CH39 (403), A Taste Of Success (2)

The next day, at around 2 p.m., I could be seen standing outside the entrance of our main lab, waiting for Weiss to arrive. We had agreed to meet up at 2 p.m., and I had, as usual, come over to the lab at 7:30 a.m. I simply went to our laboratory and greeted Carl as well as Sibel, before we, once more, went over our plans for the day.

Afterward, we went ahead with our preparations, which included the creation of two more Mystic Ice Gems. While those two were inside the pressure device, we put the Mystic Ice Gem we currently had at hand through the tests we had settled on to formally determine our product's capabilities.

It was only 5 minutes before 2 p.m., that I walked to the entrance, where I could currently be seen waiting for Weiss to show up. Not that she was late since there was still a minute until 2 p.m.

"Mikail, good morning," Weiss greeted me with our by now established greetings-hug just two minutes later.

"Good morning, Weiss," I returned while smiling at her. "Thank you for agreeing to come over even when I was being pretty vague about the whole thing."

"No problem, I don't mind helping you if I can," she assured, "I have to admit that I got a bit curious due to the secrecy involved."

"I can imagine," I told her with a chuckle, knowing that curiosity was something that most, if not all of our group of friends had in common.

"Regardless, I'm sorry, but I need you to sign the NDA before I can tell you more," I told Weiss while leading her inside the lobby.

I moved to one of the corners of the waiting area and pulled out the NDA Professor Oak had given James, who passed it to me.

"Weiss, I want to emphasize that this is a psychic-backed Non-Disclosure Agreement that comes straight from Professor Oak, so please read through it once and only sign it if you see absolutely no problems with the conditions written on it," I warned her before handing her the NDA.

The content of the NDA was pretty simple. Weiss could not tell anyone about the topic of our research until Oak Labs revealed the topic first. Moreover, even after that, she could once again not reveal the specifics she learned during her time working with us until those details were revealed from our side.

That meant she would not be able to share anything about our Mystic Ice Gem with anyone before our lab revealed it to the public. The same was true for any of the other items/products she witnessed during her visit(s).

There was nothing on the NDA aside from those conditions and I was thankful that it was not one of those page-long ones that always appeared in movies. I guess one did not have to go through hoops and loops if one had psychic powers to ensure that the agreement was upheld.

I was also sure that no one would want to sign cumbersome papers for the same reason since everyone would be afraid of pitfalls being included if the paper was not straightforward. At least that was my assumption, I was by no means an expert on NDAs since I only came across them shortly before joining Oak Labs.

Anyway, Weiss ended up signing it, after she read through it twice, so I put away the NDA and led her to our assigned lab.

"Well, now that you've signed the NDA, I can tell you what I, and the team I have been assigned to, am currently working on," I told Weiss during our walk to our part of the building.

"Do tell," Weiss requested curiously and I made sure to lower my voice to ensure that only Weiss, who walking beside me could hear my voice.

"My group is working on finding an alternate evolution trigger for Eevee. More specifically, we are trying to find a cheaper and safer alternative for the Ice Stone and the Ice Rock," Weiss made an "hooo" sound when I said that, which showed me that I had genuinely roused her interest, so I swiftly continued my explanation.

"The reason I called you over, is that the group I am part of has successfully completed an object yesterday. Unfortunately, the object, which we decided to call Mystic Ice Gem, failed the Eevee test. Still, I suggested that we try to see if the Mystic Ice Gem is capable of evolving other ice types, that do not have as high a requirement for their evolution as Glaceon, and that's where you come into play," I admitted to her and I could see her figure out why I called her.

"I want your help in organizing an ice type that can normally evolve using a standard D-Class Ice Stone so that we can test whether our D-Class Mystic Ice Gem is capable of triggering its evolution or not. You were the first person that came to my mind since you are somewhat of a semi-ice-type specialist.

Moreover, you are currently going to an ice-centric trainer school, and your family is also an ice-centric one, so I felt that you would have a much easier time finding a willing Pokemon than anyone else I know," I finished my explanation just as we arrived in front of the lab door.

"I can see why you called me," Weiss returned with a nod while following me to the table I was working at.

"Weiss, these are Carl and Sibel, my coworkers for this project," I introduced Weiss, before doing the same in reverse. "Carl, Sibel, this is Weiss. She's a friend of mine that should be able to help us with our Pokemon problem. In fact, she might be able to help us with our other tests regarding the capabilities of our Mystic Ice Gem since she is an Ice Elementalist herself, on top of being somewhat of an ice-type specialist."

The three greeted each other before Weiss asked what I meant with the second part, so I explained to her our objective of determining the full capabilities of our Mystic Ice Gem, aside from the whole evolution thing.

Weiss agreed to help but requested that her family would be given the right to buy a steady amount of Mystic Ice Gems if they desired to do so once we revealed the Mystic Ice Gem to the public.

Carl, Sibel, and I discussed her request among us and offered to keep aside 10% of the item output each month for her family. The items would be kept aside for the first half of each month before we made them available for general purchase.

Weiss asked for 20%, and after a short negotiation, we ended up agreeing on 15% instead. After that was settled, I asked her if she had an ice type at hand that we could use to test our Mystic Ice Gem's evolution abilities.

"Well, not really, but I know about two classmates at my trainer school that have an Alolan Sandshrew and an Alolan Vulpix respectively. I don't think it would be hard for me to persuade them to provide their Pokemon if it allowed them to evolve their Pokemon for free," she paused for a moment when she said that.

"They don't have to pay for anything, do they?" Weiss ended up asking, and I shook my head.

"No, they don't," Sibel was the one that answered. "All they have to do is provide the Pokemon. They also need to know that the Mystic Ice Gem may fail to trigger the evolution, so they should not cause any problems if that happens. As long as it does trigger, the evolution process is perfectly safe.

