CH25 (255), It Finally Happened

Well, Mars/Ursaring's case was a nice surprise, but something even greater happened just a bit after that. Okay, a bit might be an understatement, but today, close to the end of the second week of the second month, on Kyoday, 12.15.2180, Mothra/Butterfree's Strength reached SSS.

With this, my lovely not-so-little little girl completed her limit-breaking. She was officially ready to break through to the gold stage to become my very first gold-stage Pokemon.

Not only would sweet Mothra be my first gold-stage Pokemon, but her breakthrough bonus would also turn her into my first Pokemon with aurora potential. Well, light aurora to be specific, but aurora nonetheless.

That was one of the reasons I would only allow her to break through inside Utopia since I had no idea of her breakthrough this time would cause any big phenomenon due to her reaching light aurora potential.

The potential phenomenon of her improvement might attract the attention of a legendary, or worse of some high-class criminals that believed that the risk of offending the Aura Guardian and Alliance was worth a Pokemon with "legendary" or "mythical" potential.

So, Mothra breaking through inside Utopia would avoid attracting any attention even if a phenomenon appeared since no one outside of Utopia would witness it.

Anyway, I was not sure if she would unlock an additional gene or talent but I was expecting something to happen. Still, no matter which one happened, I was not planning to hide it since I could blame it on her advancement to the gold stage. The fact that it was actually true was all the better in my opinion.

However, if my guess was true and she actually unlocked a gene then she would lose some of her potential in the process, so she would have to go through her breakthrough inside Utopia to reduce the amount of lost potential. That was the second reason besides the potential aurora phenomenon that she had to go through her breakthrough inside Utopia.

This meant I would have to keep her breakthrough a secret for a little while, at least until I could go on a trip to Mt.Moon to use the place as a cover for her breakthrough for my parents or anyone else. Otherwise, they would be curious why I did not call them to let them watch her breakthrough.

Saying that Mothra broke through during one of my regular training trips was much easier to explain, so that was going to be my cover story. I just had to keep it a secret for 2 days, 1.5 days actually since I could go to Mt.Moon around noon on Arcdays.

Anyway, excuses aside, I waited until we separated for the night before locking my door and entering Utopia. I called everyone and we moved to Mothra's habitat. I went up to her and hugged her.

"Alright, girl, are you ready? Today's the big day. You're going to show everyone why you're my sweet genius," I told her and she happily chittered that she was ready.

I took a few steps back to give her some room and the others formed a circle around her with a roughly 6 meters radius for the same reason.

"This is it, sweety. Go ahead," I told her and she began glowing showing that she started her breakthrough. Normally the breakthrough process was shorter and less bright than an evolution unless something extraordinary happened.

Well, it seemed that I had been right about Mothra's breakthrough being really special this time around since she was sucking in the energy of Utopia as if there was no tomorrow. It was definitely more than the regular amount that got attracted during a breakthrough.

Not only that, but the light began to rise in intensity reaching a degree that was comparable to the brightness that normally happens during evolutions.

Furthermore, her breakthrough was taking longer than it normally took which supported my belief that she was going through some important changes. A lot of energy was being funneled into Mothra's light cocoon and something resembling an aurora borealis began appearing above her.

I was supremely thankful that I had not let her go through with her breakthrough outside of Utopia. It took a full 4 minutes for the light show to settle which was actually longer than the longest evolution I had witnessed so far, and once the light was gone we could all see why it had taken so long.

While Mothra had not suddenly evolved into a hitherto unknown evolution of Butterfree, there were some changes compared to her previous look. First of all, was the fact that Mothra had grown even bigger than she had previously been, which had already been significantly larger than the average of her species.

Now, while her main body had only grown by 10 cm or so, at least from my estimation, her total growth including her wings was bigger than that. I would say that her total height had gone from 240 cm to around 270 cm, maybe a bit more. That meant that she had grown by around 30 to 40 cm during her breakthrough.

