CH14 (378), Investigating The Rumors (2)

Two and a half days later, I had examined more than half of the suspicious areas without coming across the target in any of them. There were still, 7 areas left to explore and I had until tomorrow night before I had to return to Pallet City, so more than enough to finish my search.

I was really hoping I would find my target, even if I had greatly enjoyed being outside on an exploration/investigation trip once more. That this was the first time that I was in the wild without checking in at home or any settlement for that matter was also a new experience.

All I could say on that matter was that Utopia ruled since I got to be out and still sleep in a comfy as well as safe bed by simply entering Utopia at night. Was I cheating with this? Definitely. Was it worth it? Absolutely.

Creating a camouflage tent, capable of withstanding Pokemon attacks to a certain extent in case it gets discovered despite the camouflage, was probably a really good business idea. One that could even save the lives of trainers in the wild, if the concealment and defensive capabilities were good enough.

I was pretty sure that there were already tents like this on the market, but I was doubly sure that better ones would always be welcome as well. It was definitely an idea worth considering since it could not only earn me money but might even help me gain some positive karma and reputation.

I made a mental note to look into the feasibility and difficulty of such a project to see if I could handle it on my own, or if I should rather collaborate with an existing company.

If I concluded that I could handle it on my own, I could ponder if it was possible to involve the future orphans in the productions, at least the older ones. That way, the kids and the orphanage would be able to earn some money on the side for the future through a cut of the profits.

Obviously, relying purely on them was impossible since I would make the offer entirely voluntary because I was trying to do something good for them. I was not planning to exploit or use them since helping them was my way of doing good.

Any positive karma I received, as a result, was a bonus. Nu-uh, it was definitely not the main goal. Yep, I was just preparing for the future. I meant I was just preparing them for the future. Yes, that was what I meant.

Self-hypnosis was the way I came up with to take care of the diminished positive karma yield my plans would no doubt cause. I was just doing good without any background thoughts. Once I really believed that the positive karma I gained would not be reduced due to me acting to gain positive karma, probably.

Anyway, back to the topic before I got derailed by my reflections on the future. We just made it to the next small stretch of "forest" that I was going to investigate, so I dismounted Enji/Arcanine before I thanked him for acting as my transport.

Then I proceeded to call out everyone at or above the silver stage, except for my water types. From my group of water types, only Abzu/Milotic and Tiamat/Milotic made an appearance. You know to see if they could sense or feel any water in their immediate surroundings.

Once everyone was out, I told them to spread out and to look for any water or Pokemon that looked like Tentacruel or Tentacool. My escort and I began speeding through the forest as well. A bit more than half an hour later I released a signal that called everyone over, and the result was disappointing.

There was a shallow pond, but it was pretty small, and there were no signs of any Tenta-line members anywhere, so I thanked everyone for their hard work before I recalled them except Enji, whom I asked to head to the next area.

We made it there in less than twenty minutes, and I once again released everyone at or above the silver stage. This forest was a bit bigger than the previous one, so I gave everyone a full hour to check the place. Sadly, the search ended up being a bust either way.

Instead of recalling everyone, I decided to have an early dinner since it was already 5 p.m by this point, so I began distributing everyone their food. I made sure to do the same for the one that stayed inside Utopia. I only recalled them after everyone was done eating.

Naturally, Enji stayed with me and we once more began heading toward the next location. This one was actually one of the bigger stretches of trees I had noted down, and I would even consider calling it a genuine forest, albeit a somewhat small one. By my estimates, the forest was somewhere between 7 to 8 acres or 28k to 32k m² big.

It was a bit further away from our current spot, roughly 400 or so kilometers according to my map, so it took Enji nearly 45 minutes to arrive at our destination. I dismounted and patted Enji on the head before I once again called out my search team.

Right now it was a quarter past six, and I was guessing that it would take us a few hours to go through the forest, so I decided to stop my exploration for the days once we were done with this one.

I would leave the last four for tomorrow, and considering that, I told everyone that they had until 8:30 p.m., or 2 hours and 15 minutes to check out their part of the forest before we would meet up back here.

I would naturally still release a signal for them, but nearly all of them had a pretty good internal clock, so I doubted that they would have a problem dividing their time accordingly.

Thor/Raichu and Enji once more stuck to my side, and we went out to look for any signs of water or our targets as well. Surprisingly, we came across a trail less than 5 minutes after entering the forest. Not only that, but I got multiple mental messages that the others had also found traces that resembles those we were looking for.

