514 CH145 (509), Ecruteak City

Even though Yoruichi went on that mission of hers, I chose to spend another night at my family's Rota home, since I saw no reason to book an extra night at a hotel when I could simply sleep in our home and leave going to Ecruteak City to the next morning.

Ecruteak City was where Weiss was preparing for her next Gym challenge, so obviously that was where I would be heading as well. Since tomorrow was Palkiday, and I was going to be in another region, even if it was the one neighboring ours, I decided to stay there until Grouday evening.

I opened the TeleHub App and booked a teleportation to Ecruteak City at 9 a.m. According to the info on the app, I would be in Ecruteak sometime between 9:35 and 9:45 a.m. Once the booking was complete I went to sleep.

The next morning, once I was up and done with my breakfast, I left our house, locked the door, and made my way to Rota's Teleportation Hub. The trip from there to Johto went smoothly, and a quick glance at my watch told me that it was 9:40 a.m. when we arrived at Ecruteak's TeleHub.

Weiss had been hanging around Ecruteak City for two weeks now, and she had made some comments about a few things in our chat group within that period, including some of the places she liked to hang out at or train for the upcoming Gym Challenge.

That was why I was sure I would be able to track her down eventually even without asking her about her whereabouts, which would have ruined the surprise. Well, I called it a surprise, but by now everyone knew that I was going around visiting some of them. In fact, they had known since my visit to Rose.

The "surprise" part was when and where exactly I would show up to surprise them. Though Yoruichi turned that right around by counter-surprising me, even though she did admit that she had been surprised to see me show up at her doorstep, especially at that "early" hour.

Anyway, I left the hub and made my way to my first stop, the PokeCenter. You know, just in case she was still hanging out around that place for some reason. On the way there, I saw the large twin towers Ecruteak City was famous for. Considering that I could see it in a big major city like this, it was not hard to guess that the towers were a bit bigger than they were in canon.

Not to mention that neither of the towers was burned down since that particular incident did not happen here. I had already known that since I read about it beforehand, so I was not really surprised to see the two towers standing out, but seeing them with my own eyes was simply different compared to reading about them.

One thing that did actually overlap with canon, was that the two towers were built as places of worship directed at Lugia and Ho-Oh. Though, there were no legends about either of them roosting on the roof of one of the towers. It was just that Lugia and Ho-Oh were the main deities being worshipped here in Johto, and Ecruteak had always been the religious center of Johto.

Still, while the roosting thing was a bust, which meant no legendary appearance show for anyone, there was actually a legend about one of their feathers appearing on the roof in front of someone exceptional. That was impressive since I could only dream/imagine the use and effect the feather of a living deity could have.

That would probably be a pretty good way to boost a Pokemon in some form. Without actually seeing it, I could only go with assumptions, but I could see such a feather granting a Pokemon a big potential boost or unlocking a gene upon use. It could also lead to a blessing being granted. Everything was possible, even the possibility of nothing happening.

Oh, and seeing how no tower got burned down, it should have been obvious that the legend of Suicune, Entei, and Raikou had to be different as well, and it was. I looked that up, and the trio had a different "creation" myth, which didn't even have anything to do with Johto or even the northern continent. Though, it was still Ho-Oh that was responsible for their existence or at least that of the original Legendary Beasts.

Anyway, interesting facts aside, I made it to the PokeCenter I knew Weiss was staying in and checked whether she was around or not. Unfortunately, she wasn't, so I moved to the next place on the list, but she wasn't there as well.

Thankfully, I did spot her at the Haunted Mansion, which was a building that was actually being sponsored by the Ecruteak Gym, so that trainers had a place to prepare for the Gym Challenge. The mansion was rather big and looked like one would expect an old haunted mansion to look like, which was on purpose to make the ghost-type Pokemon feel comfortable.

The Gym even had some of their Pokemon act as "floor bosses" to ensure that the ghosts in the mansion followed the set rules, which ensure that the difficulty of the mansion floors was consistent. The ground floor had the weakest Pokemon, starting with iron stage ghosts at the entrance and ending with a bronze stage floor boss.

Each floor after that had stronger Pokemon compared to the floor below. The fifth and sixth floors were actually supposed to have a few dark gold stage Pokemon hanging around, though the "floor bosses" were definitely at that level.

Now, while there were a lot of ghost-type Pokemon at the mansion, apparently only about 6-9% were actually wild. The rest were provided by the Gym, so ghost types had not suddenly become superabundant. Besides, not everyone could simply capture one of the wild ghost types the Haunted Mansion, even if they came across them since one had to sign an agreement before one was allowed to enter the mansion.

