CH85 (449), Lull (1)

The next morning I made my way back to Pallet City to visit the lab as I had agreed upon before leaving for the exams.

"Mikail, good to see you," James greeted me as soon as I stepped into our lab room. "Good morning, James. How's it going?" I returned and he gave me a knowing look before he answered.

"Can't complain. Your folks are nearly done, at least from what they told me, and the Leafeon side is also looking promising. In fact, after considering the current progress of our project, I've spoken with the Professor about the next phase of our Eevee project, and we are currently debating what kind of Eeveelution we should be aiming for.

We've narrowed it down to the ground, rock, poison, and steel types, but have yet to choose which one to focus on since the professor wants us to stick to a single topic this time around," James shared and I was doubly happy.

Not only were Carl and Sibel close to finishing up the Arctic Heart project, but James just shared the future direction of our Eevee project with me, and he even told me about the content of their discussion. If that was not an underhanded question regarding my opinion then I did not know what was.

"Well, personally, I'd go with the steel Eeveelution since I find that one to be the most interesting option among the four you listed, with poison coming second," I decided to share my opinion and he just hummed in return before giving me a nod but did not comment further on the topic, so I did not add anything else.

Personally, I thought that researching a possible normal-type Eeveelution would be pretty interesting as well, but that remained unsaid. "Alright, I'll just go over to greet Carl and Sibel," I said instead and James returned a "you do that" with a nod.

"Yo," I greeted the two after walking over to our group's work desk. They looked over and gave me a smile when they saw that it was me. "How's it going?" I asked them despite what James told me.

"Great," Sibel said cheerfully, and Carl nodded in agreement. "We're nearly done. Currently, we've managed to raise the Arctic Heart output to 93 out of 100, and I'm hoping we'll manage to raise that to the 95 out of 100 we've been aiming for within another week or two," he elaborated and I gave them a thumbs up.

It seemed like the two really managed to nearly finish our project, which was definitely good news. "That's great," I praised wholeheartedly since I was genuinely happy that we would be closing the Arctic Heart chapter soon, even if I would be on my break when it happened.

"Yes," Carl returned before he looked at Sibel. My expert senses told me that there was definitely something going on with these two. These gaze exchanges and the times I saw/caught them holding hands, but I ignored the gossipy thoughts and listened to Sibel who spoke up.

"We'll be transferred to the Leafeon project as well once we are done with the Arctic Heart, and James told us that our job would be to simply assist the other groups with their ideas as well as group projects," she shared and I could not say that I was surprised to hear that.

I had already expected something along those lines, seeing how the case of the other groups of our Glaceon project went. Besides, it was not as if there was much else they could do other than assist the other groups. Anyway, we talked a bit more about how they were, and they told me they were actually planning to apply for a month of vacation once they managed to finish the Arctic Heart.

Nonetheless, they were going to be back here when I came back from my own break so I simply wished them a nice future vacation before saying my goodbyes to them. I also gave a parting goodbye to James before I returned to Hope Town. The next time I was going to come back to the lab would be after 3 months when my break was over.

Unless they somehow managed to finish the Leafeon project as well and began working on the new Eeveelution. In that case, they would call me over for a day since I managed to get James to agree that I should be participating in the first day of the "new" project even if I was still on vacation.

However, that depended on whether they managed to finish the current project or not, so the whole thing was out of my hands. What I could do was enjoy the free time I had on my hands, so that was what I did. I spent the rest of the day chilling with my parents and the whole of Grouday just training as well as hanging out with my Pokemon.

They actually asked for one of our grooming/massage sessions and I agreed, fully knowing that it would take me two to three weeks to go through all of them, even after allocating 3 to 4 hours to it each day. Still, it was something that all of my Pokemon really enjoyed, and I was happy that they were happy, which was why I agreed.

In fact, my parents chose to join me. Well, I was saying join, but they simply decided to also do a grooming session at the same time as I was, so that we could share the period with each other even if we were all doing our own thing with our own Pokemon.

Still, all three of us were out in our backyard at the same time, doing the same, or at least similar things, so it could be counted as a group activity I guess. However, considering the difference in the number of Pokemon we had, they would be done way before me.

Regardless, it was a fun thing to do after breakfast, and aside from the grooming we spent an hour or two relaxing with our Pokemon before we did our own things until dinner. Dinner was followed by another two or three hours of hanging out together before I retreated to my room and did whatever I wanted to do.