Well, aside from that, they also have to sign an NDA, to guarantee their silence regarding the method of evolution until we go public, whether it works or not. The NDA is pretty much the same as yours, so they can only talk about it after our public release," Carl added and I agreed with him.

"I don't think that will be a problem," Weiss returned before asking for a moment to contact the two people she had in mind. I told her to go ahead, so she pulled her phone out and began to make some calls.

After she was done talking with both of them, she asked me to prepare two NDAs for them before stating that her two schoolmates would arrive in Pallet City in 90 minutes, so we would have to fetch them once that happened.

I went up to James to ask him about procuring two more NDAs, and he simply pulled out five before handing them to me. Seeing my surprised look, he jokingly said that he and the Professor had already expected me to need more once I began involving a single outsider in our project, so they prepared a few more.

I thanked him and asked him to pass on my thanks to the Professor and to his Alakazam as well, who was most likely the one who secured the NDAs.

After I got the NDAs, our quartet spent the next 80 minutes using Weiss to test our Mystic Ice Gem to see what she could tell us regarding the things she could feel after coming into contact with it.

We made sure to record and note everything that happened. Thanks to using various devices such as the energy gauge or the impact gauge we proved that the Mystic Ice Gem amplified ice energy, but 80 minutes was not enough to provide enough data to determine any decisive numbers.

Still, once my alarm informed me that 80 minutes had passed, I took Weiss and left for Pallet City, more specifically the Teleportation Hub. I obviously asked Gwen/Gardevoir to teleport us there since rushing there on foot within 10 minutes would cause us discomfort due to sweat.

Anyway, just three or so minutes later, someone calling out to Weiss alerted us that our guests had arrived. Weiss formally introduced us to each other, and Max, as well as Nora, acknowledged that they knew who I was. My presence also gave them the notion that the whole thing had to do with Oak Labs, so they were a bit excited.

I swiftly asked them to follow me to a quiet corner of the hub, where I pulled out two NDAs before handing one to each of them. I requested them to read and sign the NDAs if they wanted to know specifics, and the two read through the paper. I saw them give Weiss a questioning look after they were done, and Weiss simply gave them a reassuring nod.

After she did that, the duo looked at each other before resolutely signing the NDAs. I put those away after that before asking them to follow me outside, where I called out Gwen and requested her to teleport us to the main lab entrance.

From there I led them to our laboratory, before bringing them to our workstation, where I introduced them to Carl and Sibel. After that, Carl, Sibel, and I began to set up everything for the evolution test. We were naturally going to record the whole thing, but since it was not an Eevee test, we saw no reason to move to the central table.

Once our preparations were complete, I asked Nora to call out her Sandshrew, which she did while everyone was watching her. James also joined us to watch the test after having noticed the ongoing events, but the others kept working on their own thing.

Anyway, after Sandshrew appeared, I requested for it to walk over to the center of the table, which it did after Nora repeated the request. Thankfully our work tables were quite robust so they had no problems with Sandshrew's weight, and even if it successfully evolved, the table could easily carry an Alolan Sandslash since it had no problems with devices that weighed more than a quarter ton.

Once Sandshrew was in position, I took our Mystic Ice Gem and placed it right in front of Sandshrew. Once I was back in my position, I asked it to touch the Mystic Ice Gem, and we all observed it with bated breath when Sandshrew moved its hand on top of the Mystic Ice Gem, after receiving the okay from Nora.

Nothing happened for a few seconds, but then after the third second Sandshrew lit up in the telltale light of evolution, causing Nora to cheer, and Carl, Sibel, as well as I to release a sigh of relief before we also began cheering or happily laughing in Carl's case.

Once the light settled down, an Alolan Sandslash stood where previously an Alolan Sandshrew had been. James congratulated us while Nora went up to her Pokemon to hug it. I asked her to send us the health report from the PokeCenter once she went there to confirm Sandslash's health after its evolution, and she happily agreed to my request.

We were not expecting any problems because of the nature of Pokemon evolution, but asking for a health report was standard procedure. After that, I asked her to recall her Pokemon before asking Max to call out his Alolan Vulpix.

I once more requested for the Pokemon to move to the center before placing one of the two new Mystic Ice Gems in front of Vulpix. Vulpix then placed its paw onto the gem and just like before the evolution got triggered after a few moments.

Max was naturally happy to see that the evolution of his Pokemon was a success as well, and my group was also really happy since the second evolution meant that our D-Class Mystic Ice Gem could replace a regular D-Class Ice Stone as an evolution trigger.

This gave us the hope that our current path was not wrong and simply needed some more work. Anyway, I repeated my earlier request and asked Max to give us the PokeCenter report of his Alolan Ninetales as well.

Afterward, we thanked them for their participation. The two said that they were thankful for our help in evolving their Pokemon, and since their part was done I, along with Weiss escorted them back to Pallet City. I made sure to remind them to send us the PokeCenter reports, before Weiss and I returned to the lab.

-----------------------------

***A Big Thank You to Chad Jones for becoming a Patron***

Advertising plug-in:

There is poll up right now on patre'on that decides what kind of mini-arc happens during Mikail's next vacation, so those interested can become patrons and vote.

Currently, the first goal has been completed, so for the duration of January the lowest number of advanced chapters available is 4, while the highest number of advanced chapters is 8.

If the second goal gets fulfilled, the lowest number of advanced chapters available will be 6, while the highest number of advanced chapters will be 10. Aside from the advanced chapters, I will also release 2 bonus chapters if goal 2 is met.

Sketches, drawings of the MC, Variants and maps can be found on my Patre'on. A patre'on exclusive Legendary Lore series can be found there as well.

Help me stay motivated.

patreo*n/Azrail93