In the agreement, you had to acquiesce to the fact that you were only allowed to capture one or more of the ghosts if you were able to fulfill the stipulations mentioned in the agreement. I read through them before I signed it so that I could enter the place, and the conditions were pretty much set to ensure that one was actually capable of taking care of the ghost, knew what to expect, and what one was getting into.

All in all, the stipulations were for the good of everyone involved, even the arrogant and conceited people who thought they did not need to fulfill any of those provisions. Also, I did not know if this was true, but I actually heard that the "floor boss" of the sixth/highest floor was not the strongest ghost that could be found in the Haunted Mansion.

According to hearsay, there was allegedly a small floor below the ground floor which supposedly housed a stage 6 ghost type, that only appeared under certain circumstances. To me that sounded like a lot like some kind of final/secret/hidden boss, but as I said that was just an unconfirmed rumor.

I decided to ask Weiss whether she had heard or seen anything that could corroborate that, but I had to greet her first. Still, since I was still planning on surprising her, I carefully sneaked up on her. I only had to worry about myself since Mothra/Butterfree had to temporarily stay inside Utopia/her ball for this.

Anyway, I went all nin-nin on her and managed to make it right behind her. As soon as I stood in from of her back, I tapped her on the shoulder, which made her shudder and flinch. Though, she managed to not scream/shout even though she obviously got shocked, which was pretty impressive.

If that had been all, I would have been a happy camper, but Weiss reacted pretty aggressively to my shoulder tap/surprise. The only reason I did not end up as a popsicle was that I did a tactical retreat, meaning I did a short-range teleportation that made me appear 5 meters in from of Weiss so that she could see me while leaving me outside the ice that appeared in a roughly two-meter radius around her.

Weiss' ice-cold reaction aside, the audience certainly seemed amused by the whole thing since we could hear quite a bit of ghostly laughter coming from all around us. One Haunter even came out from behind a wall and gave me a thumbs-up before vanishing below the parquet.

Well, once Weiss stopped glaring at me and we exchanged proper greetings, I asked her how she was doing, and we talked about her time in Ecruteak City, and the Haunted Mansion. I did bring up the topic of the hidden boss, but she said that she saw no Ghost like that even though she did go down to the basement.

According to her the only thing that supported the rumor was the fact that no other ghost types could be found down there, which in itself was suspicious due to the state of the rest of the mansion. Regardless, Weiss was happy to see me and dragged me out of the mansion to show me around Ecruteak City, or rather the places she liked so far.

Our leaving was thankfully not a waste since we had received a pass upon signing the agreement that was good for a full 3 days before another agreement had to be signed. The first place she dragged me to was the rather famous Kimono Sister's Teahouse, which had the appearance of a rather luxurious ancient-styled johtonian tea house.

They had a vast assortment of teas, and at the very least the one I chose tasted incredible. If the other varieties were just as good I could understand why the tea house was so popular. Great-tasting tea aside, the teahouse seemed to be over a thousand years old and was in the possession of the same family during all those years.

The Kimono Sisters part was a tradition set by the first owner who had quite a few daughters that helped him manage the tea house. Since then the family made sure that a batch of sisters from their family was involved in the operation of the tea house to continue the tradition.

If they did not manage to amass enough real sisters, then they used cousin sisters to make up the numbers. The Kimono part was actually the least surprising part of the story since those were the traditional/time-honored clothes in Johto and Kanto.

While the history behind the Tea House was rather interesting, there was a reason for the tea house's current popularity and it had to do with the current batch of Kimono Sisters. The latest batch of sisters was rather famous internationally, not only because of their impressive (traditional) dance performances but also because of their Eeveelution partner's gimmick, and the tea house benefited from their fame.

Unfortunately, the sisters only performed twice every month, and there was no set day for their performance, which meant that one had to come over each day if one wanted to make sure they managed to see the sister's performance.

I was also quite surprised to hear that the sisters had recently added a Ferreon to their Eeveelution dance performance. It was interesting to hear something like this about the species I helped discover.

Nonetheless, the tea house was not the only place one could watch performances like those in Ecruteak City. There was also the rather famous and popular Ecruteak Performance/Dance Theatre, which was one of the places Weiss and I visited during my stay in Johto.

We also made sure to visit both "worship" towers, and we also spent a few hours inside the Haunted Mansion to not waste the passes we had. Hades/Haunter certainly enjoyed the experience if nothing else. He had fun messing with the other ghosts.

Aside from those places, Weiss and I also strolled around the less iconic areas of the city, and I had to say that while there were quite a few districts with a more "traditional" architectural design, there were also districts with a more "modern" architectural design.

By the end of my stay, I could freely admit that Ecruteak City had its charm and that I actually preferred Ecruteak's design over that of other major cities such as Viridian or Saffron City.

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