Pokemon Alternate Universe Adventures

Once I had cheered up Mothra/Butterfree after her miss with the Skarmory, we continued our journey. Half an hour went by with only the occasional sighting of the usual desert dwellers instead of my/our targets, and after coming across yet another small cluster of Geodude, I decided to change my approach to them a bit since doing nothing but walking was starting to get a bit boring since I was not the sand surfing. I brought out Squirtle as well as Beldum and let them battle the 5 Geodude.

Since our side had the advantage and I believed my Pokemon could handle it, I chose to let Squirtle and Beldum face all Geodude at once. Squirtle dealt with the 3 iron Geodude while Beldum fought the 2 bronze ones. One-on-one their battles would probably have finished within less than a minute each, but since they had to face multiple opponents, who I had to admit worked decently well together, my duo took quite a bit longer to win. Still, they did ultimately win even if they were panting out of exertion once the last Geodude was down.

After huffing for a bit, Squirtle released a pleased laugh and I understood why since he had managed to take down his foes before Beldum even though he had been facing one more Geodude than it, though the fact that Beldum's batch was stronger had to do with that. Still, it was a fact that Squirtle finished half a minute before Beldum, so I pat him on the head and praised him on a job well done. I did not forget to pat Beldum's side while telling it that it had done a good job as well before I began to point out the things they could have done differently; Situations where they should have dodged instead of blocking or cases where the opposite would have been better, along with missed opportunities to counterattack.

Once I was sure that Squirtle and Beldum understood why the alternate actions would have been more appropriate, I told them that I would call them out from time to time to battle like this. The two were quite happy when they heard that and told me to not forget my promise before I moved them back to Utopia, which had me and the others laugh a bit. When we stumbled upon a pair of Sandshrew just a few minutes later, I stayed true to my word and brought out Squirtle to let him face them 2 vs 1. He had a harder time against those two than he did against the 3 Geodude but that was not surprising since the Sandshrew were a lot nimbler than Geodude and less affected by Squirtle's water moves.

Anyway, once I stopped ignoring the less "interesting" Pokemon, at least the ones at or above the (high) iron stage things got a lot busier and we ended up stopping every 3 to 5 minutes for a battle. I had to set that lower limit since battling opponents weaker than that was nearly useless for Squirtle, who got to battle more often than Beldum since we came across more iron-stage Pokemon than we did bronze ones even with the limitation I put in place. Still, by the time I chose to stop for lunch roughly three hours later, Squirtle had fought 22 times while Beldum had battled 13 times.

Each of those battles had them face at least one Pokemon, but there were a few times when they had to face two or three foes at once. Nonetheless, since I moved them back to Utopia after each battle, they were always in top physical form for each battle thanks to Utopia's healing regardless of how scuffed up they became after a fight. However, while their bodies were fine, they were mentally exhausted after having battled so many times within a relatively short period, so I had them join us for lunch. Once we had eaten, I told them that they were done for the day to let them rest their weary minds.

Yet, just because those two were done for the day did not mean that I stopped the battles. I replaced Bedlum with Vendrak/Salandit and Squirtle with Larvitar, though, unlike Vendrak who could handle facing two opponents at once, I did not let Larvitar face multiple foes since he was less trained than Squirtle and did not have the type advantage that Squirtle had. Even Vendrak only got to face a single opponent at a time whenever his foe happened to be a Graveler or a (high) bronze Geodude, which while rare did happen twice.

In the rare cases where we came across individuals stronger than that or groups with members stronger than that, Mothra and Co stepped in to intimidate them if necessary. For those at the silver stage Gaara/Gabite, Igneel/Charizard, Fortuna/Togekiss, and the others at that level stepped in, while Hades/Gengar, Melinda/Mienshao, and Po/Pangoro faced the gold Pokemon. Still, compared to the lower-level groups, these guys and gals only got a few individual chances to act. Battling once or twice was pretty much a warm-up for them, so unlike the busier lower group, they went and sparred/battled among themselves to get rid of their excess energy.

While we partook in a lot of battles due to my decision, slowing our pace quite a bit, the fighting experience was not the only return we got. After each battle, I made sure to heal our beaten foes/victims and hand them a few berries for their "cooperation" before using Observe on them. The healing and the berries were why the groups we came across went along with the whole thing, though it was not as if they had a choice with Mothra and Co overseeing the situation. Still, it was better for them to cooperate willingly, especially since there were times when I came across some potential Utopians among the beaten Pokemon. Recruiting those was much easier when they did not harbor a grudge against us for beating them up.

At the end of the day, when we returned to Utopia for dinner, the number of Pokemon I managed to recruit that I was actually aiming for was rather pitiful since we only met two target groups; A small group of Trapinch, and a small gathering of Sandile. Unfortunately, among those, only a single deep yellow Sandile qualified for Utopia. Compared to that, I managed to spot many more Utopia prospects among the beaten Geodude, Graveler, Sandshrew, Sandslash, Diglett, Dugtrio, Cacnea, Scraggy, Helioptile, and Dweeble. Well, more like among some of those species since some were "lucky encounters" without any yield.

