416 CH49 (413), Final Days Of 2181 (2)

My parents were naturally happy to see me, but since it was already quite late, I retreated to my room a bit more than an hour later. While I was lying in my bed I began contemplating what I was going to do during the next 3 weeks before I would pay the lab another visit.

I was definitely planning to stay in Hope Town for this stretch to spend time with my parents and naturally with my Pokemon as well. However, I also had quite a few personal projects that I had been somewhat neglecting since joining the Eevee project.

While Osiris/Marowak's evolution to Skellibra was practically a done deal that only needed Charmander to grow up, get stronger, and evolve into Charizard, other projects of mine were still in limbo. Mars/Ursaring's alternate evolution was one of those projects.

I had by now determined that the most viable option for Mars was taking contrasting steps compared to what was needed for the evolution to Ursaluna. Since one of the evolution requirements for Ursaluna was a full moon, I decided to look into another celestial phenomenon.

Naturally, I chose one linked to the "opposite" of the moon, so I went through the list of known solar phenomena and settled on the solar flares. Solar flares were actually pretty common phenomena, that could persist from minutes to even hours.

The reason we usually did not notice them, was that they were simply not visible without the help of instruments most of the time, even if some effects could still be felt depending on the strength of the solar flare. However, occasionally a Solar Flare could be seen without the help of instruments, but such a phenomenon only happened once every few months.

I concluded, that such a Solar Flare would most likely work as the requirement for Mars' alternate evolution, which I decided to dub Ursasol due to the link to the sun. Well, the reason the sun part was called sol had to do with the deity linked to the sun Solgaleo. Solgaleo was also why the sun was dubbed Sol by everyone.

Solgaleo's counterpart Lunala was where the luna part in Ursaluna came from, or rather why the moon was called Luna. Anyway, my deduction on the Solar Flare only constituted the first requirement for Ursaring's evolution to Ursasol.

Ursaluna had an object component in its evolution through the Peat Block, a ground-type item, so it was only logical that the same would be true for Ursasol as well. Now the question was what kind of object would trigger Ursasol's evolution.

Since I was going with the assumption of contrast to the original method, three types stood out to me. The first was the water type, due to Ursaluna being a ground/normal dual-type. However, water in general did not fit the sun concept all that much. On the contrary, many linked the moon to water, so I placed a water-type item as the second least likely of the three types I thought of.

The second type I thought of was the flying/air type. For obvious reasons, the flying type could be considered the diametrical opposite of the ground type, but the only link it had with the sun was that the sun was in the sky, which was the domain of the flying type.

Honestly, it was not a bad link for the two triggers, but for Ursaring to gain a flying type seemed a bit too much, at least in my opinion. Most would link the flying type to birds or winged beings after all. Due to this, I placed the flying-type item below the water one.

The third type I thought of was the fire type, as fire did contrast the earth in many aspects. Fire could dry out the peat/ground, or be snuffed out by the ground, and I did not believe the link between fire and the sun had to be explained.

However, if one considered the links between the sun while choosing the second trigger, then it was also possible that the object could be of either the metal or psychic type due to what I knew about Solgaleo.

Yet, frankly, I thought the chance for the psychic type was even lower than the water item one, so I chose to ignore it for the most part, and while the metal type could be linked to the sun in a certain way, I personally disliked the idea, which was why I focused on the other three instead.

On that front, I had been looking for possible trigger items during the last few years and ranked their importance according to the previous likelihood conclusion, so fire-type items or items related to the sun had the biggest priority. I spent a considerable amount of money while collecting items I thought would work, even if most proved useless.

Both the B and A-Class Fire Stone, for which I paid close to 1.5 and 7 million Poke respectively, proved to be inadequate. The same was true for the B and A-Class Sun Stones I bought for 2 and 8 million Poke respectively. I had to spend all of the money I earned so far from my publications and interviews on those four items.

So, I had to dip in my savings and sell some stuff before I was able to buy the even costlier higher-grade forms of those two objects. I paid 6 million Poke for the B-Class Flame Crystal I bought. The only reason I got access to it was thanks to my Expert-Class identity. Unfortunately, it proved to be useless, but I still kept it, just as I did with the Fire and Sun Stones.

The B-Class Sun Crystal, which I paid more than 8 mil Poke for, proved to be a breakthrough point since Mars actually told me he felt "something" from that one when he tried to interact with it during a visible Solar Flare, so I decided to focus my attention in that direction.

I naturally did not only buy items of those two categories but also belonging to the flying and the water type, but so far non of the objects of those types elicited a reaction from Mars. At least the items I bought served to expand my object pool, so the expenditure was not for nothing.

Honestly, now that I was looking back on all the things I had done so far while researching the alternate evolution for Mars, it seemed that I had actually done quite a lot. Still, the last step was a hard one since I had to find out what was missing.

