CH156 (770), The Trapinch Trails (2)

I was happy that there was at least one Trapinch with green potential among the 32 sleeping ones, even if it was a (mid) bronze stage Trapinch. I directly balled that one, and after thinking about it for a moment I also captured the two deep yellow potential iron stage Trapinch. While my requirements for the Trapinch elite colony were higher than they were for the Gligar because I frankly assigned more importance to it, Trapinch with deep yellow potential were guaranteed to attain at least light green potential after Utopia's optimization, so I chose to set deep yellow as the recruitment limit for Trapinch.

Both iron Trapinch were lucky enough to have their potential pushed straight to green, and the bronze one missed out on light blue by just 2%, which I was sure it would be able to finish off within a few years simply by living and training inside Utopia even if we ignored his future evolution to Vibrava. This was not a bad haul at all and a pretty decent start for this Trapinch quest. Either way, I left the Trapinch on their own after I was done capturing the three that caught my attention, and we made our way to the second marked area on the eastern Trapinch route.

Interestingly enough, we got to see something or rather someone that the Gligar did not mention during their report. Roughly 6 or 7 minutes into our walk a Helioptile suddenly ran across the sand to our left. It hurriedly rushed towards a sand mount before vanishing out of sight nearly as quickly/suddenly as it appeared. Still, I did not blame the Gligar for not knowing that there were Helioptile in this area. First of all, they were not all that big at 50 to 60 cm, and on top of that they blended in pretty well with the sand due to their yellow coloring, at least I believed they would be hard to see from the sky.

Besides, if their number was not high, it was actually possible that they never got to pass each other or pass each other rarely enough for the Gligar to fail to notice the Helioptile each time. Either way, I could not help but be curious about the little lizard, so we made our way to the mound it disappeared behind. When we made it there I had to laugh seeing Helioptile; Its body was burrowed halfway in the sand, and its head was sticking out with its frills spread out. I knew objectively that it was basking in the sun to absorb energy, but it looked rather funny, so I could not help it.

It had not moved even when it had no doubt heard our approach since we made no effort to hide it; Maybe it was thinking that we wouldn't notice it for some reason, or it had hoped that we would ignore it. Either way, it did move when I began to laugh, no doubt realizing that it had been noticed, and when I saw that Heliopltile wanted to burrow into the sand to run away, I immobilized it using my psychic powers. I levitated it out of the sand and had it hover in front of me. Knowing that Heliolisk were decent Pokemon I took a look at Helioptile's status sheet, but she happened to have orange potential, so I let her go after patting her head and giving her a snack.

After that little interlude, we resumed our way to the second Trapinch spawn point on the map. It took me close to another 25 minutes of sand surfing with Seb/Nidoking's interference before we made it to the marked area on the map. Still, interference or not, by this point it was clear that the travel time Gligar mentioned accounted for a faster speed than what I was using since it took me quite a bit longer to reach the marked spots than what they told me. Not that hard to believe since their gliding speed was naturally faster than my usual walking or my current sand surfing speed. Yet, for some reason, I had assumed that the travel time mentioned by the Gligar was them telling me how long it was going to take me to reach the place and not how long it took them to fly/glide there.

Anyway, we made it to the second spot and the Trapinch were actually living among a cluster of shrubs and cacti. More importantly, I could not only see Trapinch there but also two Vibrava resting atop two of the bigger cacti, while the Trapinch were either bustling around or resting on the ground. The Vibrava were the first to notice us and they took off into the air when they saw us heading straight for their place. One of the Vibrava released a warning shout once we had gotten within 30 meters of their little bit of shrubbery green. I was obviously not intimidated by Vibrava's shout, but we did stop when it did that since I wanted to send out my two diplomats first anyway.

The two Trapinch got transferred out from Utopia and I sent them towards the Vibrava to present the sale's pitch, though I had Hades/Gengar slip into one of their shadows so that he could interfere/protect them in case the Trapinch or Vibrava decided they did not like what my Trapinch were saying and decided to express that violently like the Trapinch in spot one did. Seeing how the undulations released by the Vibrava were merely of the silver stage, I was not worried about Hades being unable to act if it truly came down to it. Mothra/Butterfree, Seb, Gaia/Nidoqueen, as well as I watched as the Trapinch arrived in front of their target and began to speak.

This time around they were not rudely interrupted by any attacks and managed to finish their pitch. However, just because they listened to the pitch did not mean that they believed it. They proved that by shooing away my Trapinch and advising them to stop with the tall tales lest someone less tolerant took offense and decided to teach them a lesson for presumably lying to them, or for wasting their time. While that might be less pleasant to hear, I could feel their goodwill when they said that, showing that they were giving genuine advice and not just threatening us, so I decided to for now continue with the diplomatic approach.

