CH132 (746), Time To Leave

The Treecko trio came back less than 10 minutes later and first thanked the elder, who had been silently waiting for their return beside us as a representative of their tribe for everything, before the Treecko trio declared that they were ready; Following this, I moved them to Utopia, where they began to undergo the analysis/optimization process as soon as they appeared at my place. I had my earth clone welcome them to introduce them to the wonder of Utopia once the process was over and they were done gawking at Treecko, though I could understand their reaction. It was not every day that one saw someone suddenly grow to nearly triple their height, and even Treecko himself was staring at his body in disbelief. 

I knew that it was one of the males since the now large Treecko was not Shiny, which automatically excluded the female. Still, it took me a moment to realize that it was the Treecko with the dragon affinity and not the one with the ability mutation that ended up unlocking either the Alpha or the Giant gene; Actually, considering that Treecko was from what I could see "only" around somewhere between 165 and 170 cm tall, it was more likely for it to be the Alpha gene since 2.8 times the typical height was usually within that genes range. That suspicion grew stronger when Treccko told the other two to pipe down a bit and they followed suit without a complaint or any hesitation since it hinted at the Natural Leader talent that usually came with the Alpha gene.

I, or rather my second thought stream in control of the Earth Clone, watched all that happened and after the suspected new Alpha asked me what was going on, I began to tell them about Utopia and what just happened. As one would expect, all three were in awe of what they had just learned, and it took them just a few moments after I was done with my explanation to remember that I told them that I had ways to track their condition/status; They directly asked me to check them out, eager to get more details on the change they underwent.

It was at that moment that I recalled that I had yet to capture the trio, but I still went ahead and observed them first after seeing their excited looks.

'Species: Treecko

Gender: Male

Type: Grass

Potential: Light Purple*

Stage: Iron-stage (High)

(Genetic) Modifiers: Alpha*

Abilities: Overgrow, Unburden

Talents: Natural Leader*

Affinities: Grass, Dragon'

I had correctly guessed that it was the Treecko with a dragon affinity that unlocked the modifier, and I had similarly correctly deduced that the modifier he unlocked was the Alpha one. I saw no need to check the description of either the Alpha gene or the Natural Leader talent since I knew what both of them did. Still, the 35% bonus was definitely welcome and quite a bit more appreciated than the size increase that took place due to the new modifier.

Nonetheless, those verifications aside, Treecko's light purple potential meant that I was definitely going to recheck his status screen once he had been captured because I was quite curious what the percentage behind that potential was. It had to be at 60% at least since Treecko used to have deep blue potential and modifiers unlocked during the optimization process had no (potential) cost. I was hoping that it was as close to purple as possible. Either way, Treecko had secured his place in the reserve team with a good chance to advance to the main team, or more like one of the main teams considering how crowded the main team was getting.

I was starting to feel that the main team's steadily rising numbers were beginning to warrant a further distinction. Yet, there was a part of me that was against splitting the main team into groups since I had a feeling that everyone, myself included, would see one of the groups as the new main team and all the other groups as new reserve or alternate groups that were ranked below the main team. I guess I could avoid that by setting the distinctions in such a way that Pokemon could be part of multiple groups to show that the groups were equal, but it felt like I was just making everything too complicated.

'sigh' It was better to focus back on the matter at hand since I was starting to get a headache by pondering over the main team issue. It was much more preferable to just take a look at the other two status sheets.

'Species: Treecko

Gender: Female

Type: Grass

Potential: Light Purple*

Stage: Bronze-stage (Low)

(Genetic) Modifiers: Shiny

Abilities: Overgrow, Unburden

Talents: None

Affinities: Grass'

The female definitely deserved a spot on the reserve team as well. While her potential was the only part that changed, at least as far as I could see, I was very happy that it had risen from blue to light purple. Combined with her Shiny modifier that more than made up for her being at the (low) bronze stage. Actually, her being at that level meant that she was pretty much ready for her evolution, having met the optimal evolution point even if it was under not-so-optimal circumstances. Still, ready or not, I was forced to let her wait, simply because I had to prepare the proper evolution supplements first.

There was just no way that I would accept Treecko missing out on the bonus she could get during her evolution. That was one of the undisputable advantages two-stage evolution Pokemon had over Pokemon with a single or no evolution after all. Moving on, the ability-mutated male also only had his potential raised, and in his case, his potential ended up as deep blue, which made me look forward to seeing his status sheet after his capture as well since I wanted to know how much he was missing for the next step. Hopefully, the missing percentage was low enough that I could confidently say that his first evolution could close the gap.

