647 CH28 (642), Lilycove City (2)

The next day, after we finished our morning training session, I left Utopia and made my way to the M&M Pokeblock Store to check it out. I was interested in seeing what kind of PokeBlocks they were offering as well as the courses they were offering. Most might not believe it at first but the topic/study of PokeBlocks was a rather extensive one.

It was inevitable for that to be the case when one considered how many areas the proper development of a Pokemon involved. Adding the number of available types on top of that resulted in a considerable variety of PokeBlock categories. Further expanding the focus/target to the individual Pokemon lines or even species expanded the number of varieties/areas of study even further, so it was no surprise that there were hundreds of thousands, if not millions of PokeBlock recipes out there.

All that knowledge was obviously not open to the public and probably not even to the alliance, so I was most likely the only person alive who had access to all that knowledge or rather a vast majority of it. I could not rule out the possibility that some secret recipes were only passed on orally or not passed down at all. Adding to that the number of formulas created in the last 14ish years was why I said vast majority rather than all of it.

Anyway, I made it to the M&M Store and began to explore the sales-related floors. I checked out the items they were offering as well as the PokeBlocks they were selling. There were quite a few general PokeBlock kinds available, along with a few more specialized ones belonging to some of the more popular Pokemon lines/species, but it seemed that one had to actually go to one of the service counters if one wanted a specialized PokeBlock outside of those.

There was a chance that they had some of the required PokeBlocks stored away, but it was more likely that one would have to give out a custom order, which depending on the PokeBlock was 10-25% more expensive than the specialized PokeBlocks that were sold in-store, though the price could quickly climb way beyond that if one wanted something truly outstanding, though that was only normal since the ingredient prices rose along with the quality of the PokeBlock.

Still, I made sure to remember which PokeBlocks they offered and learned which blocks seemed to be the most popular by talking with my fellow customers. I had taken a look at the online for us for this as well, but confirming it with one's own eyes/ears was important as well, at least in my opinion.

I also made sure to check out the tools and instruments they offered. I did not do that because I needed some for myself, since I already had my own set, and I even made most of the tools myself. As for those I felt were too laborious to make, I bought them from the best crafter known on the market. No, the reason I was checking the available wares was to see if they were good enough for me to provide them to my future students.

Well, maybe calling them my future students was a bit much, but if the quality of the tools was decent enough, I would buy a bunch so that the orphans interested in a PokeBlock Maker career could use them in the future. The courses the M&M Store offered also gave an example of what kind of PokeBlock formula I could teach the children in the future. That was why I made sure to look through the list of available courses and even participated in one to see how they were teaching them.

I also got to see how effective the PokeBlock they were sharing actually was and how well the students did. To ensure that I did not end up with some total newbies I made sure to join a joint course that was close to concluding their lesson set since one did not pay for just one lesson since most people could not learn to make proper PokeBlocks in just one lesson.

I spent the entirety of the 2-hour lesson just observing the pupils while keeping an eye and ear on the teacher and his two assistants. That lesson gave me an idea about the quality the average person produces, and I made sure to join another lesson, but this time it was with a group of absolute beginners to see how the teacher and the assistants handled total beginners. This would prove useful to me in the future, though I was fully expecting my student to be quite a bit worse than this batch since my student would be quite a bit younger than these adults and young trainers.

Anyway, it was already 4:30 p.m. when I left the second lesson, so after buying a dozen Berry Blenders and related tools I left the M&M Store. The reason I ended up buying them was that I had seen them in use during the lessons and their performance had been good enough for me to buy a batch. After leaving the store I headed to one of the restaurants on my must-visit list since I was feeling a bit hungry due to missing out on lunch.

Once I was sated, I made my way to the Trainer Fan Club, which happened to be close to the restaurant I chose. The clubhouse was more of a medium-sized three-storey villa, but thankfully neither the interior design nor the people inside were posh. The interior design was "normal", well, as normal as it could be with all those pictures and posters of certain trainers hung up on the walls along with the models on display.

As for the people, they were dressed in all kinds of clothes, from super casual to suits and dresses, though there were a lot of people wearing similar clothes, no doubt copying/emulating their favorite trainers. I saw quite a few people, men and women, dressed like Lance and the other champions as well as famous champions and legendary class trainers. Unlike the ladies who were able to imitate their male idol's get-up without looking weird, none of the men wore any dresses, though I did see a few that were obviously emulating Cynthia, which was not hard since she was known to prefer suit-like get-ups.

