CH32 (396), That’s Going To Take A While

I was quite excited when I left my room to head to the lab on Arcday morning. The sandwich as well as the OO juice tasted extra tasty, and the sun baby giggled and gave me a wink. Jokes aside, I was really curious about what kind of project Professor Oak was going to assign me, so I made it to the main lab in half my usual time.

I gulped down the last bit of my juice right before stepping into the building. I swiftly and hopefully discretely used one of the glass panels inside to do a quick check of my face. Seeing my spotless face, I graced Lidya with a charming smile.

"Ms. Lidya, is the professor in his office?" I asked her, not holding back any of the enthusiasm I was feeling.

"Yes, he's in," she confirmed, "should I ask him if he has time for you?"

"Yes, please," I requested and she smiled at me before taking her office phone. Their exchange was a rather short one.

"Alright, he's expecting you," she passed on, "I'm sure you won't have any problem finding his office."

"Yep," I confirmed her unasked question. "Thanks for the help," I thanked her, before passing her a chilled bottle of my self-made premium OO juice that I pulled out of my waist bag.

Keeping the secretary of the place one was working in happy was important after all. She smiled at me and accepted my bribe, no, my gratitude. I swiftly headed to the professor's office after giving her a final nod.

Once I made it to his office door, I knocked and stepped inside after hearing the word "enter". Professor Oak smiled at me and motioned for me to take a seat before he greeted me.

"Mikail, my boy, good to see you," he began warmly, and I quickly returned a "good morning".

"I would ask what brought you to my office, but I believe I already know the reason you came," he chuckled good-naturedly while he said that. "You're here for your new project assignment, are you not?" he asked and I simply nodded.

"Wonderful," he continued mirthfully. "I have to admit that I had been unsure at first as to which one of the ongoing projects I should assign you to, but I, later on, found the perfect project for you.

You will be joining our latest research project. The research team was established just last week, and James is the lead researcher so you can go to him for further details.

I can however tell you that this is a long-term project that has multiple goals and that the focus of the project is the Eevee line," the professor sounded a tad bit gloating/spiteful when he said the last bit and a moment later it became apparent why exactly he sounded like that.

"That should teach that upstart a lesson. There's discreet spying and then there is the shit that Bill pulled," the professor mumbled in a rather non-discreet/silent manner.

The way he smiled and chuckled after that might not have meant that he wanted me to hear him, but the wink he threw me afterward certainly showed that he had said that so that I could hear him.

I could not help but chuckle as well when that happened. It seemed like Bill, who I assumed was Professor Bill Sonezaki, had managed to really earn the good professor's ire. I had to truly take off my hat to Bill since from what I had seen and heard about the professor until now, angering Professor Oak like that was really not easy.

From what he said, it seemed like prof. Bill went too far while trying to spy on our lab, so I could somewhat understand Professor Oak's anger. The professor certainly gave off the feeling that his lab was his home and his staff was his family.

Well, under these circumstances, choosing Eevee as a new research topic made a lot of sense since as far as I, as well as the public, knew, most if not all of professor Bill's current research projects were focused on the Eevee line.

Us working on the same species was going to make him really nervous, and most likely quite angry. If we coincidentally ended up focusing on the exact same research direction as his, Bill would probably end up frothing.

Well, Eevee had a lot, and I meant a lot of study/research potential, so the chance of us studying the exact same topic was not as big as one would at first assume. However, it was not insignificant either.

Anyway, I schooled my features before I spoke up. "Thank you for informing me of my new assignment Professor."

"You're welcome, my boy," he returned with a warm smile. "I'm sure you're going to enjoy working on the project a lot since you seem to have quite the luck with variants and new species."

After that, he tied up the conversation by telling me where I could find James as well as his team, and I made my way over there. The lab was on the east wing, so it took me a few minutes to make it there, and since the door was open I simply strolled inside.

"Good, Samantha quickly bring that Eevee over here," James said without looking up from his workstation.

It seemed like he had been waiting for someone else and that the door had been left open for that reason. The ones that had seen me seemed amused by James calling me Samantha, and before one of them could alert James that I was in fact not Samantha, I decided to gain his attention myself.

"Sorry to disappoint you like this, but I'm not Samantha," I declared, causing James to look over in surprise.

"Ah, Mikail, welcome," he greeted me, "I knew that you would be joining us, I just did not expect it to be now. Samantha went out to bring over an Eevee to test whether our most recent result could trigger an evolution or not," he explained and I told him that I didn't mind it before joining him and the others at the workstation.

Only a few moments later Samantha stepped inside with an Eevee in her arms. She directly came up to the workstation and placed the Eevee on the table.

