CH45 (409), The Work Never Stops (2)

The week passed by pretty quickly with my group busily working on our Frost Cap project, and I stayed at Pallet City on Grouday. Kinji came over to visit me, so we spent the day catching up. I also ended up asking him for a battle an hour after lunch. I first faced his weaker bug types.

Well, with weaker I meant those at or below the (low) dark gold stage, which applied to only a third of Kinji's Pokemon. Mothra/Butterfree took out his (low) dark gold stage Butterfree though it was not easy, and Horus/Xatu managed to win against his (high) gold stage Vikavolt as well as (mid) gold stage Golisopod. His Orbeetle did not fight since it was only at the (high) silver stage.

After that, I asked him to use one of his (high) dark gold stage Pokemon at that my Pokemon could face an extremely hard but not truly impossible opponent, and Kinji agreed. I have to admit I requested this because I wanted to see where they stood, and also to show them that they can't always win since that was all they lately did when I found someone to battle.

I certainly did not dislike winning, but I was worried that they might have started to get a tad bit complacent. Anyway, Kinji called out his latest (high) dark gold stage Pokemon, Yanmega, and it got to face Hera/Pidgeot first, who managed to hold out for nearly 3 minutes before she lost.

Then came Manami/Lapras and Nyx/Umbreon, before Yanmega went through the whole Sinister Six, one after the other. Stan/Gyarados managed to hold out for close to 12 minutes and I asked Kinji to swap out Yanmega when it finally began to look visibly tired after taking Stan out.

I did not want Yanmega to lose just because it was tired after beating 8 of my (mid) gold and one of my (high) gold stage Pokemon. Mind you, my Pokemon were all stronger than those at the same stage, so it was more like Yanmega had to fight 8 Pokemon at the top of the gold stage and one somewhere around the (low) dark gold stage.

Still, facing a tired Yanmega that would have beaten the purpose of the battle, so my last two Pokemon got to face a different and more importantly, fresh opponent.

My first two, and currently strongest, Pokemon got to face Kinji's (high) dark gold stage Scyther, who according to him was not far from breaking through to the platinum stage. Unsurprisingly both ended up losing, even if they did a pretty good job. Horus managed to hold out for nearly 20 minutes thanks to his quick thinking and teleportation.

Mothra was even more impressive since she only went down after more than 30 minutes, and by the end of their battle, Scyther was visibly tired. I thanked Kinji for the battle as well as his help after that and he told me it was a pretty good exercise for his Pokemon as well.

The whole thing was a pretty good experience for me, and it showed me where my Pokemon currently stood prowess-wise. I was pretty happy to note that I could have taken down Kinji's Yanmega even if he went all out if all 10 of my gold Pokemon had faced him back to back. With Scyther, I could have probably forced a tie, but that was already pretty darn impressive since it was close to reaching the platinum stage.

Moreover, I was pretty sure that I could have taken out either of Kinji's Pokemon if I had let roughly half of my gold-stage group gang up on them. Well, provided that either Mothra or Horus was among them. While that knowledge was useless in an official trainer battle, it was extremely reassuring for my trips in the wild.

Knowing that I could face up against up to two (high) dark gold stage Pokemon at once would give me more leeway while I was out exploring, especially since that would increase even more before I had the time for some good old exploration.

Kinji was pretty impressed with the performance of my Pokemon as well, and he was especially impressed by Mothra and Horus. He called them dark gold stage Pokemon hiding behind golden skin, and I happily thanked him for the compliment.

We went to the PokeCenter after our battle and I called Jessica, who had the day off and was in her dormitory over as well so that she could see Kinji too. We separated an hour after dinner, which Kinji ended up covering, and I spent the next two hours after that, talking with my Pokemon inside Utopia.

We went over their battles and I could see that losing against a stronger foe like that had rekindled their competitiveness, so I was pleased to see that my plan had worked. The next day I resumed my work at the lab, but Arcday ended without any significant progress.

Honestly, it did not surprise any of us that the Frost Cap Extract was harder to fuse with the Mystic Ice Gem than the Yache Essence had been. Still, at least we only had to work on one version during this round, so once we succeeded in producing the Mystic Frost Gem, we would straight away know whether it was a successful Glaceon trigger or not.

In the course of the week, our tireless work bore some fruit. While we were still quite a bit off from producing our Mystic Frost Gem, we managed to raise the fusion rate to over 80%. Our best result on Kyoday was 85%, but the other tries ended up mostly between 80% and 82%.

As I said, still a bit off from our goal, but pretty good progress nonetheless. Well, it was certainly enough to put us in a good mood when we left the lab for our day off. I had called mom an hour before clocking off that I would be home for dinner instead of visiting tomorrow, so they were waiting for me for dinner.

During dinner, dad ended up surprising me quite a bit. It seemed I had seriously underestimated dad's luck with my previous estimation of half a year to a year. My old man ended up finding and unlocking his energyscape in less than four months. He was officially a Tier 1 Third Class Earth Elementalist.

According to mom, dad seemed to have a lot of fun playing with dirt since he reached Tier 1. I had to laugh since I could not help but imagine dad sitting on the ground playing with mud. Dad just chuckled and said it was quite fun.

He brought me out to the terrace to show off his minor geokinesis. Still, it had only been less than a week since he reached Tier 1, so the show was not all that impressive, but I still had to admit that he was doing a good job since he was working on compressing earth. We went back inside after his show and watched a movie before we returned to our respective rooms to sleep.

Grouday was mostly spent relaxing with my parents, but dad and I did spend an hour or so working on his geokinesis. Anyway, I left a few hours after dinner and resumed my work at the lab on Arcday morning. The next two days proved to be pretty uneventful, but Moka gave me some great news on Palkiday.

