515 CH146 (510), Beginning Of The End (1)

My return to Kanto also heralded the final week of my break. The month officially ended on Dialday, but since I'd only be going back to the lab on Arcday, the weekend, which was practically the whole first week of the 14th month, also became part of the break.

Seeing how I went around hanging out with my friends until now, I decided to spend the whole final week focusing only on my Pokemon. I pulled out all stops and directly started a cleaning and massaging session right after breakfast on Arcday.

Due to the high number of Pokemon, I had to work on, I chose to do two blocks per day. One after breakfast, and one before dinner, with each block being 3 to 4 hours long. All Pokemon who were not being cleaned or massaged, used those blocks to do their training, whether that be, move, element, parameter, or resistance training.

Outside those blocks we did other stuff, such as singing, listening to music, watching movies, playing games, and what was still a favorite of a lot of my Pokemon, posing for a sculpture, with me creating said sculpture.

I felt that the division of our day was handled pretty well, and following that schedule, I managed to complete the cleaning and massaging sessions on Kyoday during the pre-dinner block. It was a pretty great way to start a new month if you ask me, and I felt that Kyoday ended up being a pretty good first day.

Grouday morning came and started off the last day of my break. Still, last day or not, I naturally did not let that stop me from upholding our weekly tradition. As soon as we were done with breakfast, I started to check up on everyone's status. I began with Mothra/Butterfree, before moving on to Horus/Xatu, and Stan/Gyarados.

After that, everyone else followed, and I saw no prominent changes, up until I checked Kimura/Hitmonform. Honestly, Kimura's talent was kind of enviable with how useful it was for training. It was the like he was the beloved son of the grind, and my boy still did not let that get to his head.

No, Kimura maintained a serious attitude while staying dedicated to the grind, and it showed. Even though it had been less than 8 months, 4 of his parameters got upgraded to the S-value, and seeing how his training routine targeted all his parameters, I did not expect the other two parameters to take more than two or so weeks to improve as well.

I shared the good news with him, and his eyes lit up in a metaphorical fire due to his motivation and enthusiasm. He proclaimed that he would finish his first round of limit-breaking in less than two weeks, and I believed him.

The others after Kimura showed no prominent changes, but that was fine as well. Since the care sessions were done, we spent the time until lunch putting on performances for each other using things we learned or improved lately. That was a nice way to show others the fruits of our labor, and even I put on a performance for the others.

I showed them my ground/aura/psionic clone prototype. I was still working on it but I was able to control it to do rudimentary movements using only one thought stream, and more complex stuff using two. Unlike my initial attempts when I started working on the personal project, the figure/clone was no longer a miniature man or clone, but one that was actually my size.

The clone project would be considered complete, once I could manipulate the clone as if I was manipulating/moving my own body using only a single thought stream. That way, I would be able to use him to speed up nearly everything that required hands-on action on my part.

Once I was good enough to control one with each thought stream and had a higher number of thought streams, I could increase my working speed by triple, quadruple, or more.

Anyway, after lunch, I decided to visit Jessie, so I called her and we met up. The two of us began strolling around while talking about the stuff we had done lately. She knew about my visit streak, but I told her about some of the things I/we did during those visits. Jessie seemed to be quite interested in hearing about that.

On her part, she shared that she had been working as usual and that her free time was either spent planning/working on a performance with/for her Pokemon or reading books on human physiology. When my eyebrow rose at the last bit, she gave me a teasing smirk and said that she had to be read up a bit on the human body if she wanted to take up the role I had planned for her.

She puffed up a bit and said that she should be able to get a certificate as a regular nurse as well by the time I was done with my practical year and began my journey. That was great news and I naturally praised her quite a bit for her proactiveness and thoughtfulness. Jessie certainly looked happy at the genuine praise.

She also shared that she had been subtly letting out bits and pieces about a job opportunity to work as a "private" nurse to see who would be interested in something like that before looking at me in a way that asked me to praise her. Well, at least it looked like that to me, so I obliged and praised as well as thanked her for her initiative.

After that, we spoke about some of the performances and choreographies Jessie was working on, and we moved to a more secluded part of one of the local parks where she and her Pokemon demonstrated them to/for me.

She asked for my opinion after each demonstration, and since I knew that she was asking for my opinion in the capacity of a critic, I told her what I thought was well done, and also what I believed could be improved. Though admittedly, each one of their performances was already pretty great. It was clear that she/they had invested a lot of time and effort into each one of those acts.