'Species: Treecko

Gender: Male

Type: Grass

Potential: Deep Blue*

Stage: Iron-stage (High)

(Genetic) Modifiers: Ability-Mutation

Abilities: Overgrow, Unburdened

Talents: None

Affinities: Grass'

I shared what I learned with the trio and they seemed pretty happy; I gave them a few moments before I brought out three ForestBalls, grabbing their attention, and their eyes flickered in realization when they saw the 3 Pokeballs. After they told me to go ahead, I captured the three Treecko before releasing them again as soon as the process was complete. I then stored their balls away beside the other balls belonging to those of the reserve after placing a few stickers for distinction's sake on them. Following that, I rechecked their now-expanded status sheets, and I was rather happy with what I saw.

The Alpha Treecko's potential was at 89.56%, which guaranteed that it would rise to purple during his evolution. As for the other male with deep blue potential, his percentage was even higher. In fact, I speculated that I might even be able to fill in the gap the regular way before he was ready to evolve. Considering his parameters, I estimated that it would take him somewhere around 20 to 24 months to complete the first round of his limit-breaking and thus qualify for his evolution unless he battled every day to speed up that process. Still, there was a good chance that we might be able to wrap up the missing 2.1% within that timeframe using just the regular supplements I provided my Pokemon before and after their training.

Anyway, after that tidbit of good news, my Earth clone led the Treecko to their new place. While this was happening inside Utopia, I (main/real body) talked to the elder. I had to admit that I was interested in checking out the giant tree not far from us, but unfortunately, the elder indicated that it was time for us to leave. When I tried to be direct and mention my hopes of directly admiring the tree in question, the elder refused clearly and without any hesitation. He made it clear that there was no chance for me to get closer to their Ancestor Tree than I was right now, and since I did not want to provoke a fight, I relented since I could sense that it would have come to exactly that if I had insisted.

That pretty much ended our conversation and the elder personally escorted us to the boundary of their territory before bidding us safe travels, indicating that he wanted us to leave the area. I had a teeny tiny feeling that my request to check out their Ancestor Tree as they called it might not have been appreciated by the elder. Mayhap it had something to do with Phantump's last visit and the theft that took place atop the Giant Tree. Either way, all I could do was shrug, though Thor/Raichu and Hades/Gengar, ever the mature Pokemon that they were, stuck out their tongue in the direction that the elder left in, which had Mothra/Butterfree and Nyx/Umbreon snicker, while Tatsumaki just smiled.

I just shook my head with a smile on my face before telling them to not mess around and follow me as I began walking in what I thought was the general direction of Brightwick City. Honestly, I could have had Tatsumaki teleport us straight to Brightwick City, which was actually why I had not moved her back to Utopia yet, but before I asked her to do that, I wanted to walk the regular way for at least half an hour; Maybe a full hour depending on how things went. Who knew, maybe I would stumble upon one of the roaming Treecko that the elder mentioned. Sadly, while it didn't take long for us to come upon our first wild Pokemon, they were not the ones I had been hoping for.

Things took a sudden turn when roughly 15 minutes after the elder left a Sceptile stepped out behind a tree not too far away from us. Everyone became alert when they saw Sceptile, but they relaxed their stance quite a bit when they noticed that the Sceptile in question was only at the gold stage. Sceptile approached us under everyone's watchful eyes and stared me straight in the eyes before dipping its head in respect, which was a bit surprising considering the way it ignored the others and focused solely on me.

Before I could ask Sceptile what it wanted, it asked me if I had a way to help it break through to the next stage, and I was taken aback at the emotional struggle that I could feel was taking place within Sceptile as it posed that question. There was hope, fear, unwillingness, and sorrow, with the latter being buried the deepest and the first two shining through on the surface, at least under my emotion sense. I thought for a moment before I told Sceptile that I might be able to do so depending on the situation/circumstances. I had an inkling what the problem was but I still asked Scepile what exactly its problem was.

Sceptile shared that its progress had slowed down drastically ever since it broke through to the gold stage and that its progress had been reduced to abyssal rates ever since it reached the (mid) gold stage. Despite that Sceptile preserved and trained and trained before eventually advancing to the (high) gold stage. Yet, despite training harder than ever, Sceptile was unable to break through regardless of what it did. It had been decades since Sceptile reached the (high) gold stage, and yet it was still unable to sense the chance to break through.

She sounded sad when she said that she ignored any courting attempts to focus solely on training for the sake of training without any results, making her lament having spent her best years without anything to show for, which was not completely true since she had at least reached the (high) gold stage. While not that strong in the grand scheme of things, it was at least a somewhat respectable rank on a local level. Besides, if what I was suspecting was true, then her problem was not surprising at all. Heck, the fact that she managed to reach the high gold stage would already be very impressive.

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