620 CH1 (615), Setting Off To Hoenn (1)

I was now officially on my journey, and I had already made plans on how to spend the upcoming days. I was not going to head to Hoenn straightaway, but pay a visit to the relatives of my Pokemon first, since we would presumably be gone for a full year. Well, actually we'd only be visiting some of the relatives since most did not have much of a bond with their family, with some such as Mothra/Butterfree not even knowing their parents.

Some still had contact with their family though, and our first stop was the "Milotic Beach", where Tiamat/Milotic and Abzu/Milotic spent an hour with "Mama" Milotic, though she was more like the ancestor of my Milotic pair. I was surprised to see that Boss Milotic had actually grown stronger since our last visit half a year ago.

I had no idea for how long Milotic had been at the (high) platinum stage, but it seemed like she had finally taken the next step, making her one of the few palladium-stage Pokemon in this part of the world/continent, and I was referring to the human territories with that.

'Species: Milotic

Gender: Female

Type: Water

Potential: Blue

Stage: Palladium-Stage (low)

Genetic variation: ?

Abilities: ?

Talents: ?

Affinities: ?'

Unfortunately for Milotic, she had reached the "limit" she could achieve with her blue potential, and while it was not impossible to surpass these inherent limits as shown by Raticate, it was an extremely hard as well as lengthy process. Not to mention that the stronger one was the harder it became, which did not bode well for Milotic's chances.

The easiest way to solve that would be to put her inside Utopia so that she could undergo the optimization process, but that would require Milotic to either join Utopia or considering our decent relationship, for her to agree to remain unaware of/unconscious during the process. Still, I would be lying if I said that I did not wish for Milotic to join Utopia.

Unfortunately, she had refused my previous recruitment attempts, and considering how she had just risen to the next level/stage, she would likely be even less inclined to join. The smartest thing for me to do would be to wait for a few years so that Milotic could realize that she could not grow any further before making her another offer which would be more in line with an equivalent exchange compared to simply gifting her the potential bonus.

Obviously, it was also possible that Milotic would get lucky and stumble upon something that could raise her potential, but the chances of that happening in the next few years were minimal. If something like that truly happened, then good on her. All I would do was earnestly congratulate her on her luck.

After thinking about the matter some more, I decided that waiting for her to realize that she had reached her/a limit before offering her the solution was truly the best way to go about this. Nonetheless, taking our relationship into account, I was planning to allow her to go through the process even if she declined my future offer to join us, though her being unconscious during the process was non-negotiable.

Anyway, once an hour or so had passed, I informed Milotic that we had to move on, and since we were already in the area, I decided to visit Boss Slowbro as well. While Boss Slowbro had refused my offers to join Utopia in the past, I was willing to try my luck again since I already had a bunch of Slowpoke and Slowbro inside Utopia, so I was hoping that would help convince Boss Slowbro to join us.

I had to admit that I was mostly betting on the Slowbro with the Alpha gene. Despite Bossbro being a tad stronger than Alphabro, I was sure that Bossbro would feel tempted to join Alphabro due to Alphabro's superior genes as well as leadership talent since Bossbro was smart enough to know the positive influence that would have on the future Slowpoke generations.

It was a matter of tribe versus personal pride and the way I saw Bossbro, he would choose his tribe over his pride any day. Thankfully, things ended up going pretty much as I expected. I showed up at Bossbro's place and asked him how he was doing before introducing him to Alphabro, who persuaded him to join Utopia. Ultimately, I left for Viridian Forest with Bossbro and his whole tribe, which consisted of 11 Slowbro and roughly 340 Slowpoke.

There were quite a few Slowpoke with good potential among them once they had all gone through Utopia's tender care, but Bossbro was not too far off either since his deep green potential turned full-blown blue, pushing his limit/ceiling from (high) dark gold to (low) stage 7/palladium.

'Species: Slowbro

Gender: Male

Type: Water, Psychic

Potential: Blue

Stage: Dark Gold-Stage (low)

Genetic variation: None

Abilities: Own Tempo, Regenerator

Talents: None

Affinities: Water, Psychic'

It was definitely a happy Mikail who paid Uncle Raichu a visit, and the previous success could not help but make me think that I might be able to get Thor/Raichu's family to join us as well, though I chose to not bring that up immediately. I first let everyone out and we spent the time until lunch simply playing/hanging out with the Raichu/Pikachu tribe.

It was during lunch after I handed everyone a truly amazing meal, that I broached the subject with Uncle Raichu, and even though Thor along with some of the Pichu tried their best to persuade the old man, Uncle Raichu remained adamant in his refusal. Since he seemed determined to refuse, I simply accepted his refusal and did not insist since I did not want to sour the mood. Straining the relationship between Thor and his family was the last thing I wanted to do.

We left for our next destination after lunch, and I once more made sure to leave being a few large bags full of PokeFood catered to the taste of the Pikachu line which had all the Pichu, Pikachu, and Raichu cheering. Well, aside from Uncle Raichu, who gave me a soft smile and thanked me for the gift.