We got distracted by the personal show Jessie and her team were putting on, so it was already about 8:20 p.m. when we arrived at Aldini's restaurant for dinner. Once we were done there, I escorted her to her room, before I went back to my dorm as well since I would be returning to the lab tomorrow.

The next morning I made my way to the lab for the first day of my last term at Oak Labs. After I made it there, I first went to Professor Oak's office to greet him, before I started to look at the ongoing project options to decide which one I would be joining this week.

My focus was drawn to one that had the potential to take up more than just the week. Namely, the lab's various projects related to variants, and there were quite a few of those. I looked at the projects that worked on variants that could still be found within alliance territory in the present.

I could not help but release a snort before breaking out in laughter when I read some of the notes by the lab assistants/researchers on the variant topic. The one that got me was the comment that read "What's wrong with Alola and Galar? Why are there so many Kanto variants over there?".

Well, the guy was not wrong considering that all 16 type variants that could be found in Alola were "Kanto natives", which basically meant that they were found/discovered there first and that the species could generally be found there more easily than in other regions.

Unlike Alola, Galar also had variants that were not "Kanto natives". However, seeing how 9 out of 16 variants were "Kanto natives", the earlier comment still fit Galar as well. The two teams that were looking into exactly that question were unfortunately not present at the lab since both teams were on an expedition to their respective "target/focus" regions, namely Alola and Galar.

Still, there was a note that the teams were in contact with the lab and each other to maintain a continuous information exchange. Nonetheless, that still meant that I could not join either of those two research projects since their scheduled return date was after the end of my internship.

While I thought that this was a bit unfortunate, I still could join the research projects that focused on individual variant species instead of the general topic. Oak Labs still had an abundance of such research projects, though they chose to focus on the Kanto-based ones, which admittedly made up 27 out of 35 known type variant tribes outside the northern continent.

After skimming through the list, I saw that there were actually 14 ongoing projects that were studying one of those variant lines. Unsurprisingly, it was the Alolan Rattata project that drew my attention first.

The Alolan Rattata was the only truly populous Rattata variant, and considering my own Rattata-related project, it was no surprise that this one managed to attract my interest first. Especially, since the alolan variant was a normal/dark-type variant, which meant it was one that I was not working on myself.

Regardless, I ended up choosing that project, so my first week was spent immersing in the knowledge Oak Labs had on the Alolan Rattata and Raticate species. For me, the most interesting part of this project was their study into the reaction of the alolan variant to the regular Rattata, and vice versa.

According to the personal experience I had with the "elemental" Rattata and the regular ones inside Utopia, the various variants did not really react negatively to each other, and they seemed to be capable of getting along harmoniously if left alone.

However, the result the project team gathered for the Alolan variant was completely different from what I saw/experienced with the 4 other variants I had in Utopia. Perhaps it was due to the nature of the alolan/dark-type variant, but the relation between them and the regular ones tended to be unharmonious.

Well, that was not 100% true. As long as the sample group was limited to Rattata, then the relation between the two groups stayed mostly neutral. While it was not really harmonious, because the alolan cousins tended to be a bit more greedy than their regular counterparts, they did not really break out into any large conflicts.

This changed once Raticate became involved. Alolan Raticate tended to be more gluttonous and greedy than Alolan Rattata, and that showed. Their gluttony and greed caused conflicts to break out between the two groups over food, which, honestly, was not that surprising since studies and nature had shown that there were conflicts between separate Alolan Raticate nests as well.

Thankfully, the negative traits of the alolan species were not too bad, and they did not have any inherent cruelty, which was why no one in alola minded them hanging out around restaurants. In fact, they saw it as a sign of the quality of a restaurant, if it was able to lure a nest of Alolan Raticate since those were seen as gourmets, which meant that the food had to be tasty to lure them over.

No one thought like that about regular Raticate or Rattata. Once those guys or gals tried to hang out in or around a restaurant they were driven off or taken care of. So the alolan variants had at least that going for themselves, even if they were not able to get along with one another.

Anyway, all that work with Alolan Rattata and Raticate made me spend that weekend focusing on my own Rattata project. The project itself was going well enough, and the numbers were slowly but steadily improving. Though I had to admit that I would not have minded it at all if the slow part went a bit faster.

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