CH154 (768), I Got Tempted

Once the deal was complete I asked Mid Trapinch if she had an idea where the Gligar that were harassing them were living, and she happily told me where I could find them after learning that I was planning to see if any of the Gligar could rouse my interest. According to her, their numbers were already low so any further reduction would be welcome, and if I gave them food in return the Gligar would definitely leave them alone until that food was consumed, so they profited doubly. Trapinch added that the Gligar were an unruly bunch and that they would likely attack us even if we revealed our strength by relying on their ability to fly/glide through the sky.

Trapinch urged me to capture as many Gligar as I wanted, and I could understand why she was thinking that. Their existing grudge aside, Gligar were flying/gliding whenever they were coming here or passing by, and given that there was no way they would miss the new Oran field I had created the next time a Gligar passed by this place. Still, even knowing that I would not just pick up the whole Gligar group unless they all ended up having decent enough potential. Nonetheless, I kept that to myself and simply thanked Mid Trapinch for the info before we left their place following her direction.

While we did that, I had my second thought stream release the two Trapinch I caught from their PokeBalls so that Utopia could do its thing. I had to think for a moment about where to place the mini desert Utopia created, and I eventually chose to set it on the outskirts of the home square, close to the eastern edge of the square. The reason I placed it so far from the center of the home/upper square was that I was certain that the desert would grow once the Trapinch evolved to their final form and as more desert dwellers joined. With the habitat at the edge, they had plenty of space to expand not only on the upper square, but I could also let the desert grow along the edge of the eastern square.

Either way, by the time I made the decision the optimization was long over so I let the Trapinch stay with Gaara/Gabite for now, who showed them around his own little desert, which I might move as well at some point in the future, though for now it would remain where it was. Once the Trapinch desert had been placed, I turned my focus to the two Trapinch and checked out their new/updated status sheets. The (mid) iron stage Trapinch's potential had risen from green to light blue potential (13.86%), and it had even unlocked a talent. Strong Jaw was a fitting talent for a Trapinch I guess, though it was less useful for the Flygon he would eventually become. With a 50% boost to any biting-related moves, Strong Jaw was practically identical to the ability Strong Jaw with which it even shared its name.

While the talent itself was not bad, it was not that great of a fit for a Flygon, and less so for a Vibrava, so it could only be called a decent draw at best. Nonetheless, that was still better than nothing as the 2nd Trapinch would no doubt agree. Not only had she not unlocked anything, but her light green potential rose to only green even if less than 9% was missing for it to turn deep green. Nonetheless, overall the results were not bad, and they definitely qualified for my elite colony plan, even if neither of them was good enough for me to consider adding them to my reserve team.

Still, I was not in a hurry on that front since this was only the first batch of new Utopia immigrants, and I was certain that I would be able to get at least one Trapinch with deep blue potential even if I failed to get a light purple one, though I was still hopeful that that would happen. Regardless, I told the trio what I had seen and funnily enough it was Gaara who was happier than the two Trapinch in question, which surprised/confused him a bit. I was not as surprised since the two had lived their whole short lives with a minor group in the outer parts of the desert, so it was not shocking that they were not aware of the significance of their potential or the usefulness talents could have.

I left the enlightenment of the duo to Gaara and turned the second thought stream attention back to the general situation in Utopia. Meanwhile, we ignored the few Pokemon that we came across while trudging through the sand, and a few minutes later, after scaling a dune we got to see a bunch of Gligar hanging out not far from our position. We were not the only ones that spotted something, one of the Gligar that was gliding through the air happened to spot us as well and warned the rest of its group. We saw how the Gligar, as a result of that warning, all ran up the dune they were on for a bit before they jumped down, which allowed them to glide up as well.

I counted 17 Gligar in total by the time the last one had joined the other in the air. All 17 stuck around and observed us as we walked to their initial position. Once we stopped at their place instead of simply passing through, they finally showed a new reaction. We heard a warning scream telling us to move on though that was anything but threatening in my opinion seeing how high they were "hiding". When we ignored their warning and I waved towards them to sign/tell them to come down instead since I wanted to talk to them without having to shout the whole time, they actually attacked us by releasing a salvo of Poison Sting. I neutralized their attacks with a simple flex of my psychic power, freezing the poison stingers in the air.