Hence, once my diplomats had returned and declared their failure, I recalled them before our whole group approached the Vibrava. Just to ensure that they did not get the stupid idea to attack us, I had Seb flash his (high) dark gold undulations for a moment. The Vibrava and Trapinch turned quiet the moment Seb did that, and they watched us nervously as we stopped at the same spot as my Trapinch did before. I cleared my throat and presented my request/offer while using aura to underline that I was being truthful. The two Vibrava looked at each other before they allowed me to check their group, though I could feel their resignedness and frustration when they did it.

That told me that they did it more because of Seb's intimidation rather than my honesty or because they were interested in the offer, which I could tell was also a factor, just not the one they were feeling predominantly at the moment. Thankfully, their curiosity won over as I continued to check each Trapinch for a few seconds without doing anything else. By then I had gone through half of the hundred-something Trapinch that had come up after the Vibrava called them. Unfortunately, the best I saw so far was a deep yellow Trapinch and a deep orange one with a digging talent that doubled its speed while digging. Still, the talent was not good enough for me to consider that Trapinch for the elite colony simply because the talent was much less useful once Trapinch evolved.

Thankfully, the potential/talent drought broke as I checked my 69th Trapinch, and I honestly thought getting just this one would be worth it since he had blue potential while being at the (mid) iron stage. I still ended up stumbling upon another Trapinch with deep yellow potential and coincidentally this one was a female as well, though she was at the (high) iron stage compared to the previous (low) bronze one, which made her a tad more valuable in my eyes. However, that was nothing compared to what I found when I checked the second to last Trapinch. He was a variant, specifically an ability variant, though I had no idea which ability got replaced since he currently had access to a single ability.

Yes, this little variant put me in quite the dilemma because his light yellow potential was below the qualification line I set but his Huge Power variant ability was extraordinary enough for me to trample the restriction I imposed. Huge Power alone was enough to turn Flygon into an apex species, and if he managed to pass on his variation a few times over his life we might be able to at some point create a branch line that had Huge Power generalized/internalized. The extra attention and investment to ensure that Trapinch's potential rose by a few grades were definitely worth it, so I decided to put him on the same level of importance as the blue potential Trapinch.

Once I finished checking all Trapinch I turned to the two silver stage Vibrava. I had no interest in taking away the leaders of this little group since I was pretty certain that that would lead to a violent confrontation or necessitate me taking in the whole group, which I didn't want to do, but I was still curious about what their potential looked like. Who knew, maybe one of them was impressive enough to make me retract my words again. I used telekinesis to touch them and they ended up having green and deep yellow respectively, which was decent but not enough to change my mind.

With the checkup over, I directly told them that I was interested in 4 of the Trapinch and I even levitated them over to show which ones I meant, before telling them what exactly I was willing to give them in return for sharing the 4 Trapinch with me. Since there were 2 very good Trapinch among the 4 I wanted I decided to be generous. I offered the Vibrava to turn/expand their little shrubbery spot into a small berry field. I did not think that there was a need to hide the trees as we did for the first Trapinch group since this group was strong enough to defend it.

Besides, the cacti might cause Pokemon that were not taking a proper look to miss the berry trees, though that was less reliable than the strength of the Vibrava. Still, I decided to let them choose themselves what kind of setup they wanted. When the Vibrava heard my offer they readily/happily agreed. They decided to forgo the hole and asked me to just set things up above the ground. Because the ground around this place was one of the occasional desert patches that was not buried under sand and had actual earth even if it was the dried and cracked kind, I had an easier time working with it.

I asked the Trapinch to vacate the area for a moment before Seb, Gaia, and I proceeded to remove roughly half a meter of earth everywhere except for the ground beneath the cacti. Once that was done, I spread a 10 cm layer of premium earth from Utopia before following up with a 10 cm layer of mulch. I mixed water stone chips and dust into the mulch before placing the 20 young Oran Berry trees in their positions, holding them in place using psychic power while I filled the rest of the gap with another layer of premium earth. Once that was done I spread some Leaf Stone dust on the ground before speading a second layer of mulch.

Due to the slightly better soil, this setup would last a decade or two longer than the one I set up before, so I told the Vibrava that the Oran Berry trees would provide Oran berries for the next 2 to 3 decades, 4 if they were lucky, though they could prolong that if they managed to water the ground around the trees once or twice a week, which would require them to get external help since even Flygon were incapable of learning Rain Dance or any other water moves as far as I remembered.

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