That could range from checking up on my Pokemon and hanging out or training with them to working/crafting/cooking around my Utopia house, or simply keeping an eye on my Rattata project. Heck, on Giratiday, I simply spent the two hours meditating, just circulating my aura as well as psychic energy.

Anyway, around lunch on Palkiday, I received a message from the foreman of the construction company that they sent out the cost estimate as well as the project plan I wanted, and a look into my emails confirmed that he was right.

I opened the document they sent over and was confronted with over 80 pages in a rather small font. It had literally everything I could think of, the material listing, number estimates, cost estimates, workload estimates, timetables, and so on, all based on the map and plans I gave them.

I was once more thankful for my superior mental capabilities which allowed me to read, understand, assess, cross-examine, ponder, and confirm the fairness of the whole thing within less than an hour.

The prices were a bit high, but considering the size of the property and the size of the project along with all the stuff involved, a cost estimate of 3.5 to 4 million for the plot transformation and 1.5 to 2 million for the two/three buildings seemed okay.

From the cross-references, I made according to the numbers I read inside the document, the price was pretty fair and made sense. I even decided to add a 250k extra budget so that they only had to call me for confirmation once they exceeded that budget.

I did, however, chose to add a stipulation that I wanted to see what the extra budget was used on at the end of the project, but that was just a minor last-minute insurance move on my part because I did mostly trust the company to not try to rip me off.

Anyway, according to the document, the company estimated the project to take somewhere between 35 to 40 months, so everything should be done by the start of my third year at the lab. Once I confirmed that I got everything right and that my reply was on point, I sent them a go-ahead message.

After that, I made the downpayment of 2 million Poke for the construction, and with that, I could in good conscience forget about the whole thing for the next 20 or so months.

The rest of the day, I went back to my previous flow, and that went on until Mewday of the third week. That day provided a little extra excitement when I saw, during his grooming/massage session, that little Bruce/Zubat had finished his first round of limit-breaking.

The little tyke was quite happy when he heard that and Moka/Crobat was quite proud of him as well. Even little Eggy seemed happy for little Bruce, and the news just seemed to fire up Eggy, so I was quite happy overall. As I said I stuck to the flow until Dialday when I decided to add a change to my current routine.

It had been nearly 12 months since Mars/Ursasol had evolved and I had decided to check on my Sunlight Bellflower "experiment", so I chose to once again check up on the 4 seeds I had planted in the special area I had created in the material subspace.

The last time I checked up on their status was a month ago. All 4 Bellflowers had germinated so far, but their growth was much slower than I was used to from plants like flowers. During my last check, the flowers had only reached less than half their documented regular/mature size, and after I checked up on them this time, they had only grown by a centimeter or so.

Anyway, it was on Giratiday of week four that I finally finished the groomings/massages for all my Pokemon, and it was just in time too. Otherwise, I would have had to take a break on Palkiday, since that was Rose's 14th birthday, and we obviously went to Orchid City to take part in her birthday celebration.

It honestly was a fun day. I got to see Rose, and a few of my other friends that Rose had become good friends with as well, such as Weiss, Jessica, Ace, and even Kinji. She liked my birthday present, which was a given since no prospective trainer, regardless of whether it was a battling or performing one, would dislike a batch of handcrafted quality Pokeballs.

Though I had to admit, that the best gift probably came from Kinji. Yeah, my man Kinji really blew all of our gifts away, and if Uncle Thorn and Aunt Lily had not gotten to know Kinji quite well by now, there would have been no way in hell they would have allowed Rose to accept Kinji's present.

Anyway, what he gave Rose was a picture of a bunch of Joltik, along with a promise to take her to their playground to spend a day there once she finished at least the first half of her practical year. The promise included helping her bring back home the Joltik she connected the best with during the day at their playground.

I mean, Galvantula had a pretty decent typing and was a rather strong Pokemon. Not to mention it being one of the better bug types. Moreover, Joltik was super cute, and even Galvantula looked somewhat cute, and we all knew that cuteness was justice, so yeah, Kinji definitely gave her the most impressive gift, even if it was not an immediate one.

I actually had an idea where the playground he mentioned was since he once shared the location with me. However, I already had so many Pokemon that I decided to leave the little Joltik be for now. Anyway, the takeaway was that she had fun, our parents had fun, and I had fun, so it was a good change of pace for everyone.

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