CH7 (621), Anorith Fossil

As soon as the award ceremony was over I took my fossil and swiftly headed toward my cabin. Once I had locked the door, I directly entered Utopia with the rock in my arms before placing it on the ground when Utopia began to do its thing.

'Analyzing...., Intact Anorith Fossil analyzed; Start improving...., cannot be improved.

Fully Preserved Body detected..., Viable Anorith DNA discovered.

Analyzing...., Viability of restoration detected.

Request input…..'

I was quite happy that Utopia saw a possibility of restoring the fossil, and I naturally gave the go-ahead since I wanted to see if it could be done after all, or if it would fail.

'Positive input received.

Checking energy storage....., Energy storage capable of supporting activity.

Initiate restoration attempt….., Partial restoration achieved….., Body restored. Absence of Mind detected…., Absence of Soul detected.'

I saw the rock turn to dust and reveal the body of the Anorith. The Anorith's body looked pretty much the same as the "known" one, which was no surprise considering that the fully preserved fossil already showed that its body shape was exactly like this.

What was different though was that the coloring was a bit different compared to the Anorith I knew from canon. The greenish parts were sky blue instead and the grey parts had that dull greenish color instead. The rest of the colors remained unchanged, making the change apparent but not significant.

Nonetheless, while the body was "alive" just like Utopia had said, it was just lying there, without any visible indications that the body was actually alive. If not for the fact that my aura sense could detect life energy from the body, I would have thought it was a carcass. I was unable to sense any thoughts from the body, showing/proving the absence of a mind, and while I currently had no way to detect a soul, I did not doubt that Utopia's assessment regarding the absence of one was right as well.

No wonder it only called it a partial restoration. As things stood this was nothing more than a "meat bag". Without a mind and soul, I wouldn't even call this Anorith truly alive. I certainly hoped the process was not over, or this would end up as a failure.

'Repeat restoration attempt…..,

Re-checking energy storage....., Energy storage capable of supporting activity.

Analyzing...., Accessing Body Memory….., Supplying Mind Power…., Budding Mind constructed.'

I had honestly expected that the soul would be the first thing to be worked on, if something like that was even possible, but it seemed I was wrong. I felt Utopia drawing psychic energy not only from the ambient psionic energy but also from me, the Caterpie, Metapod, Magikarp, and Feebas. The latter species fostered a certain suspicion in me regarding the typing of the Anorith Utopia was restoring.

I and a lot of other people in my old life always had the assumption that the original Anorith line might have had the bug/water typing instead of the rock/bug typing. The rock typing was something all "fossil" Pokemon shared, and everyone used to suspect that the fossilization and subsequent restoration resulted in them adapting the rock type, either gaining a second typing or losing one of its original typings. This in essence made all "fossil" Pokemon rock variants instead of members of the "original"/baseline species.

Anyway, the movement of so much psionic energy across Utopia attracted the attention of most Utopians capable of naturally/manually utilizing said energy, and they all followed the traces to Anorith's/my side. Thankfully, Horus/Xatu, Gwen/Gardevoir, and even Mothra/Butterfree were sensible enough to know not to interrupt us. They silently watched what was happening instead. Their appearance aside, I could now feel a weak psyche inside the body in front of me, but there was still no movement aside from some ocassional twitch.

Regardless, I switched my focus to the restoration attempt when it resumed its operation.

'Re-checking energy storage....., energy storage capable of supporting activity.

Analyzing...., Accessing Body and Mind….., Supplying Astral Power….,'

From the corner of my eye, I saw Horus twitch when Utopia mentioned supplying astral energy, and even Hades/Gengar peeked out of my shadow, though they appeared to be the only ones who seemed to feel the energy being gathered across Utopia and then funneled into the Anorith body in front of me.

I felt something leaving me during the process and I assumed that was some of my astral energy, just as I was assuming that both ambient astral energy along with some drawn from the same species as before got used in the process. I knew that it was coming, but I could not help my awe when I read the success of the attempt.

While it might not seem like much, these few words were proof that Utopia had in fact initiated the formation of a soul. I reckoned that Utopia had used that astral energy to trigger a natural soul-formation process, sorta like how Pokemon inside eggs formed/developed their souls, but that did not change the fact that this happened under the initiative of Utopia.

At least that was my assumption on the whole thing since I honestly did not think the soul's creation was entirely due to Utopia's efforts. Still, pseudo-natural process or not, it was still an unbelievable affair, and I was incredibly happy that Utopia was isolated from the PokeVerse since the "manipulation" of souls was a rather thorny affair.

I would like to avoid attracting the kind of attention something like this would cause. Thankfully I was pretty sure that its existence would not cause any problems on that side even if Anortih left Utopia since I was certain that there were still "orignal" members of the species somewhere out there in the very wide world that we were living in.