She told me that she got the feeling of wholeness, and my check after returning to my dorm/Utopia confirmed that she had raised her final parameter to SSS, officially completing her limit breaking. 3 years after her evolution to Crobat, Moka was ready for the next step on her way to the top.

I called everyone to Moka's habitat, and we all watched as she broke through to the gold stage. Her breakthrough was longer as well as more energy intensive than a regular one, but that was not surprising since we knew that her potential would rise to the light aurora grade during her breakthrough.

I went up to her to congratulate her, and she just took off the ground to move into my arms since that was more comfortable for her than staying down there. The others came up to us and began congratulating her, and I began checking out her status screen while they chatted.

'Name: Moka

Species: Crobat

Gender: Female

Age: 9+ years

-

Type: Poison, Flying

Potential: Light Aurora (13.01%)

{Purple (61.3%) -> (66.02%) -> Light Aurora (13.01%)}

Genetic variation: Royal

Abilities: Inner Focus, Infiltrator, Corrosion*

Talents: None

Affinities: Poison, Flying

-

Bond: Mikail (strong)

Quirks: None

----

Parameters:

Stage: Gold Stage (high)

Vitality: C

Strength: C

Endurance: D

Agility: A

Energy Capacity: D

Energy Density: D

----

Resistance:

Grass (Major), Fighting (Major), Bug (Major), Poison (Minor), Fairy (Minor)

-

Weaknesses:

Ice (Minor), Psychic (Minor), Ground (Minor/if hit), Rock (Minor)

-

Standardized:

Electric*

----

Condition: Healthy, Delighted, Cheerful

----

Masteries:

Poison E. Manipulation (Proficient) -> (Advanced)

Flying/Air E. Manipulation (Proficient)

----

Techniques:

-

(Unofficial) Initial:

Steel Slash

-

Novice:

Quick Guard, Super Screech (C, new)

-

Beginner:

Absorb, Mean Look, Confuse Ray, Astonish (+), Sky Attack (new, +), Hyper Beam (new, +)

-

Proficient:

Bite, Haze, Tailwind (new, ++), Gust (new, ++), Wing Attack (new, ++), Endure (new, ++), Acrobatics (new, ++), Swift (new, ++), Sludge Bomb (new, ++), Aerial Ace (new, ++), Taunt (new, ++), Giga Drain (new, ++), Hurricane (new, ++), Double Team (new, ++), Uproar (new, ++), Crunch (new, ++), X-Scissor (new, ++), Shadow Ball (new, ++), Heat Wave (new, ++), Dark Pulse (new, ++)

-

Advanced:

Poison Fang, Air Cutter, Venoshock, Leech Life, Air Slash, Poisonous Leech (C, ++), Screech (+), Supersonic (++), Protect (+++), Cross Poison (+++), Toxic (new, +++), Steel Wing (+++)

-

Mastered:

N/A

-

Combos/Custom:

Poisonous Leech (Advanced), Super Screech (Novice), Steel Slash (in progress)'

Well, the first thing I confirmed was that her potential had risen to the light aurora grade. Honestly, 3+ years of effort on my part led to an increase of roughly 5% while she had purple potential. I would probably have to spend two or three decades to see that kind of progress now that she had reached the light aurora grade.

Still, I was going to keep doing it since every percentage counted. Besides, the supplements boosted her training speed, so I would use them even if they did not help increase her potential, no matter how small.

As usual, reaching the aurora spectrum unlocked a third ability, and for Moka that turned out to be Corrosion. To be honest, we had been guessing what her third ability would end up as and Corrosion had actually been among our guesses. Our other guesses had been Technician, Analytic, Sniper, and Soundproof, but those had obviously been wrong since Corrosion ended up on her status screen.

Well, an increase in the toxicity of her poison and the ability to poison steel-type Pokemon was quite practical and useful so I was happy with the result. Moka was just as happy when I told her and the others what her new ability ended up being, and everyone began congratulating her once more.

Moving on to her parameters, I got to see the effect of her royal gene. The 25% bonus to her racial values along with the starting bonus of her limit breaking resulted in her directly starting at the (high) gold stage. The A-value in her agility was most impressive, and actually what raised her average enough to carry her into the (high) gold range.

After her parameter section came her type relation section and considering that Moka had decided to take a break after completing her resistance training with the electric type nearly half a year ago, nothing had changed since then.

Still, we agreed to pause this part of her training for a year, so she would take it up in another half a year, and we had already decided which weakness she would work on for her second round. Both of us felt her psychic weakness had to be the next one, especially since our bond should help with that one due to my psychic status, so that would be the one she would be working on.

Anyway, only her move section was left, but I could see that nothing had changed due to her breakthrough. Still, remembering her move section after her evolution, I felt quite proud of her progress. Moka spent the last 3-plus years expanding her move pool and focused on a few moves she felt most interested in for certain periods.

She had more than one custom move, with her first original move Poisonous Leech having reached advanced mastery. The move was a really strong one that dealt damage, had a high likelihood of poisoning the enemy, and recovered Moka's health/stamina.

Furthermore, it was not her only custom/original move. Super Screech was pretty useful and felt like a good idea when we began working on it. It retained all of the effects of Screech, including being used to interfere with certain moves, and it had the additional benefit of confusing the target.

The last custom move was also the one she was currently working on. It was also the first one that was not an original of hers. Hera was helping Moka with Steel Slash since she was the one that came up with the move.

Once she had the move down, we were going to start working on raising a few flying moves to advanced so that her flying/air energy manipulation could rise to advanced as well. At the moment, only her poison energy manipulation was at that mastery due to the number of her advanced poison moves, so we were planning to correct that.

Anyway, once I was done looking through her status screen, I declared the start of her celebration, and even though everyone knew that it was coming, they still cheered before we began heading to the central area for the party.

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