454 CH87 (451), Vacation (1)

The week passed by quickly with Dad organizing everything for our trip, and Mom, with our help, making sure that the house could be left alone for nearly the whole upcoming month.

When I was not helping mom with "preparing" the house, and I was seriously contemplating whether mom was using the trip as an excuse for a grand cleaning of our home, I was either spending time with my Pokemon, training myself, or focusing a bit more on the Rattata project.

Spending time with my Pokemon was always nice and fulfilling, my personal training was going somewhere even if I was still not reaching Tier 3, but at least I was absolutely shredded and could probably move a mountain, or at least a hill. Okay, maybe not really those two, but definitely a really, really big boulder.

Anyway, the Rattata project was going pretty well as well. While the number of the project group had not risen lately, mostly because I had not bothered getting more Rattata and no eggs had hatched, the number of Rattata participating in the project with an additional affinity had risen to 171. That was close to 74% of all project Rattata, which was 236 by the way.

Moreover, the number of Rattata with a second full/standard affinity had risen to 20 just today/on Grouday. The type-group with the highest number was still the water group with 6 Rattata, while the smallest group was the electric group with 4 Rattata.

The water group was not far off from reaching the number I set for them to evolve, though only 2 had managed to reach the (high) bronze stage so far, so I was considering whether to upgrade the quality of the food and supplements I gave them to avoid stalling the project.

In the end, I decided to go ahead with the increase for all Rattata with a second standard-grade affinity. It was not as if I was lacking materials after all. I just had to work a tiny bit harder to make the supplements but was within the acceptable range since it was just for 20 of them. Having as many Pokemon as I did, I was used to laboring for a large group of Pokemon.

Anyway, once Arcday came around, we left our house really early in the morning. I was talking about 5:30 a.m. kind of early and headed for the Honey City Teleportation Hub, where we made use of the ultra-long distance teleport service that Dad had organized.

The ultra-long-distance teleport service between Honey City, in Kanto, on the northern continent, and Akala Island, in Alola, on the western continent covered nearly 30.000 kilometers, which was really impressive since the earth I used to live on only had a circumference of about 40.000 km.

Dad splurged a bit while arranging the service, which meant the teleporter was a strong as well as expensive one, but in turn, it took us only 80 minutes to arrive at our destination, and that included breaks. Something like that would have been impossible if not for teleportation since a flying speed of close to Mach 20 would have been necessary to fly 30k km in 80 minutes.

While I was sure that there were Pokemon that could reach that kind of speed, we would not be able to travel with such Pokemon, hence the impossible part. Truly, teleportation was a blessing for everyone who wanted to travel large distances in as short a time as possible.

Surprisingly, this was the first time I was affected by a time difference, even if it was only by a single hour. According to Kanto time, it should have been 7 a.m. right now, but the clock I was currently starting at in the teleportation hub was telling me that it was 6 a.m. instead.

That had not happened even when I was in Ransei for the student's world championship, and Ransei was quite a bit further away from Kanto than Alola was. I knew that was because Ransei was positioned "right" below Kanto, so it fell into the same time zone stretch as Kanto.

Meanwhile, Alola was to Kanto's west, which meant that Alola fell into another timezone stretch and that Kanto was 1 hour ahead of any places within this timezone, including Alola. From Yu and geography lessons, I knew that Orre was 1 hour ahead of Kanto.

The rather "small" time difference between these regions despite the "large" distance between them was a testament to the size of the planet we were living on, which I and a lot of people tended to ignore most of the time since presently the rest of the world did not have much to do with us.

Heck, most of the rest of the continents we were living on had nothing to do with us, so it was no surprise we tended to ignore the whole wide world out there. Regardless, we first headed to the hotel that Dad had booked our rooms in before heading to the hotel's restaurant for breakfast.

Finding the hotel, checking in, stopping by the rooms, and heading to the restaurant took more than half an hour. Thankfully, we only had to wait about 5 minutes until the breakfast buffet opened/started. Dad had been handed a few brochures at the reception, and we were looking through them while we were eating.

"Alright, what do you two want to do today? We're going to be here for four weeks, so I think starting with the general Island tour offered by the hotel is not a bad idea. The brochure says the tour starts at 9 a.m, brings us around a few of the major attractions in and around Heahea City and we'll be back at the hotel by 6 p.m," Dad asked after looking through a few brochures while giving his own opinion in advance.

"I don't mind," I said with a shrug. "They'll apparently ferry us around by bus, so it makes sense that the tour focuses on Heahea City. Still, I'd definitely like to take part in the tour around the foot of Wela Volcano, but that can wait for a few days I guess since the brochure for that one says that the hotel is only a partner of the tour agency, so one has to pay for the transport there.