The Gligar seeing that actually collectively turned tail and started to flee. I naturally would not allow that so I told Mothra/Butterfree to stop them. Mothra gave me a salute before she vanished from atop my head and appeared in the center of the Gligar swarm using Teleport. She then flexed her Psychic and froze all 17 Gligar in place before leisurely flying back down with them in tow. She settled on my shoulder and proudly stacked the Gligar at my feet while looking at me with eyes/a face that screamed praise me. I laughed amusedly before patting Mothra on the head while praising her for the swift handling of the situation.

I saw the panicked but still defiant look in nearly all the frozen Gligar's eyes, so I simply told Mothra to put them to sleep. She had them sniff some dust, which had them sleeping within seconds, following which I took a look at their status sheets to check their potential. The result was out of my expectations, which honestly had been pretty low due to the small number of Gligar. Still, contrary to what I had expected, there were quite a few interesting Gligar among this small batch. In fact, this little group of Gligar, except for two members, pretty much embodied what I was aiming for with my elite colony plan, just on a much smaller scale.

They actually had 1 Gligar with light blue potential, though he was unfortunately already at the (low) bronze stage. Aside from that one, their group also had 3 Gligar with greenish potential, with the strongest Gligar at (high) bronze being the one to have deep green potential. The other two were a (mid) bronze Gligar with light green potential and a (high) iron stage Gligar with green potential. The potential of these 4 was pretty good, but it was the fact that the rest of the Gligar, aside from 2, had yellowish potential that had me compare them to the elite colony I had in mind. The only blemish was the two exceptions who had orange and deep orange potential respectively.

Nonetheless, the rest of their group was good enough for me to take in the whole batch, so I directly took out 17 Pokeballs and balled them all at once. Mothra had technically beaten them already after all, and all at once at that, so capturing them was not a problem. I doubted the Gligar would be able to use that as a contention point, and once they saw what a great place Utopia was any need to complain would probably vanish either way, which was for the best for everyone. I had a few questions for these Gligar after all that I wanted answers to. I had difficulties believing that a random wild group of Gligar could just have an average potential scale like this.

There had to be other things involved, and I was curious about which one of the scenarios I could think of applied to them, so I lost no time and released them all inside Utopia. The generated habitat got placed right beside the Trapinch one, while the Gligar themselves were deposited beside Gaara and the Trapinch duo, though I kept them asleep for now since I did not want them to cause any trouble until someone stronger arrived in case they decided to ignore the reality of the situation and attack the Trapinch.

While waiting for Osiris to arrive, I had my second thought stream check out all of the Gligar, and the optimization brought about pretty good results. The light blue Gligar now had blue potential with less than 14% to deep blue. The strongest Gligar had his potential raised to light blue at nearly 79%. The mid-bronze Gligar had her light green potential turned to deep green, while the green potential iron Gligar joined the light blue club, though it was kinda close if one saw a surplus of 5% as close. These 4 aside, 4 more Gligar had their potential raised to a green shade, with 3 being light green and one actually having her potential raised to green.

That left 8 Gligar with yellowish potential, with one of them being the Gligar that used to have deep orange potential. The only disappointing point was that there was still a Gligar that failed to even attain light yellow potential, so I decided to temporarily turn him infertile just in case he decided to get active to prevent him from compromising their potential average any further, and he was not the only one. Since I already had a small base to work with I decided to let the Gligar go with the elite route as well, so I added the Gligar with light yellow potential to the temporarily infertile list as well. I usually did not make use of this unless the Pokemon in question had red or deep red potential and lived in the main space, but since I wanted an elite colony I decided to adapt.

The change was temporary because I was going to let them regain their fertility once their potential rose to yellow, which given Utopia's resources was not impossible as long as they did not slack off in their training, though it might take them a decade or more to do so. Still, I made them infertile not impotent, so they were simply not able to get kids and were otherwise unaffected. Regardless, the deep orange Gligar was lucky that he was only missing 13% to light yellow so he still had a chance to get rid of his infertility as well. To avoid any future complaints I straight up told them what I did once Osiris showed up and they were allowed to wake up.

I could feel that some still wanted to complain but Osiris's aura had them stay quiet, and with Gaara telling them the advantages of living in Utopia even their complaints vanished or rather got buried beneath the temptation of what Utopia granted, namely a perfect living environment with an abundance of food along with a guarantee of safety as long as they did not go around trying to kill other Utopians. Anyway, once Gaara was done with the brief overview I went ahead and asked the leading Gligar the question that had cropped up once I saw the potential average of their group.

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