She was starting to get too big and I was seriously worried that she would grow even bigger in the future during some of her breakthroughs. I think it is time for her to learn Minimize. I knew that Butterfree generally did/could not learn that move, but I had complete trust in the unreasonableness that was Mothra's talent.

Once she mastered that move she'd hopefully be able to keep her size to that of a regular Butterfree since it would be more convenient that way. Who knew, if she managed to transcendent the move, she might be able to derive a move like Maximize, allowing her to increase her size instead. That way she could gain a Kaiju, I meant giant form befitting her name.

Anyway, that was not the only change to her looks. This time it was her lower wings that had gained a new pattern, kinda like her upper wings had gained the blue flame pattern when she unlocked her royal gene. This time a purple flame had been added to each lower wing.

This indicated that as I had suspected a change had happened to her genes and I was curious what exactly happened. Still, I could check her new status screen in a moment.

What I had to do right now was to congratulate Mothra for her successful breakthrough, so I ran straight up to her and gave her a warm hug while congratulating her before telling her about the changes that had happened to her.

My actions caused a chain reaction, and everyone else followed my example. They began crowding us to congratulate Mothra for her breakthrough and her new look.

Eggy was especially enthusiastic and he marveled at the changes that Mothra went through. Mothra used her telekinetic abilities to float her junior brother around making Eggy even more delighted.

I waited a bit for the excitement to calm down before initiating our photo tradition. We first took a few photos with just the main members before taking a few more with all Utopia's inhabitants. Well, except for the numerous Magikarp chilling inside the main space.

Since it was pretty late we did not throw a grill party, but we did celebrate with snacks and some music. I used that time to check her new status to see everything that changed, and boy was the status screen full of change.

'Name: Mothra

Species: Butterfree

Gender: Female

Age: 8+ years

-

Type: Bug, Flying

Potential: Deep Purple (32.2%) -> Deep Purple (2.2%) -> Light Aurora (31.1%)

Genetic variation: Royal -> Queen (King)

Abilities: Compound Eyes, Tinted Lens, Shield Dust (new)

Talents: Quick Start V2

Affinities: Bug, Flying, Psychic, Grass (weak)

-

Bond: Mikail (strong)

Quirks: Likes to eat, Curious

----

Parameters:

Stage: Gold Stage (mid)

Vitality: D

Strength: E

Endurance: E

Agility: C

Energy Capacity: B

Energy Density: C

----

Resistance:

Grass (Major), Fighting (Major), Ground (Minor), Bug (Minor)

-

Weaknesses:

Fire (Minor), Ice (Minor), Flying (Minor), Rock (Major)

-

Standardized:

Electric, Fire (in progress)

----

Condition: Healthy, Happy, Excited, Elated

----

Masteries:

Bug E. Manipulation (Advanced),

Psychic/Psionic Energy Manipulation (Advanced)

Flying/Air E. Manipulation (Advanced)

Grass E. Manipulation (Novice) (new)

----

Techniques:

-

(Unofficial) Initial:

Pollen Puff

-

Novice:

Rage Powder, Draining Kiss, Flash, Supersonic, Sweet Scent, Headbutt, Toxic, Round, Natural Gift

-

Beginner:

Rain Dance, Safeguard, Swift, Venoshock, Shadow Ball, Double Team, Roost, Dream Eater, Silver Wind, Mega Drain (+), Twister (+)

-

Proficient:

Bug Bite, Tackle, Sleep Powder, Stun Spore, Poison Powder, Whirlwind, Energy Ball, Giga Drain, Endure, Aerial Ace, Hyper Beam (+), Sunny Day (+), Solar Beam (+)

-

Advanced:

Iron Head, Iron Defense, Harden, Psychic Fangs, Thunder Fang, Electroweb, Bug Buzz, Psybeam, Air Slash, Signal Beam, Quiver Dance, Psychic, Gust, Air Cutter, Steel Wing (+), Hurricane (+), Protect (+), Teleport (+)

-

Mastered:

Confusion, String Shot, Tailwind

-

Combo/Custom:

Powder Bomb (All variants, Beginner), String Variant (All 3, Beginner), Web Variants (All 3, Beginner), Steel Slash (Beginner)'

There was so much to go through that I had trouble deciding where to start, so let's start at the beginning. Well, maybe not the complete beginning since the first block only had the name, species, gender, and age. Let's start with the second block instead since that one shows the most significant changes that Mothra went through.