The travel time by bus/shuttle is a few hours, so it takes a lot of time to even get there unless one is willing to use the Teleportation Hub," I shared and neither were surprised by my interest since they knew that I wanted to look into the Salandit situation.

There was no way I was wasting a few hours just to pay less by the way, so we were definitely going to use the hub once we decided to take part in the volcano tour.

"I don't mind it either since the tour stops at Heahea Beach, the traditional market, and the grand mall," Mom said before pointing at some of the other brochures. "I'd like to visit Brooklet Hill, Hano Beach, and the Pikachu Valley at some point though."

"Yeah/Me too," Dad and I agreed at the same time. I mean the series of waterfalls looked really cool and who could say no to a valley full of the Pikachu line? Well, not me, obviously.

"So, we go with the tour first?" Dad asked for confirmation. "Yes/Yep," Mom and I confirmed. "Great," he returned. "We've got about 2 hours until the bus heads off, so I'd say that gives everyone enough time to prepare for the trip," Dad said while throwing a glance at Mom that said I'm talking about you.

Mom did not even deign to answer him, and I just smiled. "Sure. Should I knock on your door, or are we going to meet up in the lobby or some other place?" I asked and Mom replied with "Lobby" before Dad could say anything.

He just looked at me in agreement after she did that, so I acknowledged it with a nod myself. We finished up about 5 minutes later and returned to our respective rooms. I took a quick shower and spent the rest of the time until I had to go down to the lobby lying on the bed, absentmindedly staring at the ceiling while checking out the super library, once more trying to find any books on a possible male Salandit evolution.

Unfortunately, I once again failed to find anything substantial aside from records that mention rumors and tales about sightings of said species. However, there was nothing concrete in there, at least not in the ones I read through.

Either no one had actually bothered writing anything concrete down, which meant that there was nothing on the topic in my super library, probably since no one managed to get anything substantial, or I was just failing to find the bits that were recorded somewhere.

I decided to once more forgo searching for specific "books" and just focused on written records of tales/myths and rumors from Alola, which was where I managed to spot mentions of "possible" sightings in the first place. This was not the first time I was doing this mental search on the topic after all, but I kept trying my luck each time before giving up.

Anyway, 10 minutes before 9 a.m. I left for the lobby and a few minutes after I made it there my parents came down as well.

"Alright, the tour bus is supposed to be waiting in front of the entrance, so let's get there before they leave without us," Dad urged and we made our way out of the hotel.

We made it there and took our seats with a minute to spare, but the people already there did stare at us for arriving at the last minute as if we were the reason they had yet to leave. I mean they did that to the pair that came after us as well, but it was not like the bus could leave early even if we had not come at all.

Anyway, our first stop was the Grand Mall which housed all kinds of stores from nearly all well-known brands as well as all Alolan brands. The guide told us that we had 2 hours to explore the mall before we would move onto the traditional market, where we would also have our lunch break.

He took note of everyone's names and said that they won't wait more than 5 minutes past the 2 hours and that those that missed the group would have to return to the hotel by themselves. No one complained, out loud, and the group split up with everyone going their way to explore the place.

The Grand Mall really deserved its name because the complex was enormous. Not only was it really big in area size, but it also had 9 floors. According to the facility/building plan/map, there were more than 500 locations spread across the 9 floors, consisting mostly of shops/stores with a few restaurants, cafes, and entertainment venues mixed in.

There was no way we would be able to visit everything in just the 2 hours we had, and the tour guy had to have known that. Still, he had brought us here, so we'd know where to go if we wanted to come back, and looking at Mom who seemed to happily and seriously study the floor plan, both Dad and I knew that she was definitely planning to come back.

Mom insisted to visit each store even if we all knew that she had no real interest in some of them like the farm store, which was actually dedicated to farming supplies and devices. I guess the grand mall took its "have everything" reputation seriously.

Regardless, we managed to visit like 80% of the stores on just the first floor by the time the 2 hours were up. We returned to the entrance and saw the tour guy waiting for everyone to assemble with a list in his hands.

We had to wait for a batch of people, but they all made it back before the extra 5 minutes were up, so no one got left behind.

Our next stop was the traditional market, though I honestly would not call that place a market since the size of the place exceeded everything I thought fit that description. Heck, it was not even a market street it was a whole market city block. There were a lot of street stores and stalls along with regular stores, so the whole place was more chaotic and lively.

The tour guy gave out two maps, one with stores he recommended we check out, and the second one with restaurants/stalls that he recommended. He gave us 2.5 hours to explore the market district while telling us that the 2.5 hours included the lunch break.

He did add that he would be at "Aina's Kitchen" between 12:45 p.m. and 1:30 p.m., so we could find him there if we did not want to wait until we met back up at 1:45 p.m.

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