CH42 (406), The Next Step (2)

While that feeling had turned out to be true each time until now, I still immediately checked her status screen to see if she was right or not. Well, it turned out to be true once more, so I made sure to tell everyone that had yet to show up to move to Hera/Pidgeot's habitat before we headed there as well.

Once we made it there, everyone began discussing Hera's breakthrough while we waited for those still missing to arrive. The main topic of their discussions was what kind of new ability Hera would unlock, since they all knew that she would join those with light aurora potential after her breakthrough, and every one of us knew that those with aurora potential of any grade would unlock a third ability.

Well, they obviously were no ability experts, so they threw around all kinds of suggestions that they knew of. I could definitely say that I would be disappointed if some of them came to be true, such as Early Bird, but some were pretty good like Speed Boost or even Pressure.

I was really hoping it would be a useful one, and I had reason to be hopeful as well since the ones that had been unlocked so far were all pretty useful abilities. Well, not that I had a large group to compare with since Hera would be the third one to actually reach that kind of potential. Yet, that was still more than probably anyone else could claim.

Anyway, we only had to wait for a few more minutes until Seb and Gaia joined us along with their parents, so I asked everyone to give Hera some space, and once they were done following that request, I gave Hera a last pat before I joined the others, leaving her in the middle of a circle, surrounded by all of us.

I gave her the go-ahead and she initiated her breakthrough. The increased energy suction and slight shining on her part, as well as slightly longer breakthrough time, were things we/I expected due to her potential issue, so no one was surprised when it happened.

Once the breakthrough was over, I went up to Hera, who was checking herself out, probably trying to get a feel for what had changed, and congratulated her on reaching the gold stage and light aurora potential. I hugged her before I began checking her potential, while the others began pestering, I meant congratulating her.

'Name: Hera

Species: Pidgeot

Gender: Female

Age: 10+ years

-

Type: Flying, Normal

Potential: Light Aurora (39.9%)

{Deep Purple (16.59%) -> (19.8%) -> Light Aurora (39.9%)}

Genetic variation: None

Abilities: [Keen Eye], Tangled Feet, Big Pecks, Wind Rider*

Talents: Composed

Affinities: Flying, Normal

-

Bond: Mikail (strong)

Quirks: Calm/Tranquil*

----

Parameters:

Stage: Gold Stage (mid)

Vitality: D

Strength: D

Endurance: E

Agility: C

Energy Capacity: E

Energy Density: E

----

Immune: Ghost, Flying/Air

-

Resistance:

Grass (Minor), Ground (Minor), Bug (Minor)

-

Weaknesses:

Ice (Minor), Rock (Minor)

-

Standardized:

Electric, Ice (in progress)*

----

Condition: Healthy, Delighted, Cheerful

----

Masteries:

Flying/Air E. Manipulation (Advanced)

Neutral E. Manipulation (Beginner) -> Advanced

----

Techniques:

-

(Unofficial) Initial:

N/A

-

Novice:

N/A

-

Beginner:

Rest (new, +), Double Edge (new, +)

-

Proficient:

Tackle, Sand Attack, Whirlwind, Feather Dance, Wing Attack, Steel Slash (C), Endure (new, ++), Double Team (new, ++), Pluck (new, ++), Heat Wave (new, ++), Mirror Move (new, ++), Razor Wind (new, ++), Defog (new, ++), Sky Attack (new, ++), Brave Bird (new, ++)

-

Advanced:

Twister, Agility, Quick Attack, Aerial Ace, Air Slash, Tailwind, Roost, Steel Wing, Hurricane (++), Swift (+), Protect (+), Hyper Beam (new, +++)

-

Mastered:

Gust, Air Cutter (+)

-

Combo/Custom:

Steel Slash (Proficient), Aerostream (in progress)*'

As expected, her potential had risen to light aurora, and with her being only a hair's breadth away from 40%, she had surpassed the previous number one Mothra/Butterfree, who had yet to go past 32% even after more than 1.5 years had passed since her potential rose to light aurora.

Anyway, after confirming her rise to light aurora, I moved on to the point everyone was curious about, her third ability. I was naturally passing over Keen Eye in that count, which was an intrinsic ability of all bird-like Pokemon.

Well, I could admit to being surprised at seeing an ability I had never heard of before, which had only happened once before with Mycelium Might. Still, it remained a fact, that I had never heard about an ability called Wind Rider before this, so I obviously checked out what it did.

The general description was as followed, when a Pokemon with Wind Rider is hit by a wind/flying move or when Tailwind takes effect, its strength receives a boost, and the wind/flying move will have no effect on that Pokémon.

Well, that effect was pretty familiar, since I knew of other abilities that had a similar effect such as Lighting Rod or Sap Sipper. The main difference between those element-absorbing abilities and this one, aside from the fact that it was the first one aimed at the flying type, was that Wind Rider could apparently also be triggered by Tailwind.

This also meant that the no-damage rule was similarly limited to purely elemental attacks/effects, and that physical moves of the flying type would simply cause reduced, maybe even greatly reduced damage, since the energy of the attack would be absorbed on contact, and only the physical aspect would go through.

