623 CH4 (618), Dangling Surprises (2)
The next morning I left Utopia a bit early at 8 a.m. since I was in a bit of a rush. While the fishing competition went on until 4 p.m., the battle tournament began at 12 p.m., so I would need to be at the tournament venue at that time. I'd have to juggle both contests during these 4 hours, and I felt that it would be easier if I could secure the first place before 12.
As soon as I made it to the deck, I went to a staff member and accepted the rod and bait before choosing a spot that seemed decent enough. Just like I had decided yesterday, I went ahead and called out Fortuna/Togekiss so that she could serve as my lucky charm for the rest of the competition.
While Fortuna was watching, I affixed the bait on the hook before I swung my rod and cast the line. Fortuna cheered me on when I did that, excited to watch me fish. Well, at least she was excited for the first few minutes until she realized that all we were doing once the hook had been cast was waiting for something to bite/take the bait.
Nonetheless, as luck would have, our first catch did not make us too long, and just 4 minutes after casting the line, the cord began to move, indicating that something had bitten the bait. The sound of the rod attracted Fortuna's attention and she excitedly told me to do something. Seeing her like this, I had to smile and I considered teasing her, but I didn't. Instead, I stood up from the chair and moved towards the rod to take control of the situation.
Observing the movement from the line, I concluded that the hook was secure and that I could start feeling in the line, so I did just that. With Fortuna cheering me on, I began to bring in the catch, and after a minute-long "struggle", I pulled the capture onto the deck. I had to admit that I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that our/my first capture of the day was actually a Luvdisc.
While most considered Luvdisc some of the smaller Pokemon out here in the ocean, they were not all that small considering that their average size was 60 cm, though they were not big by any means. Nonetheless, Luvdisc were not common Pokemon and could even be considered rare, so capturing one was bound to get me a good score, especially since this one appeared to be slightly bigger than the average Luvdisc. I honestly could not truly tell, at least not without measuring her, but even if it was the case, the difference wasn't much.
Regardless, I held Luvdisc out to the camera and observed the screen to see if it would appear on the rankings. In the end, Luvdisc was given 116 points, placing her close to the Top 10, which while slightly disappointing was not bad for such a "little thing". It would have made it into the Top 5 yesterday, but by now the rankings had changed a bit, and even Mantyke had been pushed down to second place due to a Lumineon that earned 141 points.
My Sharpedo barely managed to cling to the fifth place with his 130 points, and Lanturn and Seaking had long been pushed out of the Top 5. Regardless, Luvdisc was definitely a good first catch, and I was hoping the following ones would be just as good or better. Still, I honestly had no interest in Luvdisc, but since she had been "caught" I went ahead and checked her status sheet to see if she was "worth" adding to Utopia.
Sadly, her potential was not good enough, so I let her go before I recast the line for another round of fishing. I did not have to wait long for my second capture, though I ended up returning the Goldeen to the sea right away as well. I spent the next two hours casting my line, capturing a Pokemon before throwing it back into the ocean, and while the "quality" of the Pokemon I caught had definitely gone up, I still had not captured anything that would let me take the first place.
My best capture so far was a Huntail which once more earned me second place. Huntail was pretty average in size, but still earned a respectable 137 points. The reason for this was that it was quite uncommon to fish out one of these Pokemon since they usually stuck around in deeper parts of the ocean.
I was initially rather hyped when I saw the Huntail since they were usually rather strong with only the best Clamperl evolving to either Huntail or Gorebyss due to their need for Deep Sea Scales and Deep Sea Teetth to evolve, but then I noticed that it was only at the bronze stage which was a bit unusual. When I then checked its potential and saw that it had only light yellow potential, I assumed that it had simply gotten lucky as a Clamperl and managed to stumble upon a Deep Sea Tooth. All things considered, I decided to let Huntail go as well when I saw it look longingly at the ocean and simply resumed fishing.
At this point, I had slightly less than 2 hours left until noon, so I was in a bit of a hurry to catch a "winning" Pokemon. I turned to Fortuna/Togekiss brought out one of her favorite snacks. I fed it to her before stroking her head, making her coo in happiness. I stopped a minute or so later and asked her to wish me luck before swinging my rod once more.
Surprisingly, this time around, it took close to 15 minutes before something took the bait, and I had to admit that after the first 10 minutes without anything biting, I could not help but wonder if anything went wrong before I decided to simply trust the process/Fortuna.
Once something did finally bite, I quickly went up to the rod and observed the situation, once I felt like the hook had properly caught on, I began the reel-in process, and I was happy to note that whatever Pokemon it was, was a decently strong one. The resistance it put up was similar to those of the final evolutions I reeled in so far, so I was assuming that this was one as well. Either that or a Wailmer. Nothing else came to my mind and certainly no Wishiwashi, no sir.
Anyway, I let my catch tire itself out for a minute before I began to seriously reel it in. Once the Pokemon had been dragged close to the surface, I saw a pretty large silhouette. From the shadow, the Pokemon had to be at least 4 to 5 meters long, which supported my final evolution theory.
After the Pokemon had been pulled close to the surface, I gathered my strength and yanked it out of the sea and onto the deck. A proverbial water fountain burst out when the Pokemon got yanked out of the water, attracting a lot of attention. Yet, I ignored all of that and stared in disbelief at the Pokemon I had dragged into the deck. I had been right with my size estimation, but completely wrong as far as the "species" was concerned.
