CH144 (758), Project Starto

The days after Thor/Raichu's blessed affairs went by rather calmly with no further surprises coming from Utopia or on the road. The occasional wild as well as trainer battles aside, we continued our leisure walk and we managed to make it to Oplain City by lunch on Dialday. Oplain City had a Minor Grass-based Gym, and by beating the Gym Leader Chari Narkul I would earn my third B-rank Badge, and my 6th Gym Badge overall. As usual, when I did not arrive at a city at night, the first thing I did after making it there was to visit the Gym to register for a Gym Battle, and I managed to register for one in 5 days on Giratiday.

I had once again gone with the 3-star challenge, and this time I made the decision to go into the Gym Challenge blind, without doing any research aside from knowing that the Gym was one specializing in grass-type Pokemon. The previous two Minor Gym Challenges were the reason I made this decision, and unless I ended up losing the challenge I would probably stick with this decision for the rest of my Hoenn Gym Circuit. Something the receptionist had shared during the registration was that I would be facing 3 Gym Trainers using 3 Pokemon each before I would face Gym Leader Narkul in a 4-vs-4 battle, but that did not change my plans to go into the battles without looking up anything.

Taking possible variables into account, I gave Optimus/Butterfree, Prime/Beedrill, Kun/Azuraid, Ali/Gallade, Saphira/Altaria, Hades/Gengar, and Gwen/Gardevoir a heads-up that they might get a turn during the Gym Challenge on Giratiday, which had them rather enthused and motivated. Even without knowing the exact strength of the Pokemon we would be facing or their species for that matter, I was sure that this line-up would be able to earn me the Gym Badge one way or the other, especially since more than half of them had an advantage over the Gym Pokemon since we knew that they had to have the grass typing.

Anyway, after leaving the Gym, I found a quiet spot to enter Utopia for lunch with my Pokemon. After a nice meal, I once again left Utopia and strolled around the city with Mothra/Butterfree lazing on my head in her chibi form. The reason we were alone was a bit funny. Seeing how the others began to train in preparation for the upcoming Gym Challenge, Hades had appeared eager to join in as well, so I told him that he should stay inside Utopia and train since Mothra was more than enough in case of an emergency, which had my girl proudly puff out her chest; She then told Hades to leave me to her. Hades did the smart thing and just nodded his head and I could just imagine the sweatdrops running down his back as well as the side of his (fore)head.

Either way, we strolled around Oplain City until dinner time, which we ate inside Utopia with the rest, even though we did visit a few inviting-looking restaurants during our stroll. A few meals were no problem for me after all, and Mothra had a pretty great capacity as well, even if she stayed in her chibi form, so eating dinner with the others was no problem for her either. The rest of the evening was spent inside Utopia, and I only left my space after the morning training session the next day. Kyoday and Grouday were spent just like that, with half a day spent strolling around the city with Mothra, while the mornings and evenings were spent inside Utopia with my Pokemon.

Arcday not only started off the second week of the month but more important than that was that the latest batch of Pinkan Berries ripened that morning, which brought the number of grown/harvested berries to a number that sufficed for the first round of the Pinkan project. So, after having breakfast with everyone, I left them to their devices and moved to my berry workroom first since the first step required me to handle the berries, which could get rather messy. I spent the next 7 hours peeling all stored Pinkan Berries, only taking a break during lunch time, 4 hours into my peeling session.

In fact, I was not the only one who was peeling berries, half an hour into the peeling, I called over Luna/Clefable, Tatsumaki/Alakazam, and Gaia/Nidoqueen to help me. Tatsumaki and I even used our psychic abilities to speed things up, and it still took us 6ish hours to go through the whole stock, which was a testament to how many Pinkan berries I had stocked up on.

Anyway, once I was done with the peeling, I separated the peels into two piles and the flesh into three piles since I had different plans for each of the piles. One of the peel piles was going to be processed/dried into a chip-like snack, while the other pile was going to be turned into leaf candy/candy stripes. The Pinkan project participants were going to be eating these as snacks between meals whenever they felt peckish or simply wanted a snack.

Meanwhile, the pulp was going to be used to prepare the meals the participants were going to eat. One pile had its juice squeezed out and stored separately to use as drinks, while the leftover pulp would be used to make kibble. The second pile of pulp was transferred to one of my labs, where they were processed and turned into a concentrate that was then used together with the third pile of pulp to prepare a bunch of pre-selected meals that all Pinkan project participants would eat for the foreseeable future.

I was not worried about the meals spoiling since they were stored in the mansion's inventory which would keep them fresh nearly indefinitely; Not that they would stay there anywhere that long since I was expecting the participants to go through all meals within 2 months, at which point I should have harvested enough berries for a second cooking session. Doing all of this took me and the girls the rest of Arcday and the entirety of Mewday, but by the end of Mewday, I had put away the last meal. Hence, the actual first feeding session was during breakfast on Giratiday; Since the Gym battle was slated for 1 p.m., I did not have to skip or hurry through breakfast, which allowed me to observe the Pinkan project participants during their new Pinkan meal, though I use my earth clone for that. My actual body took over after breakfast and observed them for an additional two hours.