Nonetheless, similar to the previous step, this one took a few minutes as well, and I saw Shedinja, as well as the few other ghost-type Utopians, arrive during this time, showing that they had felt the movement of astral enrgy as well. They stopped by the psychic group's side and joined them in watching the event.

'Nascent Soul constructed; Restoration complete.'

Once the process was over, there seemed to finally be some proper "life" in the Anorith. I mean, I saw its body start to fidget, indicating that Anorith was trying to control its body. I kept an eye on its movements while refocusing on the initiation process since Utopia seemed to have directly moved on to the next step now that Anorith had been successfully "restored".

'Analyzing...., Anorith analyzed.

Start improving potential...., Potential successfully improved.

Start optimizing genes..., Genes optimized, gene structure further stabilized.

Unlocking extra abilities...., Unlocking extra ability failed.

Unlocking talents...., Unlocking talents failed.

Re-checking energy storage....., Energy storage below 15%…., Drawing in additional energy.'

Hot d*mn. I had not expected the restoration to cost so much energy. Not even the doubling of Utopia's size had caused an energy storage warning, though now that I thought about it, that event might be the cause of why the warning got triggered by the restoration in the first place considering how it happened just a few hours ago. Nonetheless, at least there was still enough energy to complete the process.

'Generating tailored habitat...., Habitat successfully generated.

Add habitat to main space....., Main space successfully expanded.'

Anyway, I specified where I wanted the new place to be arranged and watched as a pond appeared not far from my position. The others all briefly turned in the direction of the pond when it appeared before looking back at the wiggling body at my feet.

Still, even though Anorith's habitat was close by, I chose to keep it right in front of me since I had yet to check Anorith's status sheet.

'Relocate Anorith to habitat..., Relocation aborted.

Energy storage at 6%.

Process finished.'

Once the whole process was over, I crouched down to look Anorith in the eyes. I could feel that it was slightly confused, which was understandable since it was practically a newborn in a grown body. My movement attracted Anorith's attention and when we came face to face, I was able to spot the same confusion I felt in its eyes.

I used my aura to radiate feelings of warmth, appreciation, fondness, and happiness to show Anorith that I meant no harm. The positive emotions helped settle the restlessness that had started to form, and when I rubbed the spot between its eyes Anorith released some happy chittering.

The others tried to come closer when that happened, but I raised my other hand to tell them to stop to give Anorith some more time to get used to me. While I kept scratching Anorith, I went ahead and took a look at its status sheet.

'Name: N/A

Species: Anorith

Gender: Male

Age: 0 (4+) years'

Well, it appears that Anorith was a male which would make things easier in the future as far as progeny were concerned. Nonetheless, admittedly the age section was a bit more interesting than his gender. I had a pretty good idea of why there were two age indicators, but the fact that two "ages" were being displayed was quite a novel experience.

The zero was clearly due to its "newborn" mind and soul, while the four was obviously due to the age of his physical body. Utopia had restored the body of the fossilized Anorith after all, and frankly, it was already a surprise that the "previous" Anorith had been as young as he had been before he ended up falling victim to that underground volcano.

'Type: Water, Bug

Potential: Deep Blue (60%)

(Genetic) Modifiers: None

Abilities: Swift Swim, Hydration

Talents: None

Affinities: Water, Bug'

Anorith's typing was a pleasant surprise, though I had kinda expected it after noticing from where, or rather whom the psionic energy was being drawn from. Still, it was interesting to see him having a different typing from the canon one, and as far as I was concerned, this was proof that bug/water was the species' "original" typing.

I had already looked through my mental library a long time ago to see what it had on fossil Pokemon but unfortunately, the "fossil" Pokemon had already become fossils when the first written notes were made. The only proper documents on them came from the first and second civilizations and in both cases the "resurrected" species had the rock typing just like in canon.

Most of the "hidden"/secluded living "fossil" Pokemon that humanity had an inkling of, were descendants of those specimens as well. I belived that there might be true members of the original line somewhere out there, the world was an extremely large place after all, but as far as I knew, none of the "fossil" Pokemon within or close to the human territories belonged to that kind, at least none of the documented ones.

Typing aside, Anorith's deep blue potential was another pleasant surprise since I had no idea what it was going to end up as. I only knew that Utopia had succesfully boosted his potential, which revealed that his "original" potential had been blue (0%). The fossil's high classification seemed to have been useful after all, though this was still pure speculation on my part.

What was just as interesting was that Anorith's second ability was not Battle Armor like that of its rock counterpart, but Hydration instead, which I definitely preferred due to the practicality of the ability. Seeing how both of Anorith's abilities benefited from Rain Dance, teaching Anorith that move in case he did not already know it definitely became a priority.

