CH82 (604), Rangers (4)

The rest of the week after Abzu/Milotic's breakthrough went less nicely for me since 1 out of the 5 elders that were still on this week's list went missing as well, one was only feigning compliance but was not planning to keep its word, and the other 3, of which one had a small family, declined my offer.

Honestly, it was the one feigning compliance that took me a bit off guard since I had not expected something like this from a Jigglypuff of all things. I guess its cute appearance blinded me a bit, and to think I even offered it a Moon Stone so that it could evolve after being rejuvenated. Yet, Jigglypuff planned to lull me to sleep after enjoying the rejuvenation treatment and then take off to avoid any responsibilities.

The sad part was that Jigglypuff could/would probably have gotten away with it if not for two things. The first one was a basic fact. Utopia was a separate space, so there was no getting out unless I allowed it once someone came inside. Well, I did not want to talk in absolutes, so I guess it was better to say that brute forcing one's way OUT was not entirely impossible, but I honestly believed that it would take at least a creation member for that or someone close to that level, and even then it was out of Utopia and not inside. I was not willing to budge on the last bit due to Utopia's origins.

Anyway, the second issue, and the one that caused her plan to fail from the start, happened to be a matter of luck. While Jigglypuff agreed to my offer, I did not feel any negative emotions from her, just some playfulness, which was more of a neutral or even "positive" feeling, and if I had ignored that, Jigglypuff would have at least been able to enter Utopia.

Instead, I felt curious why she felt playful when she should have been thrilled, so I dug a bit deeper. Once I focused more on her emotions, I felt some naughtiness and smugness, which had me taking a peek into her mind. That was when I learned about her plan, which resulted in me retracting my offer, and since she had no plans to hurt/attack any of us in her scheme, I decided to simply let her be.

Well, as I said, the recruitment failed, leaving me with only 11 more targets at the start of the third "proper" week. 6 of those were on our patrol route for the third week, and I got to meet the first one an hour after lunchtime on Arcday. Luckily enough, the old Farfetch'd agreed without me having to say all that much once he heard that I would give him a super high-class leek, and he was genuine about it too.

Maybe it was because of the good start, but the second "oldie" actually ended up agreeing too, even if Lombre asked for some assurance first. I chose to use the fastest method and swore on my aura while radiating said aura that what I said was true. Vows like this were taken seriously here, so Lombre accepted my vow and I transferred him inside Utopia where he underwent the standard optimization.

Following that my Earth Clone handed the rejuvenated Lombre a Water Stone so that he could evolve since that was part of the deal I offered him. It turned out that he knew Farfetch'd, and the two were quite happy to see one another. Our patrol area/route on Giratiday had no one on my list, so there was nothing much to say about that day since nothing interesting happened. At the end of the day, I simply hoped that the rest of my recruitment attempts would follow the previous two examples.

Unfortunately, my wish fell through since I had no such luck on both Palkiday and Dialday. Heck, I did not even get to present my offer since both elders were nowhere to be found, though I was pretty sure that the Venomoth had fallen victim to an attack due to the battle traces we found around his nest. Honestly, nature did not seem to be kind to these old Pokemon.

The final two elders on my list for this week lived together, and both ended up accepting the offer I made them on Kyoday. I only had to persuade one of them and the spouse followed along. I was quite happy to get a pair of (mid) gold Roselia, though Ranger Elisabeth approached me after I took that pair away. She shared that she was starting to become a bit worried because she was doubtful about my ability to take care of as many Pokemon as I seemed to be intent on bringing away.

It was obvious that she had no idea about my available resources, namely Utopia or the mystery island as the higher-ups believed Utopia to be, so I simply pointed out that I was a junior professor and that I had the permission as well as the resources to take care of any of the Pokmeon I recruited. She seemed satisfied with that and admitted that she had forgotten that I was a junior professor. Whether that was truly the case, or if she had simply not known about it for one reason or another was not important as long as she did not try to stop me from going through my list.

Sadly, Grouday was another day without anyone on my list being in our patrol area, but unlike Grouday, the Arcday patrol route did have an elderly that I wanted to recruit. The new week was the final one for this month, and on Grouday the new/14th month would begin. Since we would be moving on to another stretch starting next month, this week became the last time I would be in this area/stretch of the wild.

By the end of the week, only one of the 5 targets/elders on my list agreed to join me. Of the other four, the family guy did not want to leave without his family, but their number exceeded the limit set by Elisabeth, so I had to leave them behind. Aside from him, one of the elders was once again gone, and the other two directly declined my offer, so I ended up empty-handed.

