were unwarranted.

'Species: Riolu

Gender: Female

Type: Fighting

Potential: Blue

Stage: Iron-stage (high)

Genetic variation: Shiny

Abilities: Steadfast, Prankster

Talents: None

Affinities: Fighting, Aura'

What was great, was that she was only at the (high) iron stage, so she could still take advantage of the first possible limit break from the iron to the bronze stage. Some of the Riolu I had checked had already advanced to the bronze stage, but luckily she hadn't done that.

Well, her having a Shiny Gene was kinda obvious since she looked the part, and it gave a nice 15% boost to her overall. Her ability section, or rather the ability section of all Riolu I checked revealed something rather interesting.

All Riolu with a second ability had Prankster as their second ability, only their first ability varied between either Steadfast or Inner Focus, and it made perfect sense. Steadfast and Inner Focus were abilities whose effects conflicted, since one profited from flinching, while the other prevented flinching.

In that regard, it made sense that nature deemed it fit to avoid pairing the two abilities. As for her having both a Fighting and an Aura affinity, that made perfect sense, at least to me, since the two were not the same. The Aura affinity was something all Riolu had.

I definitely set her as my temporary choice. No idea if I would find a better Riolu but if I didn't, I would go with her. Well, that was if she agreed. It was always possible that my choice did not want to go with me.

Anyway, after concluding our little game of tag I moved to the next recreation area and repeated the process there. I found some good Riolu there as well. The best one here was a male bronze stage Riolu with blue potential, but he could not compete with the female shiny I saw in the first area.

A quick look at my watch told me that I still had a lot of time, so I was not too worried about finding some more interesting Riolu. It was only 10:50 a.m after all.

The next area turned out to be a bust as well, with only a few light blue potential Riolu, so definitely no one that could replace the shiny. It was at the fourth area that I came across a Riolu that made me seriously contemplate if I should keep the shiny as my choice or if I should replace her with the new one.

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