'Type: Bug, Flying

Potential: Deep Purple (32.2%) -> Deep Purple (2.2%) -> Light Aurora (31.1%)

Genetic variation: Royal -> Queen (King)

Abilities: Compound Eyes, Tinted Lens, Shield Dust (new)

Talents: Quick Start V2

Affinities: Bug, Flying, Psychic, Grass (weak)'

Her potential went first through a down and then an up, but even if we consider the loss of potential due to the change in genes the numbers did not quite add up, so I had to take a closer look there.

First, Mothra lost 30% of her potential due to upgrading her royal gene to the king, or in her case the queen gene since she was a female. Well, that part panned out since unlocking a level 2 gene, which the king gene was, had a potential cost of 80%.

Utopia reduced that cost to 60%, and since Mothra already had the corresponding level 1 gene, the royal gene, she only had to upgrade it, which cost 30% instead of 60%. That was how her potential got reduced to close to the lower limit of deep purple.

After that, the 160% potential bonus from her limit breaking got added, but instead of reaching light aurora (62.2%), Mothra ended up with (31.1%) instead. I naturally checked why that happened and the reason for that was that the increase of each percent at light aurora required double the "percentage" as before.

So, until light aurora, 97.8% of her 160% bonus got added like normal, but once Mothra's potential reached light aurora, the leftover 62.2% of her bonus only filled 31.1% since the potential increase cost/requirement doubled.

Unfortunately, that was not all, since I was assuming that the requirement/cost was going to double once more once she reached aurora potential, and while I currently had no information on deep aurora as well, I was pretty confident that the cost would double there once more.

Talk about "legendary difficulty" to increase the potential once it has reached the aurora spectrum. Still, as long as nothing else cropped up Mothra would reach aurora potential during her breakthrough to the dark gold stage.

Now, I had mentioned the upgrade of her royal gene to the king/queen gene, so let's talk about what that meant. Well, her physical changes were due to that upgrade. She had grown a bit and her lower wings had gotten that purple flame pattern. Other than that her overall bonus, which included her "racial value" had turned from 25% to 50%.

This meant that her current BS had changed to 592.5 instead of the 493.75 BS it had been as a royal Butterfree, or the 395 BS that a regular Butterfree had. She was extremely close to the racial value of a regular pseudo-legendary, so my little sweety had come a long way from the "weak" species that she originated from.

Now, the reason I called the 50% bonus overall instead of just a racial bonus, was that it obviously affected more than just her racial value. It also affected things like lifespan, intelligence growth, and so on.

Well, after going over the change from royal to queen gene, that only left the addition of a third ability. Some quick research made clear that this had nothing to do with her queen gene, but had to do with her reaching light aurora potential.

Apparently, all Pokemon in the aurora spectrum had 3 abilities instead of 2, just like all Pokemon at or above the green potential spectrum had 2 abilities instead of 1. Mothra, or rather the Butterfree-line's third ability was Shield Dust, which was an ability that was not listed in canon for her species since Butterfree only had 2 possible abilities in canon.

However, Shield Dust was an ability that many butterfly or moth-related Pokemon had in canon, so it made sense for Shield Dust to be her third ability, and that was pretty much it for the changes in this block of her status screen.

Her quirks and our home had not changed, so the next important block was her parameters.

'Parameters:

Stage: Gold Stage (mid)

Vitality: D

Strength: E

Endurance: E

Agility: C

Energy Capacity: B

Energy Density: C'

Mothra's parameters and her starting stage were honestly a bit absurd due to her 50% genetic bonus as well as the limit-breaking starting bonus. 3 of her parameters, namely Agility, Energy Capacity, and Energy Density were already in the (high) gold range, with her Energy Capacity starting with an unbelievable B-value.