The assistants began working when she did that, some began recording the event, some began making notes, and the rest began mumbling into a voice recorder, but all of them were focused on Eevee and the object in the middle of the worktable.

The object looked like an ice block, so I was assuming that the team was hoping that the object they created would cause Eevee to evolve into a Glaceon.

Well, I obviously managed to stumble into an ongoing experiment, and since I did not want to be the only one that was just standing around, I took out my notepad and began documenting what I was seeing.

While that was happening Eevee looked over to James, clearly waiting for a go-ahead signal. It seemed this was not the first time Eevee took part in one of the experiments and since he, his tail pattern looked like a sun, was still an Eevee, the previous rounds obviously failed.

"You can go ahead and touch the ice block. Hopefully, it will work this time," James said to Eevee, who made his way over to the chunk of ice.

I could see and feel Eevee's anticipation when he stopped before the ice. He then lifted his right front paw and carefully placed it on the ice. Everyone watched with bathing breath what would happen, but when nothing happened after 5 seconds it became obvious that the experiment had failed.

I certainly did not hear a collective sound of disappointment when that happened, but Eevee was definitely disappointed when he lifted his paw after waiting for an extra ten seconds just to see if there was a delay and if he could still evolve.

James went up and patted Eevee on the head to comfort him before signaling Samantha to bring Eevee away. I heard Samantha whisper to Eevee that they would get it to work at some point and that he could definitely evolve into Glaceon when they did.

"Alright, I know you're disappointed, but failure is the mother of success, so back to your workstations. We'll succeed eventually," James said after clapping to get everyone's attention.

The others did follow his instructions, but I stayed behind since I had yet to be assigned to a group. Once everyone was gone, James put away the failed ice block before turning to me.

"Well, as you can see, finding an alternate way to induce the evolution of Eevee to Glaceon is one of the two research directions we have settled on for now. The other one is the evolution of Eevee to Leafeon.

Everyone knows that spending some time absorbing the energy released into the environment by a Moss Rock or Ice Rock can initiate the evolution of an Eevee to a Leafeon or Glaceon respectively, but not everyone can travel to the areas where such rocks can be found, and since the rocks begin to lose their effect after being removed from the place they originated from, helping an Eevee evolve to Leafeon or Glaceon was, is, quite hard.

Even after it was discovered that certain Ice Stones and Leaf Stones can replace the Ice Rock and Moss Rock, that is only the case for B-Class and above stones, so while it became less bothersome to induce the evolution, the difficulty did not really decrease for most trainers. That is especially the case for Ice Stones which are generally rarer than Leaf Stones.

Now, that I've said this much, you have no doubt figured out that our goal is the creation of an object that is capable of taking the role of the rocks and stones. The ultimate goal we have for the object, aside from it being actually able to induce evolution, is that it has to be within the price range of a D-Class Evolution Stone," James did the introduction of our research project and I nodded along during his explanation.

I could see why they decided to go with these two topics. His summary of the problem was pretty apt. Helping an Eevee to evolve using the rocks or stones was either too risky for weaker trainers or too expensive since the cheaper B-Class Leaf Stone could cost up to 1.5 million Poke, not to mention the much rarer Ice Stone.

Releasing an object that only had a five-digit price tag or one that was only slightly above six digits, would give much more trainers the option to evolve their Eevee to Leafeon or Glaceon, so I gave James a firm nod.

"Those are great study directions," I acknowledged, before giving him an inquisitive look. "So, which group am I joining?"

"Mikail, I'll be honest with you. We all think that the Glaceon project will be harder due to ice materials being scarcer than grass ones. I want you to join the Glaceon research group, but I am willing to assign you to the Leafeon one if that's what you want," James frankly told me what he wanted.

"Sure," I replied with a nod. "I don't mind joining the Glaceon group if that's what you think would be the most appropriate," I clarified, having an inkling why he wanted me to join that group.

"That's great," James said and I could feel his happiness at my decision. "Come on, I'll lead you to your group," he declared before walking toward the right half of the lab.

I could see that there were 3 tables occupied by a total of 8 people, and they all looked over when James called for their attention to declare my inclusion into their group. They gave me nods or words of acceptance/welcome before turning back to their work.

James beckoned me to the table with 2 assistants and pulled up the list of materials they were working with to create the evolution object. He asked me to familiarize myself with the list for now, and I directly noticed that there were a lot of water-type materials among them.

I asked James why that was the case and he told me that they were trying to see if they could find some water materials that could be used after being frozen by an ice-type move or another ice-type material. I nodded at that and focused back on the list.

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