Splashing/Flopping around partly on the line, and partly on the deck was the biggest Magikarp I had ever seen. I could not believe the size of this thing, but I had to since it was right in front of my eyes. I watched as the Magikarp stopped panicking and righted its body, providing me a better look at it. All I could say was that it was huge. It was at least 4 times bigger than a regular Magikarp, maybe even 5 times bigger, which meant that this Magikarp had to have the giant gene.
The odds for this kind of catch had to be less than one in a billion, and I could feel everyone's shock. However, that was not all I felt. I also felt greed rising in some of the people who had started to gather around us, so I used my psionic energy to infiltrate Magikarp's mind and put it to sleep before pulling out a LakeBall and lobbing it at the sleeping giant.
Despite its enormous size, Magikarp was only at the (mid) iron stage, which was why it had a hard time defending against me. Its "strength" made me assume that Magikarp was pretty young since I honestly believed that it would have otherwise either evolved or at least been stronger.
Anyway, I quickly picked up the LakeBall and I felt the greed around me turn to disappointment. Relieved that no one was giving off any sinister feelings, which meant I wouldn't have to literally beat them up if they tried to do something stupid, I focused on the scoreboard to see what score my Magikarp had received. I was pretty sure that Magikarp would get first place, and I was right.
The organizers gave Magikarp 200 points, which was more than 50 points above the previous first-place holder, pretty much securing my victory in this competition. I did not believe that anyone would get a better score within the next 5 hours unless someone somehow managed to pull out a Milotic, or something comparable. Heck, I was not sure if even an average Milotic could beat my giant Magikarp's score.
It was safe to say that I was happy with the score. I pulled Fortuna into a hug and spun her around, making her release a happy thrill, showing that she enjoyed the attention. I stopped after a few spins, and let her go much to Fortuna's disappointment. I naturally picked her back up when I felt that, though I was pretty sure that we made for a funny picture right now since she was a bit too big for me to hold her properly.
Regardless, once I stopped spinning around, a few people left the crowd to approach me. I saw that all of them held themselves with confidence and poise giving the impression of "importance". I was assuming that they were either successful businessmen/women or members of some large families.
They gave each other challenging looks before the first one spoke up and offered me a considerable amount of money to buy my newly acquired giant Magikarp. With the first offer presented, the others gave their offers as well, and before long the bid had risen to 10 million Poke, which was incredibly high for a Magikarp, though it made sense considering how special mine was.
Nonetheless, forget about 10 million, even if they offered me a 100 million Poke, I would have refused to sell this Magikarp. I was determined to keep it for myself. Heck, even if it turned out that Magikarp had shit potential, which I did not truly believe, but even if that was the case, I would keep the Magikarp. There was simply no way I would let a giant Magikarp slip through my fingers.
Even if it ended up having deep red potential, Utopia would raise it to either light orange or orange potential, and from there I would slowly but surely help it become stronger and stronger. I would pump it full with the best supplements to ensure optimal training results and patiently help it complete its limit-breaking phase during each stage. Even if it took a century or two or even three, it would be able to attain at least deep green or light blue potential by the time it was at the dark gold stage.
At that point, I would have Magikarp/Gyarados "tumble" with a lot of high-potential Gyarados to spread his seed so that the "potential" for the giant gene would become more prevalent among the Magikarp inside Utopia. For something like the giant gene, I was willing to go with a long-term plan like this if I had to. Not to mention that Magikarp most likely had better potential than deep-red.
Interested in finding out just what kind of potential Magikarp had, I made sure to politely express that I had absolutely no interest in selling the Magikarp, and I even went so far as to mention my Junior Professor title to show them that I had zero fear of their backgrounds since I, as a JP, had the backing of the alliance and science community/Professor Oak. I didn't even see the need to pull the Order Card and simply watched as the ladies and gentlemen walked away in disappointment.
Once they were gone, I called out Magikarp once more since I wanted to check him out before placing him inside Utopia. Fortuna was quite interested in Magikarp as well, so she directly struck up a conversation with it. I smiled at her enthusiasm before introducing myself to Magikarp. I naturally used a separate thought stream to check Magikarp's status sheet while we were talking.
'Name: N/A
Species: Magiakarp
Gender: Male
Age: 2+ years
-
Type: Water
Potential: Green (78.53%)
(Genetic) Modifiers: Giant
Abilities: Swift Swim, Pressure
Talents: None
Affinities: Water
-
Bond: Mikail (artificial)
Quirks: None
----
Parameters:
Stage: Iron Stage (Mid)
Vitality: E
Strength: E
Endurance: D
Agility: D
Energy Capacity: E
Energy Density: E
----
Resistance:
Fire (Minor), Water (Minor), Ice (Minor), Steel (Minor)
-
Weaknesses:
Electric (Minor), Grass (Minor)
----
Condition: Healthy, Slightly Confused, Interested
----
Masteries:
Water Energy Manipulation (Novice)
----
Techniques:
-
Novice:
Water Gun
-
Beginner:
Flail
-
Proficient:
Splash, Tackle
-
Advanced:
None
-
Mastered:
None'
I was happy to note that Magikarp's potential was quite decent since he would pretty much already be at the finish line of the Gyarados in the worst-case scenario once he went through the Utopia treatment. Not to mention that he seemed to have an alternate ability seeing how Rattled had been replaced by Pressure, though considering that he was not acknowledged as an ability variant in the modifier section, it was clear that the talent was related to his giant gene instead.
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