CH232 (846), Great Find, Or Just A Bust?

During breakfast, my thoughts wandered to the story that Professor Oak had shared with me yesterday. While he had done so to explain Jeff's circumstances/background, I finally understood why the alliance as well as its policies were so humane, to put it simply, and why the professor was still so influential.

It was because the darkening of the alliance and the ensuing chaotic period had already taken place long ago. Still, the long lifespan of strong trainers ensured that the Sovereign (Oak), who forged the peace, was still around to clean up the mess before things could escalate any further and shatter beyond repair. In fact, had the Professor not been uninterested in maintaining his leadership of the alliance back then, things would not have developed that way in the first place.

Granted, he was still pretty much hands-off right now, but at least he still participated and supervised the alliance's workings, which showed that he had learned from the past even if it meant that he was practically forced to stay in touch with things. Honestly, I had this thought many times, and I believed it would still reappear in the future, but humanity was really really lucky that Professor Oak was the model good guy.

Had he been only a decent guy the alliance as it was today would not have existed and humanity would have either been far more divided or it would have existed but be rather corrupt by now. Had Professor Oak been a bad guy he would have likely been ruling humanity with an iron fist. Given how smart and strong he was I saw no way for anyone to truly resist him or plan any effective revolutions.

I was not sure if he would have provoked the final purge of mankind at the hands of the legends/deities simply because I believed that with 3 precedents, an evil Samuel Oak would be able to do his evil thing without overstepping the tolerance limit of the legendaries. At least until he felt certain he could resist, which given the creation groups' existence was a folly, but evil overlords usually tended to be unable to accept any restrained, even reasonable ones, and I was not sure if an evil Oak would be any different on that point.

Well, had the situation in Pokeverse 6942 not been as it was right now, I would not have chosen it, so humanity was even more in the professor's debt without even knowing it because my presence was obviously a blessing for humanity. Narcissistic jokes aside, it was clear that the professor deserved all the respect he was given. Anyway, I pushed the subject out of my mind after that and focused back on finishing breakfast.

We had Mewday already, and I wanted to see if I could wrap up my exploration of the non-stream/waterfall parts of the initial space/room today. As soon as we were done eating and had cleaned up, I brought Mothra/Butterfree, Nyx/Umbreon, and Thor/Raichu out of Utopia with me. Hades/Gengar, who was already in my shadow, naturally came along as well.

We reappeared beside the boulder formation, and our sudden appearance actually ended up startling a Geodude who had apparently decided to move over at some point over the night. It curled up into a ball in shock, and I heard the others snicker at its reaction. I found it a bit funny as well, but I also felt a bit bad about starting the little rock dude so much, so I placed a Sitrus Berry beside the trembling rock before leading my group toward the steps connecting to the lower platform.

We went down and directly turned to the left to check the area adjacent to the L platform. It had one of the four craters in the chamber and did not lead to any connected areas. Well, unless I was willing to jump down of course, which I could do but wouldn't since not doing so did not hinder my exploration. Anyway, I led my group to check the area around the crater, which did not take long since the crater took up most of the area in this part of the platform.

We then began walking into the crater, but other than being marginally larger than the first crater we inspected at the entrance, there was no real difference, at least from what I could see. Pokemon-wise, it was pretty much the same as well, with Diglett, Sandshrew, and Geodude calling the crater their home. That was what I thought until a Dugtrio emerged two meters to our left, and while Dugtrio's appearance was not that interesting, the result of its arrival was much more interesting.

Two pointy little rocks close to Dugtrio began to shake moments after it surfaced, and as it turned out, those were not just some random rocks, but part of a buried Lunatone. A Lunatone that was most definitely not happy to be disturbed given by the glare it was directing at Dugtrio. Any distraction/boredom I felt naturally vanished the moment Lunatone showed up and it obviously drew my full attention.

Maybe it was because it felt that and thought that it did not like the attention I was paying to it, but despite the glare it levied on Dugtrio it just threw a rock at it to show its discontent before Lunatone began to levitate away. I naturally could not simply let that (high) silver-stage Lunatone go like that, at least not before I had checked its status sheet. The little rock shard it was levitating by its side as it turned to leave also drew my attention.

Hence, Lunatone did not get far before I clasped it in a telekinetic grip. Lunatone being a psychic type obviously recognized what was happening and not only began to struggle physically against my hold but also utilized its psychic powers to break my grip. Its dual approach stopped me from trying to drag it over using my telekinesis. I could have done it, but it would have been quite slow, so I focused on keeping it in place because nothing stopped me from approaching Lunatone the normal way.