Nonetheless, the ability was an extremely good one, especially the fact that Hera could trigger it on her own by using Tailwind, and I happily shared the news and details of Hera's new ability with the others. They began to cheer loudly, happy for their fellow clan member, before once more congratulating Hera, who was beaming in joy.

I naturally praised and congratulated Hera as well, briefly pausing my check of her status, before I continued looking through her status screen. The reason I briefly paused my inspection despite having a second-thought stream was that she deserved my full attention while I was talking to her at that moment.

Anyway, the next noteworthy change was actually in her quirk section. Hera was in the process of moving from calm to tranquil, and surprisingly those two were not the same thing. They were pretty similar sure, but tranquil seemed to be an even higher form of calm, and frankly, I was not sure if I wanted her to complete that change or not.

Sure, both could easily be linked to her Composed talent, but tranquil gave me too much of a "free of worldly matters" kind of vibe. While that certainly sounded impressive on paper, I believed that such an attitude could quickly lead to detachment towards pretty much everything, including us, which I obviously did not want.

Yes, I was definitely going to ensure that Hera did not turn tranquil, calm was good enough for her. She did not need tranquility, unlike some other species that I could think of.

Moving on, her parameters put her firmly into the (mid) gold stage, but it would take some time for her to reach the limit of her sub-stage, considering that half her parameters were at E-value and that she only had a single C-value among the rest. It was clear that she would be reaching the (high) gold stage after her predecessors despite her higher potential.

Her resistance training was going well enough. After she standardized her electric weakness with the help of Thor/Raichu, she took a break for around two years, before she began to work on her ice weakness with the help of Manami/Lapras, roughly a year ago. Finishing with the ice type was probably going to take a few more years at the pace we were going, but that was good enough.

We did not want her to feel discomforted by the end of it as she had been after she completed her electric resistance training. "Discomforted" was a bit of an understatement since it took two years before she was ready for another round of resistance training, but it was the closest word that came to my mind without exaggerating.

Well, moving on to a less awkward part of her status, her mastery in neutral/normal energy manipulation had risen to advanced thanks to the normal moves she improved.

Meanwhile, her flying/air energy manipulation had not risen since reaching mastery was much harder to do. She had obviously not reached that point, and it would probably take a long while before she did since mastering moves was not her main focus right now.

As far as moves were concerned, Hera had focused more on finishing her custom move and getting good at it, before she began learning new moves and becoming good enough with them. After that, she chose to focus on a select few moves that she felt were useful, before she started working on a new custom move.

She got the idea to start on the new move when I grumbled about the lack of a killer flying-energy move while she was focusing on Hyper Beam, so we began discussing how to go about creating such a move.

Our goal was to create a continuous focused stream of air that would be fired at the target. Kinda like those pressurized water cutters just with air instead of water. Additionally, since it was going to use the flying energies cutting properties the stream would not have to be as focused/thin.

To achieve that, Hera began focusing on moves we felt would be useful for her new moves, such as Hyper Beam for the energy concentration aspect, Air Cutter for the cutting aspect of flying/air energy, and Hurricane for the mass of flying energy, its power, and partly due to its funnel aspect since we thought it could help with the energy concentration.

We decided to dub our project Aerostream, and the name might have been inspired by another move, but just a little bit, since the moves were fundamentally different.

Well, the move had yet to move out of the conception stage since Hera had been busy preparing for it, and working on her regular training, but we could start working on it now since she was done with the preparations.

Anyway, once I was done looking through everything, I told everyone that we would be starting Hera's celebration. That made them cheer, and we headed to the central area for the celebration. I began pulling out everything we needed for the party once we made it to my place and we kept the celebration going until close to midnight before I declared the end of the party.

The next morning started the 34th month, and my group continued our work on adding the Yache concentrate/essence to our Mystic Ice Gem. Yet, we failed to succeed with any of the concentrate degrees on Dialday.

Kyoday was similarly unsuccessful, even if we managed to raise the fusion degree of the 50%-version to a bit over 90%. Furthermore, I got some good news from Hades/Haunter, who completed the second round of his limit-breaking.

Grouday was as usual our day off, and this time I chose to stay in Pallet City. I visited Jessie and spent some time with her, but aside from that, I spent most of the day inside Utopia with my Pokemon. Come Arcday we were back to working on our project and it took us until Giratiday for one of our essences Gems to be successful.

It was obviously the 50%-version, and we lost no time putting it through the mandatory preliminary test. Unsurprisingly, the Mystic Ice Yache Essence Gem and holy Mew was that name a mouthful, easily passed so we asked for an Eevee for the actual evolution test. Unfortunately, the test failed, but that did not slow us down, and we kept on working on the other versions.

On Dialday, I got some personal good news, unrelated to our project, which had been quite on the success front for the last two days. Bruce/Zubat managed to reach the (high) iron stage, and I naturally praised him a lot for that. Still, Moka/Crobat was probably even happier than I was when her little bro advanced, and she showered him with so much praise, that I had to hold her back for a bit.

Well, speaking of Moka, she only needed to raise one more of her parameters to SSS before she would be done with her limit breaking, and it would be her turn to receive congratulations. That could happen within a month or two or some after that. Regardless of the exact amount, it would happen soon enough.

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