I had to admit, that this was not a nice way to tie up the first half of my ranger phase, but I ultimately managed to recruit 5 (mid) to (high) gold stage Pokmeon to act as guardians of my Pokemon reserve, and that was 5 golden Pokemon more than before, so I decided to simply be grateful for what I got, and close the matter.

Anyway, as soon as the sun rose on Arcday morning, we returned to Rose City. As usual, we would spend a week here before leaving for our patrol, though I had no idea where our new patrol area was. After a full 4 weeks out of Utopia, I made my way inside as soon as I could, and I had no plans to leave before the week was up. Everyone was happy to see me, and I made sure to give Abzu/Milotic a hug to congratulate him on his breakthrough in "person".

I made sure to supervise everyone's training after that until lunch, and we immediately resumed training afterward. I had made sure to check out everyone yesterday during our Grouday routine using my Earth Clone, but there was just something different about seeing where they stood with my own eyes.

After the second training session, I put on an earth doll battle performance for everyone, before we proceeded to simply hang out and talk until dinner. Once we had eaten, I opened a little "portal" to the outside/Terra so that I could access the internet, and we watched some videos, including a few by Jessie and Rose.

Mewday followed a similar pattern, starting with breakfast, followed by training, food, some more training, some entertainment, and spending two hours just hanging out. We ended the day with dinner, and some more relaxing. Giratiday started the same, but things changed when Hypno visited us during lunch, and it became quickly apparent why.

Hypno actually managed to advance to the (high) silver stage and came to share his happiness with us since he had quite a few friends among my Pokemon. Everyone, including myself, congratulated him and while Hades was the first to request that we throw a party for Hypno, he was not the only one. I did not need more than that and directly pulled out our party stuff. The celebration went on for around two and a half hours, and the period after that until dinner was spent training to make up for the second session we were supposed to hold after lunch.

The next few days went by in the same vein as the previous ones, and before I knew it, it was already Grouday. As usual, we began our check-up routine right after breakfast, and nothing out of the ordinary came up until Po/Pangoro's turn. My panda warrior had managed to complete his limit-breaking phase, which I was more than happy to share with him and the others, though he still had to wait for me to finish the session before we could leave for his place.

Nonetheless, I eventually completed all checkups, and unfortunately, no further good news appeared, but that was fine. With the session over, I announced Po's upcoming breakthrough over UtopiaFM, before we made our way to his place. Once we made it there, we waited for the Utopians interested in witnessing the event, and after the last one had arrived, Fortuna/Togekiss and I proceeded with the pre-breakthrough tradition.

We then joined the others and I gave Po the go-ahead that had him initiate his breakthrough. No one was surprised when some energy got drawn to Po and he started to light up since he was expected to attain aurora potential during this breakthrough. According to our experience, each one of the advancements of this kind has been accompanied by some light and energy influx.

Nonetheless, it did not take long for the brightness to exceed my expectations by a bit, causing some excitement among the audience. Yet, the difference was not enough for me to be absolutely certain that something more was going on. That uncertainty increased when the breakthrough began to end, and (mid) gold undulations started to spread, though any uncertainty completely vanished once Po became properly visible once more.

There was no room for doubt, not when I could see him sporting a new color. Obviously, I was not the only one to notice the change, and there was quite some excitement going around. Still, the color change was not what one would expect from the shiny gene since Po was not brown, but black like a real panda, unlike his previous dark grey. Whatever he had unlocked, it was not the shiny gene, at least not the regular one. This might have been an alternate one or even a superior version, but it was also possible that he had unlocked another unrelated gene.

Regardless, I made my way to his side and started to notice a few more small details, though one stood out nearly immediately once I stopped focusing on the change of his fur/pelt. No idea how I did not notice it before, but I could actually see his eyes. Previously it was extremely hard to notice/see his eyes due to the black rings around his eyes which matched his eye color, but now his eyes/pupils seemed to have turned green, so one could actually see them, and I had to say that I liked the color.

Anyway, the last change/detail I noticed once I was nearly at his side, was that Po's claws/nails were no longer black, but white. It was a minor detail, but still something that had changed. Once I stood in front of Po, he stopped checking out his changes and gave me a happy smile before laughing happily. I joined his laughter and hugged him before congratulating him on reaching the gold stage.

I also congratulated him on his change, and I made sure to compliment his new look. I told him that he looked great, and the others, who had joined us at this point, agreed with me. While they were showering Po with congratulations as well as compliments, I went ahead and took a look at his new/updated status sheet.

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