Honestly, Mothra only needed to improve her Strength and Endurance, which both started at E, to D, and she would be directly promoted to the (high) gold stage from her current (mid) gold stage.

That actually made me wonder how it would be for the actual pseudo-legendaries if they went through the limit breaking as she did and the result was surprising.

Most were around Mothra's prowess parameter-wise, with some being a bit worse and some being a bit better. The only pseudo-legendary that stood out was Garchomp since it was the only pseudo-legendary that managed to squeeze into the (high) gold stage from the start using the limit-breaking bonus.

Actually, the only other non-legendary besides Garchomp that managed to start at the (high) gold stage using the limit-breaking bonus was Slaking. I was obviously not counting any Pokemon that had managed to go through Mega-Evolution/Potential Unleashed. Only the regular species/racial value was considered in this.

Well, the rest of her status screen had not changed. Her type relations remained the same, and she had unlocked her grass energy manipulation after raising Solar Beam to proficiency, which was her fifth proficient grass move.

Well, her (weak) grass affinity was another vital factor why she could unlock her grass energy manipulation, but her breakthrough had nothing to do with it, and as far as her moves were concerned, she had not learned a new move due to her breakthrough.

Everything was as it had been before her breakthrough. I would have been happy if her breakthrough had allowed her to comprehend Pollen Puff, which was the move we were currently working on, but that is probably a bit greedy on my part considering the changes Mothra already went through thanks to her breakthrough.

Anyway, the reason she was trying to learn Pollen Puff had to do with our last mission. My sweety Mothra wanted to be able to heal others as well, so we started working on Pollen Puff to allow her to heal others.

Since no one in our team or among our acquaintances/friends knew the move, Mothra had to learn the move according to the old-school style, meaning by herself. Well, that wasn't bad either, just a few weeks of sporadic extra work.

All in all, Mothra's new status screen was incredible and I couldn't stop myself from hugging Mothra once more after I was done checking her new status screen.

On Arcday evening, after returning from Mt.Moon, I told my parents about Mothra's breakthrough to the gold stage and her new look. They were first flabbergasted by the news before becoming really excited. The two congratulated me enthusiastically and they did the same to Mothra after having me call her out.

My parents threw a small private party to celebrate Mothra's breakthrough and the fact that I now had my first gold-stage Pokemon. The next day I went up to Mr. Burns and told him about Mothra's breakthrough as well. Later that day he informed me that Mr. Cameron gave me 100 academy points for my/Mothra's achievement.

The third week went by like that and the final week of the second month followed right after it, giving way to my final month as a second-year student. On Palkiday, 01.16.2180, Mr. Cameron called me to his office and informed me that my paper had successfully passed the review and that the Academy had added 250 academy points to my profile as a reward.

He asked me where I wanted to publish my paper this time. I thought about my options before going for a similar selection to my first release. I chose the Kanto Weekly, the Rota Weekly, the Forest And Jungle Magazine, which was a magazine focused on famous forests and jungles, and the last paper/magazine was the Viridian Forest News, a weekly paper dedicated to important news concerning the Viridian Forest as the papers/magazines to publish the list of my second paper.

The academic journal I chose to publish the complete paper was once again "The Pokemon Ecology Journal" since it contained articles on ecology and Pokemon distribution. Due to the fact that it was released monthly, my paper would only appear in the journal released next month, so I stipulated that the other papers could only release the news after The Pokemon Ecology Journal had been published.

As for any interviews, those would only happen after the official release. Once all that had been decided I left Mr. Cameron's office after thanking him for his help and the support of the academy. The next two-ish weeks were pretty calm, but a few days before the final exams began Luna/Clefable's potential improved to light purple which was a pretty good start to the final exam phase.

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***A Big Thank You to AJ for becoming a Patron***

This chapter was longer than my regular ones at over 3k words, so I hope you enjoyed it.

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