I was not sure if I should become hopeful or not since this was not the first time this happened and each time it was just a species whose "footprints" looked really similar to the ones we were looking for.

Still, I send a telepathic message to everyone, piggybacking our bond to do so, that informed them, that anyone that found something should head for me. After I did that, the three of us began following the tracks in front of us. It only took us 3 minutes to come across fresh tracks, and only a minute later we found the origin of the trails we had been following.

An Oddish was slowly edging backward while throwing nervous looks in our direction, especially Enji, who was looking at it curiously with a tilted head. I could not help but be a bit disappointed when I saw Oddish, but that went away when I had to chuckle at Oddish's reaction after Mothra/Butterfree suddenly appeared beside me.

Oddish jumped in fright, feet fidgeting in the air for a moment at the sudden arrival of a really big Butterfree. Not to mention her stage got revealed due to her arrival via teleportation. I felt a bit bad seeing how its nervousness turned to fear after it felt Mothra's strength, so I cranked my aura up and threw a few grass-type snacks over to it before informing it that we would be leaving it alone.

It gave the snacks a look, a sniff, and a lick before it ate them. After it did that though, it beat a hasty retreat, and I ignored it in favor of asking Mothra to take us to the tracks she had found.

However, before she teleported away, Gwen/Gardevoir appeared, and a few moments after her, Horus/Xatu also came/flew over. Still, I decided to go to Mothra's spot first, since she had been the first one to arrive. The other two simply tagged along, and all of us were teleported to our goal by Mothra.

She excitedly pointed out the tracks she had found and we began following them. It took us only three minutes to find the source and it turned out to be a Gloom.

Taking the number of tracks we had found, I was starting to think that there might be a big family or a small tribe of those in this forest, so all the traces might have been left behind by one of their members.

We ignored the Gloom and headed for the tracks found by Gwen next, but those brought us to two Oddish, so we moved on to the traces found by Horus.

After following those for a minute or two, a few more of the same "footprints" joined the tracks, making me think that we were possibly following another Oddish that had another one join it during its stroll through the forest.

However, the possibility of Tentacruel deciding to use more than just two tentacles to "walk" had us resume our tracking. Well, nearly 5 minutes later we found the source of the traces, and as I had expected they led us to some Oddish.

In fact, we managed to follow them to their home since there were more than just two Oddish. In front of us were 21 Oddish as well as 6 Gloom, and there was even a Vileplume in their midst. However, that was not the biggest surprise.

No, that honor belonged to the black Tentacruel or rather the Tentacruel lookalike since there were some distinct visual differences that I could see, aside from just the color when compared to a regular one.

Besides, the Tentacruel lookalike was not alone since there was also a Tentacool variant I guess. This one only seemed to have a different color but looked like a regular Tentacool otherwise, at least from what I could see.

That reinforced the probability of the other one being just a variant with a rather striking visual difference due to its variation just like some of my Gyarados with their eastern dragon horns, rather than me stumbling upon a new species that just looked like another one.

No matter which one it was, there was no doubt that I had found the target of my investigation/exploration trip, and there was even a bonus variant.

Well, the question was how to go about the whole thing. The Tenta-members seemed to be part of the same group as the Vileplume's party, so there was no way they wouldn't interfere if I tried something with the variant duo, and seeing the tension of every Pokemon on the other side after they saw us, it was obvious that they were ready to fight.

They were even releasing their aura for intimidation purposes, and I had to say that their strength was not bad at all. The Vileplume was quite strong for a random Pokemon in this part of the region. It was at the (mid) gold stage, while the Tentacruel variant(?) was even stronger than that.

The aura the variant released actually showed that it had reached the dark gold stage, but thankfully it was only at the (low) substage. We could still deal with that, had it been stronger, we probably would have had to retreat.

Well, I would have asked Mothra and Horus to gang up on it if it had been at the (mid) dark gold stage, but anything higher than that, and I would have signaled a temporary strategic retreat.

Thankfully, that was not the case, and "all" we had to face was a (low) dark gold stage Tentacruel variant, a (mid) gold stage Vileplume, and 5 silver stage Gloom. The rest was too weak to make a real difference during the battle, especially since more and more of my Pokemon were arriving at our position.

Surprisingly, our side was not the only one that was swelling since I saw two more Oddish joining their side, along with another silver stage Gloom.

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