Right after we handed over the final plate, we began cleaning up the cooking station to signal that we were done for the night. Once we finished that, I let my gaze wander across the room while I mentally reviewed the Pokémon I had marked down during this little dinner party. Among the 53 fighting types that I marked (mentally) were 2 Makuhita, 1 Hariyama, 5 Scraggy, 3 Scrafty, 14 Machop, 8 Machoke, 9 Tyrogue, 5 Hitmonchan, 4 Hitmonlee, and finally 2 Hitmontop.
The numbers among the various species were not all that surprising since it was a matter of representation among all the fighting types present. The Makuhita line was the second smallest group among them, so it was actually not bad to find three potential candidates. On the contrary, the Machop line had the highest number among the fighting types present, which was also the case for those I marked. Interestingly enough, the Hitmon-line was pretty close to the Machop line in that regard despite having "only" a bit more than two-thirds of their number.
Less interesting was that although the number of marked Pokémon had gone from 17 to 53 after the first round, those with light blue potential or above had barely seen any growth. On top of the Tyrogue and Machop with light blue from the first round of dinner handouts, only a blue potential Machoke and a light blue potential Hitmonchan made the cut. Granted, there were actually three more fighting types with blueish potential, but they were among those not fit for recruitment.
Another unfortunate thing was that the four Hitmonform that actually came to the dinner party were among those unfit for recruitment as well. They held obvious leading positions not only among the Hitmon-line but all fighting types that showed up/lived here, which stopped me from marking them down even though all four qualified for the Utopia potential-wise even with their prowess ranging from the (high) silver to (mid) gold stage.
The same was true for the two Machamp I spotted, which had been rather startling to see in the first place. The fact that the Machoke tribe here had managed to produce 2 "wild" Machamp given their number was incredible, and a bit hard to believe due to that exact reason. While not truly small considering that there were close to 450 of them, and that was including the Machop, their number was still considerably smaller than other examples of areas that produced Machamp in the wild.
Even if we added the rest of the fighting types living together with them, numbers like these were hard-pressed to fulfill the evolution condition for a single Machamp evolution, much less two of them since usually only the strongest among them, which in groups like this one normally meant those at the (high) silver stage, would be useful for the Machoke challenge ceremony.
Either something else was involved, possibly the fabled Aura Guy, or maybe there were more fighting types in the area outside the mountain and they had gone out to fight those as well. While I made a mental note to later go and see if the Machamp were open to sharing how they had managed to evolve, I let my gaze slide past the area where the little group of Meditite and Medicham that had been part of the final handout round were eating.
I could not help but feel a tad disappointed at that moment at the fact that none of the few Meditite and Medicham that turned up among the species living here ended up among the 53 I was planning to make an offer to. The two that did qualify were the Medicham leading their small group, which stopped me from marking them down. It was just not meant to be I guess.
The fact that I ended up finding some here at all had already been a surprise, so it was not as if I had been expecting any of them to potentially join anyway. It still made me look even more forward to checking out the rooms/homes of everyone present, provided that they agreed to let me take a look at their homes obviously. Granted, even if they did agree, that would have to wait until tomorrow since it was already long past 9 p.m., which made it somewhat inappropriate to intrude into their homes.
In fact, I briefly considered whether I should wait with my recruitment offer until tomorrow as well, but after considering it for a moment, I rejected the idea. It was better to do that now when I had everyone at hand. Who knew if all of them would stay put tomorrow? There was a good chance that I would be unable to find them all even if I went around all the homes, so I decided to give the offer now while the meal was fresh on their minds.
In fact, I chose to expand my after-meal conversation tour to use the chance to ask everyone, including the groups with no one on my list, if I could pay a visit to their homes tomorrow. With the decision made, I put the cleaned cooking stations away and thanked my assistants for their hard work before asking them if they wanted to stay outside until we left or if I should move them home right now. They chose to go back to Utopia, and since they had already had their fill of the hubbub while helping me, I could understand why they were not interested in sticking around.
After transferring them to Utopia, I asked Anubis/Lucario and the others if they wanted to head back as well, but they chose to stick around until I left, so I told them to do as they pleased, while I went to the closest group that had already finished eating. Since this particular group had no one on my list, I only ended up getting permission to visit the two homes this batch lived in before tying up the conversation and moving on to the next group.