I had to smile a bit when I saw the few guys as well as gals in lab coats, red shirts, and brown pants, which was pretty much Professor Oak's standard get-up, though he did occasionally go for a light purple shirt instead. Clothes were not the only thing these fans tried to imitate, they did the same with their idol's Pokemon team, and they even attempted to emulate their fighting styles, which they knew through endlessly studying the available battle videos of their idols.

I naturally went around and challenged the trainers in the groups I was most interested in, and there were always a few who were happy to accept my challenge. At the end of the day, I learned a few things. The ratio of regular people to trainers that hung at this place seemed to be 2 to 1. Also, only 1 out of 3 of those trainers were what I would consider active. The rest had stopped traveling around, only trained to keep their Pokemon fit as well as healthy, and had stopped trying to reach the next trainer class.

Their attitude was also why I split the individual fan groups into three "factions". The first consisted of regular people who simply idolized famous and/or strong trainers. The second were trainers who had "retired" and were just trying to emulate the trainers they idolized, while the third group was actually aiming to reach as high as they could but did so while emulating their idols since their idol's Pokemon were also their favorite choices for their own teams.

Not that many managed to mirror their idol's teams in its entirety. Nearly all of them tended to miss a Pokemon or two for obvious reasons, though, from the excited chatter by the audience, I learned that some did that on purpose because they were not all that interested in certain Pokemon their idols had in their teams. Fans of Master Drake and Lance were the forerunners of this.

Most of their fans only managed to copy only one or two members of their known lineups, with most of those being Gyarados, Kingdra, Altaria, Flygon, or one of the Pokemon of those evolution lines. Apex species were a rarity, which was a given, and they were missing in most fan groups. Even some of the rarer top species such as Lucario and Togekiss did not have any representation among the present fans. I also had to say that I was extremely popular with the Cynthia fans once they saw that I had a Gabite, Togekiss, Glaceon, Lucario, and Milotic.

Anyway, I had fun challenging the cosplayers even if I was only able to use my gold stage Pokemon against 8 of them. That was still better than the single trainer present that had dark gold stage Pokemon. Still, I guess that was already a pretty good haul since this was a Trainer Fan Club and not a Trainer Club.

It was already 9 p.m. when I left the club and returned to Utopia. Unlike my Pokemon, whom I had made sure to hand dinner at 7, I had yet to eat dinner, so while we were talking about the day, I ate sandwiches in between conversations/sentences. While everyone seemed happy enough with things, my dark gold stage Pokemon did approach me and mentioned that they also wanted to get in on the action like the weaker family members.

I had initially been planning to head to the beach tomorrow to check out the Beach/Surf Club and the Fisher's Club, but I ended up promising them that I would head to the Battle Club instead since that was the place I knew would have the trainers that could give them a proper fight. They were quite excited when I promised that. Following that, I spent the rest of the evening fulfilling the spa session promise for the day.

The next day, I made my way to the Lilycove Battle Club right after our morning training session, and while I would have loved to give my dark gold Pokemon the challenge they wanted right away, that was unfortunately not possible. Ever since I started the Aaron Aura Academy I had not been as active as I could have been in the club scene, so my current rank at the Battle Club was that of a mere Knight.

Since there was no way any dark gold Pokemon could see a silver stage Pokemon as a challenge, I had to raise my rank twice first before I could give them the challenge I promised them. Hence my rise through the ranks began. Because my last visit was more than a year ago, my victory streak had been reset, so I had to start the 25 victory streak I needed to be promoted to Knight Commander from 0.

I obviously did not let go of the training opportunity this presented and used my silver-stage Pokemon during these battles. I only resorted to anyone stronger if we came across one of the rare Knights that had a gold-stage Pokemon or two in their teams, though only the last 5 trainers I had to face fit that category. The Knight Commander I had to face during the advancement fight fielded only gold-stage Pokemon, so I followed suit as well.

Nonetheless, reaching the Knight Commander rank took me nearly 6 hours, including the lunch break, so by the time I started working on advancing to the Lord rank it was already 6:20 p.m. We all knew by this point, that there was no way I could advance to the Lord rank today, but I still kept going and tried to earn as many victories as I could for tomorrow.

By the time I left, shortly after 11 p.m., I had built up a 17-victory streak, so I would only need to win 8 more times tomorrow before I could face a Lord or Lady for my advancement battle.

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