CH87 (217), Stubborn Boy To Stubborn Guy?!? (1)

I started our morning training after my parents left. For diversity's sake, I decided to spar with Mars/Ursaring after going two rounds against Tyson/Machoke. Fighting Mars was different than Tyson since Mars was more of a tank.

Anyway, while Ali/Ralts was healing our bruises I checked his progress and saw that his energy density had increased to C, which meant that only vitality was left, and that would happen pretty soon as well.

This meant his evolution was not too far off, and it was time for him to copy one of the abilities I had been considering for his "Save Point" talent, or rather it was time for me to increase my efforts in finding those abilities.

My favorite, at least for his time as Gallade, was "Protean", since it would give a large boost to all his moves due to adjusting his typing to that of the used move.

However, unlike with canon, here it seemed that the Pokemon kept his primary typing if he has two. While not confirmed, it had been speculated that it might even adjust both typings if the Pokemon used a combo move of two different types/elements.

Still, "Wonder Guard" was probably better during his time as a Kirlia. Being "invulnerable" towards direct damage from all types except for those that one had a weakness to sounded really useful for Pokemon in general, more so for the more fragile ones.

Besides, who knew maybe he would be able to awaken another talent using "Wonder Guard" as a basis during his evolution. While it was most likely extremely improbable, it was not impossible. I would have tried getting it for Ali from the start but I had no luck so far with finding a Shedinja.

They were already pretty rare due to the circumstance of their creation, but their general vulnerability despite the ability that turned them nearly "invulnerable", and wasn't that ironic, made them not as desirable for trainers as one would think.

Finding them in the wild was even harder, so I had been unable to find one to copy the ability from so far. I had actually heard about the appearance of a trainer with a Shedinja twice, but both times I missed them when I traveled to the area they showed up in.

Still, I wisened up after my last failure and bribed a few people at the most likely places a Shedinja could show up. Those being the receptionist and a few regulars at the few bug clubs and bug halls I visited before.

I had been warned that they would monitor my engagement with the Shedinja's trainer before they agreed since they were unwilling to harm the owner in case I was planning something nefarious. I obviously agreed since my intentions were pure.

I promised them money as long as they informed me about their appearance and some more if they kept the trainer occupied until I arrived, in case he or she wanted to leave before my arrival.

I did the same in areas where a Kecleon or Froakie-line member could show up, but that proved even harder than finding a Shedinja. "Protean" was a hidden ability, which translated to pretty rare among the species.

That Kecleon were already relatively rare made things harder, not to mention the Froakie line, which originated from another continent on top of being just as rare if not rarer.

While I got no alerts regarding Froakie, I had received three alerts for a Kecleon after initiating the bribery operation, but the Kecleon in question had "Color Change", which was not what I wanted.

Anyway, after I decided to intensify my efforts, I called Kinji/Samurai to ask him if he knew where I could find a Shedinja. I had tried to keep him out of my search efforts since I wanted to try it without involving one of my friends first, but time was running out.

"Yo, Kinji! How's it going?" I greeted him over the phone. I could have video-called, but that was not convenient most of the time. Moreover, it was not really necessary.

"Everything's fine. Still, working on becoming a Bug King. How about you?" He returned, giving me the opening I needed.

"Bro, do you remember me telling you about my Ralts's talent?" I began, and he was quick to answer.

"Sure, hard to forget such a bug-like talent. Why?" Seeing as he remembered what I told him, I went straight to the topic.

"Well, I have been trying to find a Shedinja so that Ali can copy Wonder Guard off it, but I had no luck so far finding one. I know you don't have one, but do you perhaps know where I could find a Shedinja?"

I could hear him pondering and chose to wait for him to speak up since urging him would be useless.

"Hmm, I did fight against a few trainers that had a Shedinja, but I don't have their number, and I don't think I'll be able to find them quickly. Still, I think I might know where to find one in the wild if it is still in the area I last saw it." I did a fist pump when he said that.

"Still, don't set your expectations too high, since it's possible that it left the area, been driven out, or simply not survived," Kinji added and I nodded at that since he was right. Not that he could see me nodding or anything.

"That's still more than I can say otherwise. There's at least a chance to find one at the place you mentioned," I honestly returned. "Could you tell me where I could find it? Somewhere in Viridian Forest, I would assume."

"Well, it's pretty hard to describe it in words, it would be better if I showed you," Kinji replied.

"Are you sure? I could try to find it on my own. I wouldn't want to distract you from your stuff," I asked, not wanting to impose too much on him.

"Yeah, that's no problem. I wouldn't have offered if I did not have the time. I can use the occasion for a short training trip inside Viridian Forest, so no need to worry about wasting my time," Kinji responded before he continued.