Anyway, after these pleasant discoveries, I moved on to the next part of his status sheet, which led me to a much less pleasant discovery.

'Bond: Mikail (artificial)

Quirks: Volcanophobia (subconscious/imprinted)'

It appeared that Anorith had somehow inherited a fear of volcano eruptions from its body in the process of being "resurrected". It might have been when Utopia accessed the body's memories during the restoration process, but regardless of when or how it happened, Anorith was now stuck with Volcanophobia. What I found rather intriguing was that my observation ability classified Volcanophobia as a quirk rather than a condition. Still, whether it was a quirk or a condition, it was something that I/we had to deal with even if I currently had no idea how. Maybe Eruption would be helpful, but any attempts would have to wait until we had a decent connection.

Another interesting development was that Anorith seemed to have either inherited the body's full strength before "his" demise or at least a large part of it since he was not starting out at either the stageless or iron stage, but directly at the bronze stage instead.

'Parameters:

Stage: Bronze Stage (Low)

Vitality: H

Strength: F

Endurance: G

Agility: F

Energy Capacity: H

Energy Density: G'

This was likely another result of restoring a complete/intact body, and I had to say the implications this could have for fossils of say an Aerodactyl or Armaldo that succumbed to similar circumstances were quite interesting, though I had to admit that I would have preferred Anorith to have started at the iron stage instead for the extra limit break that would have allowed.

The next few sections after that were like one would expect them to be, at least until the move section. The move section showed once more that Anorith had inherited some knowledge from his body since he had quite a few more moves on display than a "newborn" should have. Not to mention that some of them had higher levels of mastery which had to have come from the previous "iteration" of Anorith.

'Techniques:

-

Novice:

Aqua Jet, Iron Defense

-

Beginner:

Bug Bite, Metal Claw

-

Proficient:

Fury Cutter, Harden, Water Gun

-

Advanced:

None

-

Mastered:

None'

That also explained why Anorith was and still is a bit confused since the little guy had knowledge of moves without having the actual experience of using them or any personal memories for that matter.

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

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

This part is purely to display Anorith's status screen and the analysis/restoration process in one piece and does not count toward the word count.

'Analyzing...., Intact Anorith Fossil analyzed; Start improving...., cannot be improved.

Fully Preserved Body detected..., Viable Anorith DNA discovered.

Analyzing...., Viability of restoration detected.

Request input….., Positive input received.

Checking energy storage....., energy storage capable of supporting activity.

Initiate restoration attempt….., Partial restoration achieved….., Body restored. Absence of Mind detected…., Absence of Soul detected.

Repeat restoration attempt….., Re-checking energy storage....., Energy storage capable of supporting activity.

Analyzing...., Accessing Body Memory….., Supplying Mind Power…., Budding Mind constructed.

Re-checking energy storage....., Energy storage capable of supporting activity.

Analyzing...., Accessing Body and Mind….., Supplying Astral Power….,

Nascent Soul constructed; Restoration complete.

Analyzing...., Anorith analyzed.

Start improving potential...., Potential successfully improved.

Start optimizing genes..., Genes optimized, gene structure further stabilized.

Unlocking extra abilities...., Unlocking extra ability failed.

Unlocking talents...., Unlocking talents failed.

Re-checking energy storage....., Energy storage below 15%…., Drawing in additional energy.

Generating tailored habitat...., Habitat successfully generated.

Add habitat to main space....., Main space successfully expanded.

Relocate Anorith to habitat..., Relocation aborted.

Energy storage at 6%.

Process finished.'

———

'Name: N/A

Species: Anorith

Gender: Male

Age: 0 (4+) years

-

Type: Water, Bug

Potential: Deep Blue (60%)

(Genetic) Modifiers: None

Abilities: Swift Swim, Hydration

Talents: None

Affinities: Water, Bug

-

Bond: Mikail (artificial)

Quirks: Volcanophobia (subconscious/imprinted)

----

Parameters:

Stage: Bronze Stage (Low)

Vitality: H

Strength: F

Endurance: G

Agility: F

Energy Capacity: H

Energy Density: G

----

Resistance:

Water (Minor), Ice (Minor), Fighting (Minor), Ground (Minor), Steel (Minor)

-

Weaknesses:

Electric (Minor), Flying (Minor), Rock (Minor)

----

Condition: Healthy, Slightly Confused, Curious, Happy

----

Masteries:

Water Energy Manipulation (Beginner)

Bug Energy Manipulation (Beginner)

----

Techniques:

-

Novice:

Aqua Jet, Iron Defense

-

Beginner:

Bug Bite, Metal Claw

-

Proficient:

Fury Cutter, Harden, Water Gun

-

Advanced:

None

-

Mastered:

None'

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