Our final stop in Kanto was Mt.Moon, where we visited the Clefairy/Clefable tribe. We stayed there until after dinner before leaving for Rota. I spent the night inside Utopia and the next morning I visited Mr. Cameron. I naturally wanted to say hello since I was in Rota, but I also needed his help to visit the various sanctuaries so that my Pokemon could say goodbye to their parents.

We had to make a few stops but by the end of the day we had been everywhere, so I made my way to Pallet City, where I entered Utopia for the night. The next morning I paid a visit to Oak Labs to say goodbye to Professor Oak, and we ended up talking for close to an hour. He was quite curious about my Rattata project and he expressed an interest in studying/examining some of the variants.

I promised to bring over one of each kind after I was done with the Hoenn League and the Professor simply accepted that without trying to rush me. After saying my goodbyes to the professor, I headed for Bluetiful City. I had bought a cruise ticket to Hoenn and the ship would leave the port at 10:30 a.m. We would be heading straight for Lilycove City, and the whole trip was going to take 6 days. The ship was scheduled to arrive at Lilycove City on Arcday at around 9 p.m.

The reason I opted to travel to Hoenn by ship instead of teleporting over there, which would have undoubtedly been much faster, was that I was not in a rush and that my parents actually recommended the ship to me. Apparently, rewarding tournaments/contests were regularly held on this specific cruise and the two thought I would be interested in the prizes they handed out to the Top 4, and after seeing that the last first-place prize was a Dragon Scale from a Garchomp I had to agree with them, which was why I bought the ticket.

Besides, I could use the 6 days to plan out my journey through Hoenn some more since I did not plan to haphazardly travel all over the place. I had some goals I wanted to achieve aside from earning the badges necessary to qualify for the Senior League Tournament, so properly planning out my journey was a necessity, though that did not mean that I would not stray from any established route/plan if something interesting came up.

As for my travel plan, it would naturally have to be planned according to the various gym locations. Unlike Kanto, which had 12 Major Gyms, 22 Gyms, and 66 Minor Gyms, the number of Gyms in Hoenn was considerably lower, at least as far as Standard and Minor Gyms were concerned. So, while Hoenn had 12 Major Gyms as well, there were only 14 Standard and 38 Minor Gyms, which meant that Hoenn had 36 Gyms less than Kanto.

This meant that my travel route definitely had to incorporate the 64 cities with a Gym since I was planning to challenge them all. I would use the Minor Gyms to train/test my Pokemon below the gold stage. My gold stage Pokemon would be used against the Standard Gyms, while my dark gold stage Pokemon could get a turn during the Major Gym challenges.

Thankfully, there were other chances/places for them to battle such as the Combat Tower, the Battle Maison, the Desert Palace, and the one I was looking forward to the most, the Dragon Spire said to be staffed by the ancient draconid people/tribe. Each floor had a Dragon Tamer from the draconid tribe and it was said that the final floor master was as strong as Drake, the dragon master.

While I was definitely not ready to face someone like that yet, I was looking forward to hopefully reaching the final floor just so that I could experience how strong a master like that was, even if I was destined to lose the fight. I could always come back in the future to "avenge" my loss, though honestly, I had no idea if I could even reach the final floor.

Regardless, I boarded the ship an hour before it was supposed to set off and settled in my second-class cabin. While I could have easily afforded a first-class cabin, I frankly saw no need to do so since I was going to enter Utopia whenever I wanted to sleep anyway. Paying more money for a larger room I was not going to use made no sense even if I had money to spare. Especially not when the regular meals were included in the second class ticket as well.

Anyway, after checking out my cabin, I took a look at the brochures they handed me upon boarding. Just like my parents had told me, the organizers had arranged quite a few contests/games for the passengers and two of them managed to attract my attention, or rather their prizes did.

The first was a fishing contest where the winner would receive a complete Anorith fossil. Yes, not a Claw Fossil, but a whole undamaged fossilized Anortith. Seeing that being listed as a prize for a fishing contest no less, I could not help but wonder which spendthrift arranged the prizes. A fossil like that was quite valuable after all.

Following that, I could not help but wonder if Utopia would be able to actually revive that Anorith since it was actually complete. Unlike usual fossils, which just contained a body part, this one was an undamaged fossil, so depending on how the Pokemon had ended up being fossilized there was a minuscule chance that Utopia might be able to restore the Pokemon.

Obviously, it would not work if the Pokemon had been dead and then fossilized over a long period, but if it for example ended up becoming a fossil due to a volcano eruption Utopia might actually be able to return the fossil to life if Utopia considered the "rapid fossilization" as a status condition similar to being frozen solid.

Naturally, all this was just my assumption/conjecture, and even if through some miracle I was right in my belief, I would need another miracle to ensure that the Anorith fossil was a fossil that underwent such a "rapid fossilization" process, so the odds were undoubtedly stacked against me. Regardless, the Anorith fossil was certainly interesting enough for me to immediately register for the fishing contest.

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