I doubted that I would be lucky enough that simply using an A-Class Sun Crystal would do the job. If I thought that it would really work, I would have finally used the A-Class voucher I still had from becoming a global dual champion to exchange for one. However, since I was not sure, I did not want to risk it.

There was not much else I could do with an A-Class Sun Crystal that I couldn't do with the B-Class one I already had, so it would have felt like a waste if it failed to trigger Mars' evolution. Especially, since I would have to buy/create a lot of other materials/supplements to ensure that Mars did not die or get crippled due to energy over-saturation/flow while using such a high-grade A-Class item.

Anyway, another project, aside from Mars' matter, that needed some attention was the Rattata project. So far I have still been sticking to phase 1, which was using food and low-grade supplements of certain types to determine Rattata compatible with those types and to slightly acclimate their bodies to the energy of that type for phase 2.

This step could help nurture an affinity or even promote it, but the rate was really slow, which was where phase 2 came into play. Phase 2 actually required me to put together a continuous batch of proper supplements that had to be adjusted according to the actual situation of the Rattata.

This meant that I would have to actively keep an eye on all Rattata, while also regularly producing a lot of supplements and adjusting them whenever necessary. Considering the number of Rattata the project group had grown to, thanks to hatchlings and any promising wild ones I came across whenever I was out on my own, that was something that would take up a decent chunk of time.

Well, those two were the most pressing/important ones right now, and I decided that I would use part of the current vacation to focus on one of the 4 possible Rattata variants, and the Ursaring matter.

However, it would have to wait until the new year since I was planning to keep at least the first stretch of my vacation research free so that I could spend more time with my parents and Pokemon. After that coming to that decision I went to sleep.

The next day we stayed at home until lunchtime. Dad suggested that we go to Hope Park for a picnic for lunch, citing that it would be lively there since today was Grouday, which meant a lot of families would be going there to spend time with their families. Mom agreed with him that being in such a spirited environment would do us some good and I simply went along with that idea.

Horus/Xatu brought us there once we were ready, and I kept him out with us after that. Not only Horus, but I also called out everyone smaller than me in size, so that they could have fun, and/or keep an eye on the younger ones. I only asked them to not get too far away from our picnic site and allowed them to play however they wanted after that. Mom and dad followed suit with their smaller Pokemon, not that they had a lot of those.

Naturally, so many Pokemon playing around or simply chilling in the area attracted the attention of the other parkgoers, chief among them the children. It took less than 5 minutes for a small audience of children to form that kept watching our Pokemon.

Obviously, either their caretakers, parents, or siblings were beside them, or just a few meters behind them. It took less than 10 minutes for some of the braver kids among the audience to hesitantly approach the Pokemon, and naturally, all of our Pokmeon knew not to hurt the little kids unless they tried something first.

Still, my Pokemon did not directly start playing or interacting with the kids, but first looked over to me to see what I was going to say. I gave them the sign to wait a bit before I approached the caretaker group. I told them that I had no problem with the kids interacting/playing with my Pokemon and that they would make sure to be careful not to hurt any of them.

However, I emphasized that accidents could happen and that I would not be responsible for anything that happened by accident, or because one of the kids decided to pull some shit. Okay, I might have not used the word shit for the last one, but that was what I meant, and I believe everyone got the message.

Once they agreed, I gave everyone the go-ahead, and the Pokemon began to mingle with the brave kids. Seeing that everything was fine, the other kids began to quickly join in as well. A part of them was playing tag, or asking the Pokemon to show them some moves, which they did with "weaker" moves using the lowest amount of energy possible.

Others simply sat beside the Pokemon that were sitting or lying around to relax. Thankfully nothing happened during that time and an hour before dinner time I declared that playtime was over. The adults were thankful since I had noticed that a few of them had problems getting their kids away from the Pokemon, which is why I decided to end it in the first place.

Some kids whined, saying that they wanted to keep playing, but I simply told them that we had to prepare dinner. Then without caring if they understood or not I told everyone to go back to our blanket, and all my Pokemon began marching there after waving the kids goodbye.

Due to the number of Pokemon, I had to pull out a few extra blankets, and extra ingredients for dinner. The extra ingredients were so that all of them could taste the food we prepared for the picnic, but the major part of their dinner still consisted of the food I had stored in Utopia.

We spent another hour after dinner just sitting around and relaxing while chatting before we went back home. We naturally recalled everyone before we left. Once we were back, we decided to watch a movie, which I streamed in Utopia so that they could watch the movie as well. After the movie, I went to my room and entered Utopia.

There, I told Seb/Nidoking and Gaia/Nidoqueen that the movie was the first part of their celebration and that now the second part was starting. We kept the celebration going until close to midnight before I declared that the party was over, and everyone went back to their habitats.

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