I could have obviously also had the others help me using Psychic since pretty much every single one of them knew the move, but I thought it served as a good little exercise, so I told them to not interfere. The closer we came to Lunatone the fiercer it struggled, and just as we came within a meter of it, it actually broke through to the gold stage. Unfortunately for Lunatone, that only translated to me having to truly focus on containing it.

Moreover, we were already beside Lunatone, so there was virtually no way for it to get away even if it managed to break out of my hold. Still, that did not stop Lunatone from struggling for 5 more minutes before I eventually decided to actually check its status sheet as it continued to struggle. The result was that Lunatone had yellow potential, which was rather disappointing. More so for Lunatone than for me since it meant that this breakthrough had brought it to the ceiling it could reach under normal circumstances.

To progress any further than this, Lunatone would have to either stumble upon a lucky opportunity or struggle/train for an absurd amount. Not that I thought that Lunatone was actually aware that it had reached its potential derived ceiling, but if it kept training it would at some point notice that it was not advancing to the (mid) gold stage. Once it reached that point, Lunatone could either not bother with that and simply be content with its (low) gold stage prowess or it could keep training/trying to advance.

Lunatone being a rock type could actually afford to go with the second option even if it only trained a reasonable amount per day since its lifespan was absurdly long. Either way, I lost interest in capturing it, though I did not let it go yet. I turned my head to the rock splinter that had fallen to the ground as soon as I caught Lunatone in my telekinetic grip.

Since I could not divert any of my psionic energy to latch onto the splinter, I used my second thought stream to channel some of my aura to touch it so that I could check it. I could have simply walked up and picked it up, but I did not do that because Lunastone seemed to value it quite a bit; I was worried that it would agitate Lunatone enough for it to choose to use Explosion. While I did not doubt that I would be saved if it did that, Mothra was lounging on my head after all, that did not apply to the splinter as well.

Anyway, my aura made contact with the splinter and I used Observe to see what about it attracted Lunatone's attention. I honestly suspected that it might be a meteorite splinter given where we were and the fact that Lunatone was what it was, but my expectation on that front ended up being disappointed. The splinter was not from a meteor, and I could not help the pang I felt when I read that even though it was actually something that was much more interesting, at least for me. It ended up being a splinter of a Minior's shell.

That was extremely surprising since there shouldn't have been any Minior, or splinters belonging to a Minior at the Meteor Falls. I went over everything I read about the wild Pokemon in the mountain range within and around the Meteor Falls. There had been a small number of Minior around this region in the past, but they had all been hunted down/rounded up by trainers and certain families a long time ago. The last time a wild Minior had been sighted not just here but anywhere in Hoenn was nearly 800 years ago, so finding a splinter coming from a Minior's shell was quite unexpected.

Either this splinter used to be buried somewhere and only resurfaced recently, allowing Lunatone to find it, or the much more interesting possibility in my opinion, there was still a wild Minior or even more than one of them somewhere within the Meteor Falls, and the splinter had fallen off from them. Well, it was also possible that a trainer with a Minior passed through and the splinter was the result of a battle with that Minior, but honestly, I was hoping that it was the second option.

I decided to ask Lunatone where he got the splinter from; To prevent any accidents, I told Mothra to take over, before letting go of my telekinetic hold. Lunatone did not get to enjoy its freedom for more than a second before Mothra used Psychic to freeze it again. She also used Imprison which most likely blocked pretty much all of its moves since there was a very good chance that Mothra knew every move that Lunatone knew, though the opposite was obviously not the case.

The important part was that Lunatone would not be able to use Psychic to try to resist her hold or Explosion to try to drag everyone down with it. The fact that Mothra knew how to use Explosion and Self-Destruct still felt wrong/baffling to me even after all the shit she managed to learn even though she shouldn't. Still, in some ways, it made sense for her to learn it given how often those were used against her or in her proximity.

Given her proclivity to learn moves by watching them, her somehow learning explosion was not surprising. Nonetheless, I still felt surprised when I saw the move listed in her move section. It had been some time since it happened and yet I still felt weird whenever I thought about it or every time I saw the move listed on her status sheet. Frankly, I was worried about the consequences of her using that move, so I did not let her try until this day, and I honestly do not think that I would ever let her give it a try.

While I was probably overreacting, especially since Utopia could heal her up as long as she was still alive, just the idea/image of Mothra bursting apart as a result of using Explosion made me feel all kinds of bad.

-----------------------------

***A Big Thank You to Roogini for becoming a Patron***

Advertising plug-in:

Currently, the lowest number of advanced chapters available on patre'on is 6, while the highest number of advanced chapters is 10.

Sketches, drawings of the MC, Variants and maps can be found on my Patre'on. A patre'on exclusive Legendary Lore and Pokemon Lore/Info series can be found there as well.

Help me stay motivated.

patreo*n/Azrail93