"How about tomorrow? Does that fit, or do you want to do it on another day? I'll tell you straight up that I can't do it today since I have to prepare stuff for the training trip."

"I want to do it tomorrow since I want to be done with it as soon as possible," I replied, which was met with a grunt of acknowledgment.

"Alright, then let's meet up at 10 a.m in front of the Leaf City Bug Club," he said before we exchanged farewells and hung up.

After that, I began working on the sculptures of the water types. I started with the sculpture for Manami/Lapras. The mini-Lapras had its head slightly raised with an open (mouth) smile, and her left frontal fin was raised as well.

Once we were both satisfied I sprayed the sculpture with the water and frost/ice-resistant glue I made for the water types before Ignis/Gyarados helped finish the sculpture, by drying the glue through a low-powered Heat Wave.

Before I could start working on the other sculptures my 12:30 p.m alarm went off, reminding me that it was time to check up on Eggy. Everything was fine, and I was considering switching to the previous paste that had been a tick too potent.

In the end, I decided to wait until next Arcday, so exactly one week, to do so. After the check-up, it was Kun's turn. I made his sculpture with his wings spread, belly towards the ground, with front and back raised into the air.

After him, it was the turn of Abzu as well as Tiamat. They chose to pose in such a way that their sculptures were nuzzling each other. Since I made them one after another it took a bit more work to make sure the two sculptures fit perfectly, but we managed.

Once I finished with them I decided that it was time for a lunch break, so I began taking out a working table, 5 large pots, 5 gas burners, and other things necessary for cooking curry.

The reason I brought out 5 pots instead of a single giant one, was that I had noticed that I was unable to cook a curry that satisfied everyone. Maybe there were chefs out there that could do that, but my culinary prowess did not allow that.

Still, after a lot, and I'm talking about a lot of tries I managed to reduce the number of curry variants I needed to make to satisfy everyone "perfectly" from 16 to 5.

It took me nearly 3 years to achieve that, and the lower the number became the harder it was to further reduce the number of recipes. Truly, it took me roughly a year to reduce the number of recipes to 10, and another two years to reduce that to 5.

After lunch, I began to work on the sculptures of the Sinister Six, while everyone else was training their moves and resistances. It took me roughly two-and-a-half hours to finish the sculptures of all six Gyarados.

There were three poses either of them chose. The first one was coiled, the second was a snake-like with a raised upper body, and a straight lower body, while the third one was like the second just with a U-shape instead of a straight lower body.

After I was finally done with all sculptures, I called everyone over and began playing until my egg alert rang. That signaled the end of playtime, and after the check-up, it was time for dinner. I had made more than enough curry for dinner as well, so once I heated it we ate it with relish.

After dinner, I placed everyone inside Utopia and headed inside for some meditation. I felt that I was not too far off from increasing my reserves enough to reach Tier 2 First-Class in both aura and psionic energy. It would take less than 12 months, less if I devoted more effort to meditation and increasing my reserves.

I did that for a few hours before going to sleep, which got interrupted by the alarm going off twice. The next day I woke up at 9:20 a.m and had a quick breakfast before teleporting to Leaf City, the Bug Club to be specific, through the Horus-Express.

There still were 10 minutes until our appointment at 10 a.m when I arrived there. Kinji was not there yet, but he showed up just 2 minutes later.

"Morning Mikail, I hope I did not make you wait," he said before pulling me into a brief hug.

"Nope, I arrived just a minute ago as well. Seems like we're both early, so don't mind it." I replied jovially.

"Alright, let's get going. The place I plan to bring you to is pretty far, so let's not waste too much time." Kinji returned and we left in the direction of the Viridian Forest.

"As far as I can remember the Shedinja in question has already developed an ego or personality, whatever you want to call it. Since it was somewhere around the silver stage as far as I can remember, it might have developed sapience as well." He said while we were making our way deeper into the forest.

I knew from research on Shedinja, that the species had no sense of self or identity right after its creation. They had to develop that afterward, which they did in the following months and years of their existence.

As for sapience, Shedinja were bug and ghost-type Pokemon, and their ghost typing helped reduce the minimum stage requirement to (mid) silver. Still, no matter how strong it was at the point of its creation, it had to develop its personality/identity first, before it could gain sapience.

The reason I emphasized that was that Shedinja started at the stage the Nincada evolved at, despite being born/created at that specific moment, which was something unique to their species as far as I knew.

So, theoretically, if one trained a Nincada until the gold stage before evolving it, which would take longer than raising a Ninjask to that stage due to lower BS, one received two gold stage Pokemon. At least, that would be the case if they followed the Shedinja protocol.

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