The necessary polite small talk included, it took me nearly an hour to go through all the groups spread across the large chamber/room. I managed to get everyone's agreement to let me check their homes, but not all the Pokémon I offered the opportunity to join me did so. Ultimately, 12 of the 53 I marked ended up declining, which left me with 41 recruits. Thankfully, only one of those who declined was among the blueish group, particularly the blue potential Machoke.
Given the feeling I got when he refused my offer, the reason for his refusal was of a romantic nature, but I left him some form of privacy and did not insist/ask any further questions. The fact that he did not come to me to request joining later on indicated that his love interest was not among the fighters who agreed to join. Regardless, once I was done with my little tour, I asked those who agreed to step forward so that I could capture them.
I let them right back out so that they could continue to stay with their families/groups until we resumed our exploration outside the Secret Power system. Ultimately, Utopia ended up gaining 1 Makuhita, 1 Hariyama, 4 Scraggy, 2 Scrafty, 12 Machop, 6 Machoke, 8 Tyrogue, 3 Hitmonchan, 2 Hitmonlee, and finally 2 Hitmontop in one go. None of them had reached the silver stage, which was on purpose on my part to give them more chances to make something out of themselves if they wanted to.
Since I had recruited them, I had no plans to keep the benefit of limit-breaking a secret from them, and like with many others in Utopia that I saw potential in, I was going to provide them with sufficient resources to ensure reasonable results as long as they trained seriously. All of them had that chance, even those that were not likely going to end up underlings of my main team members like the Machoke line and Hitmon-line members.
Anyway, once I had captured and then let out those that came forward, I wished everyone a good night before moving to Utopia with my Pokémon. I did not bother finding a secluded space, but I was sure that those outside would assume we had Teleported away. This included even the Medicham since I had channeled and released some psionic energy right before the transfer for that explicit purpose.
Due to Luna/Clefable and the others who had returned to Utopia before us, everyone had been waiting for us at my place, so I was too busy greeting a lot of enthusiastic Pokémon to consider anything else. However, once everyone had calmed down a bit, and we began talking about the stuff we did while snacking, I let my thoughts wander a bit. I wondered if I should call Mr. Cameron and ask him if he knew about an Aura Guardian that had spent a few years/decades in Hoenn, specifically the Meteor Falls.
I eventually dismissed the idea for two reasons. One, it was already past 10 p.m., and I did not want to bother Mr. Cameron for something trivial at this hour. Two, the dude, whoever he was, did not really do anything that HAD to be reported. As far as I was concerned he had done nothing wrong, so aside from some personal curiosity, there was no reason for me to report the situation here to the Aura Guardian Order or inquire about details that would result in questions that might lead to stuff I didn't want. Hence, I chose to let the matter go.
The next few hours were spent idling away with my Pokémon before I decided that it was time to call it a night. I sent everyone on their way before going to bed myself. The next morning I once again left Utopia with my travel group as soon as we were done with our breakfast. There were already some Pokémon around that were training, so we gave them a short wave to greet them before heading toward the closest channel to start my home-visiting tour.
I had already informed the fighting types yesterday that I would start visiting them around this time in the morning, so I saw no problem with showing up right now. The first channel led to a training room connected to 6 homes. Similar to the grand chamber, there were already some Pokémon training when we stepped into the training room, so we ended up greeting them as well, but unlike before, I chose to actually start a conversation with them to determine which home we should visit first.
It was roughly 15 minutes later that we returned to the grand chamber, and even though most of the homes/rooms turned out to be busts, I had already expected that, so I was not discouraged at all. Besides, just because I did not spot anything as grand as a Mega Stone, did not mean that they had nothing of worth; It was just that I already had all the stuff they kept as decoration or trophies that was actually useful.
Still, I had already gotten lucky once and nothing was stopping me from getting lucky a second time, especially since there were still 50+ tunnels for me to enter, so I went straight for the second tunnel and stepped inside. Time went on, and I decided to take a lunch break after returning to the grand chamber for the 19th time.
It was already close to 2 p.m., and the consistent lack of anything noteworthy had worn my excitement down somewhat. The fact that the whole thing felt a bit monotonous without any interesting discoveries to shake things up played a part as well, so eating some nice food to recharge myself before diving right back to it sounded like a good idea.
While we ate, Nyx/Umbreon and Thor/Raichu declared that they wanted to stay inside Utopia for the rest of my home tour, so it was just Mothra/Butterfree, who was content with lounging on my head, and Hades/Gengar, who was happy staying in my shadow, who returned to the grand chamber with me.
-----------------------------
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