I knew that the change was a somewhat gradual process that required a constant consumption of Pinkan berries to become permanent even after the whole body had turned pink, so I did not expect the project participants to immediately turn pink, whether that was the pink of the berries, which was the same for everyone, or their shiny pink/color, which differed from species to species. Still, after the first hour, I noted that they had started to show very small areas on their bodies that had turned pink. For now, the change was so minuscule that I might have missed it if I was not actually looking for any pink changes, but they had only eaten a Pinkan breakfast for now. I was expecting some additional changes as they snacked and ate lunch as well as dinner.

Still, I made sure to record the changes for each Pokemon; I noted down which Pokemon ate how much and which spot(s) turned pink after how long. I did this to get an idea of the effect the meals/snacks had on the different species and if there was a difference in the transition speed between the members of the species. Just for this, I had spent hours before the start of the project to measure every participant's size and weight so that I could use the data in the comparison to see if they had an impact or not. I honestly expected size to be a factor since a larger size usually meant more area to cover, but I was interested to see if a higher or lower weight would have an impact as well.

Anyway, after noting down everything, I let my third thought stream keep an eye on the Pinkan group so that I could note who ate how many Pinkan snacks, while my Earth Clone continued to hang out with my Pokemon. Meanwhile, I left Utopia and slowly made my way toward the Gym. There were still 35 minutes until 1 p.m., and even after my unhurried walk I still had 3 minutes until 12.45 p.m. Hence, I kept my word to the receptionist and arrived 15 minutes early. Shortly after I informed the reception of my arrival, I was led to the waiting room, where I proceeded to wait until I got called up.

Once I stood across the first Gym Trainer I decided to go with Kun as my opening Pokemon and my flying fish Pokemon managed to beat Vasily's (mid) gold stage Parasect with relative ease. It took quite a bit more effort for Kun to beat the (mid) gold Shiftry Vasily sent out next, and he barely managed to take down the (high) gold Tangrowth Vasily sent out as his final Pokemon before running out of juice himself. I was a bit surprised to see that the Gym Trainers used stronger Pokemon than the ones from the Drafthill Gym, but it gave my Pokemon a better workout so I was all for it.

I opened up the battle against the second Gym Trainer with Saphira and my fluff cloud dragon Pokemon managed to beat her fellow fluff Pokemon Jumpluff rather handily. A Pokemon that could get affected by strong weather conditions like that one was a pretty bad match-up against Saphira, who could control the weather at will. Natasha's second Pokemon was at the (mid) gold stage as well, and while her Vileplume did hold out quite a bit longer than her Jumpluff, Saphira's Safeguard messed up their plan to poison her. Hence, they failed to beat or drag down Saphira as Natasha had probably hoped to do. The (high) gold Pumpkaboo that Natasha sent out as her final Pokemon succeeded where her Vileplume failed, it dragged Saphira down along with itself, though that did not change the fact that Saphira swept through Natasha's team even if she got knocked out by an Explosion at the end.

I led the final battle of the challenge phase with Gwen, and she had no real problem beating the Pokemon sent out by Dominik. Dominik tried to trip Gwen up after she swiftly dealt with his Victreebel by sending out a Cacturne next, but Gwen took it down using Teleport and Moonblast as well as Dazzling Gleam. The (high) gold Ferrothorn he sent out at the end held out longer than his previous two Pokemon, but Gwen eventually wore it down, and she was still looking good at the end of it, even though Ferrothorn went out with a bang probably with the hope to follow Pumpkaboo's example.

Either way, I won the battle, which earned me the chance to face Gym Leader Chari Narkul. I decided to send out Optimus first, and if Chari somehow managed to take him down, I would follow up with Prime. Optimus' first opponent ended up being a (low) dark gold Ferrothorn, which proved to be a pretty strong opponent for Optimus thanks to its typing and strength. Optimus' powder moves as well as poison were of no help against Ferrothorn; Flying and bug moves dealt only decent damage, and Optimus had to avoid physical moves due to Ferrothorn's Iron Barbs. Still, despite everything, Optimus managed to beat Ferrothorn, even if their battle took over ten minutes to conclude, and thanks to our vigilance he managed to avoid most of the damage Ferrothorn's attempt to stick it to us by going out in an Explosion could have caused.

Still, Optimus did exert a lot of effort to beat Ferrothorn, and even if he avoided that last attack, he did suffer a certain amount of damage during the battle, so I was worried that he would end up losing against Chari's second Pokemon. Yet, I ended up being surprised when Chari sent out a (high) gold Bellossom instead of the (low) dark gold Pokemon I was expecting. Still, I knew better than to underestimate the little Bellossom since I had seen what these tiny bundles of joy could do, so Optimus went all out from the get-go. Thanks to that, Optimus managed to bag another victory before I deemed him too exhausted to battle, which was why I forfeited him once the referee declared Belossom unable to battle.

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