Nonetheless, I ended up catching myself four Geodude and a Graveler, two Sandshrew, and a Sandslash, along with a Cacnea and a Helioptile. Only one of the Geodude, one of the Sandshrew, and the Cancea had higher than deep yellow potential, but it was still a much better haul than the single Sandile. As for those three exceptions, the Sandshrew and Cancnea had light green potential while the Geodude had green potential, though all that was before they went through Utopia's optimization.

Following Utopia's tender care, I was left with purely greenish potential Pokemon along with a single light-blue Geodude. It was a good haul even if it was not the one I was hoping for. However, we still had 4 to 5 days of traveling through the desert ahead of us, more if we continued battling nearly everything like today, though delaying things further was probably not a good idea, so I decided to halve the number of battles tomorrow. Due to that decision, we ended up traveling further throughout Mewday than we did yesterday, but we also battled less and I consequently stumbled upon less lucky victims.

We were lucky enough to come across a few groups I was actually looking for and I managed to spot 2 Drilbur with yellow potential along with a Trapinch with light green potential among them. What I found curious however was that I came across no other human/trainer either today or yesterday. I was not sure if it was because the outer area of the desert was vast that I failed to spot any, but considering that most people who came to the desert actually hung out in the outer area, I would have thought that I would see more people than I did around the large oasis rather than less.

To be fair, the oasis was a rather obvious rally point so that might have had something to do with it, but it still stood out to me. I was not sure if it was because I thought about it but not long after we Utopia the next morning we stumbled upon not just one human/trainer but a whole group of them. One of them challenged me to a battle and I naturally accepted. Once I had beaten him, I asked if the others wanted to battle as well, and then proceeded to beat them one by one. After I had gone through the dazed quartet I wished them a nice day before I tried to resume my journey, but then one of the two girls of the group asked me to wait.

I saw the others give her looks, the "Girl, are you for real?" kind, but she just shook her head at them before telling me that they were going to a place they knew contained fossils. Lea asked me if I would be willing to go with them for a fair share of the fossils they found, and I understood why the others looked at her like that earlier. Still, I knew there had to be a reason why she would be willing to share that information with me since I seriously doubted that it was because she fell for me after I beat up her Pokemon, so I stared at her and the other three for a brief moment before asking just that.

Lea revealed that there were a lot of strong Pokemon that called the area the fossils were in their home, but that was too vague for me so I just kept staring at them, prompting them with my eyes/stare to continue. It was Nadir who spoke up, drawing my attention/stare to him. Nadir revealed that the knowledge of the fossils along with the drawing of a rudimentary map to the fossils came from him, or rather from the notes left behind by his late grandfather, who used to be an Expert-class trainer. He shared that his grandfather had wandered into the inner area of the desert and after a few close calls while traveling through the inner zone stumbled upon the territory of a group of Flygon.

He quickly ran away since two platinum-stage Flygon began to fight shortly after he arrived there, making him fear for his life due to collateral damage. Yet, as he was swiftly retreating he got hit in the back of his head by a rock which nearly knocked him out and caused some bleeding. When he looked at the rock he saw that it was a broken Anortih fossil, so he packed up the bloody stone and ran. Nadir did not share what happened after that aside from mentioning that his grandfather did not dare to return and kept the source of the windfall he made a secret.

Nadir only found out about it after finding his grandfather's journal while going through his grandfather's things when his parents had him help them organize the attic. After listening to his story I gave the whole group a blank stare before getting the urge to pinch the bridge of my nose. I could not help but ask all 4 of them using a pretty solemn tone if they had any Pokemon that were much stronger than the ones they used against me, which had them all shake their heads in denial. I could not help but sigh at that.

These guys were either pretty delusional, stupid, or severely underestimating the danger they were heading into or overestimating themselves. This bunch was trying to travel to and then through the inner area of the Hoenn Desert to a habitat of confirmed platinum-stage dragons with a bunch of silver-stage Pokemon. Forget about the Flygon, the wild Pokemon in the inner area would eat them alive before they made it there, especially since they were traveling in a group instead of alone like Nadir's grandfather had done, and the man had been an Expert-class trainer at the time, which meant that he had at least 3 gold stage Pokemon to accompany him if not more.

I glanced at Seb and telepathically told him to blanket these 4 youngsters with the full brunt of his might to give them a taste of reality. The four shricked when they felt Seb's aura on them and they all crumpled onto the ground under the pressure. I was pretty sure that more than one of them had pissed themselves, but I was doing this for their good so I let Seb keep up the pressure for around 30 seconds before I had him stop. I then explained to them in a no-nonsense tone that the inner area was full of Pokemon like Seb and that none of them would think twice before turning them into a meal.

I did not mince my words and declared that they had proven that they could not handle any of those Pokemon or the situations they were likely to face in the inner area before pressing that they should forget about the map and fossils for now, at least until one or all of them had qualified for the Expert Class. In fact, I straight up told them that even Nadir's grandfather had been a bit reckless and that it would be better if they waited until one of them became an ACE before they attempted the journey, though unlike with the Expert class part, I did not underline this one with my aura and psionic energy to make it stick.

Even the latter bit was a bit much, but I seriously doubted that they would survive if I let them go through with their trip, so me leaving a bit of an impression was for their own good/survival.

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