The next day after Ryujin's breakthrough was the last day of this month for me, or rather it was my last work day for this month since Grouday happened to be the actual last day of the (35th) month.
Sadly, we still failed to locate both the Ampharosite and the robber by the end of my shift. I knew that others in our unit would continue working on the search over the weekend, but I had kinda hoped to be present when the Ampharosite got recovered.
Ever since I was allowed to step out of the safety of our home in Hope Town, I had been keeping an eye out for any kind of Mega Stone. Unfortunately, I had learned rather quickly that finding Mega Stones in the wild was incredibly difficult, borderline impossible some would say, and considering that I had failed to stumble onto any myself during the last 12ish years, I was inclined to agree with that sentiment.
It was not as if there were no Mega Stones in human hands. The victim of our case was proof that there were some Mega Stones around. Not to mention that the alliance and its members had some as well. For example, some of the prominent Gym Leaders, Elite members, and Champions were known to have some.
However, the first group guarded their Mega Stones jealously, and I had not heard about any of them being willing to sell the ones in their hands. As for the ones with the alliance, I did not have access to the alliance channels that would allow me to acquire a Mega Stone for now since the conditions for that were too strict.
Anyway, this rarity/difficulty meant that I had yet to get the chance to touch any kind of Mega Stone, much less try to place it inside Utopia for a moment to see if it could replicate or produce a Mega Stone, though I was somewhat confident that it would work.
I mean, considering that Mega Stones were naturally occurring objects, I was confident that it was possible, even if their nature made it likely that the replication/production of Mega Stones either required some extra steps or that Utopia's capabilities were not good enough yet.
Regardless, this case gave me a real chance to come into contact with a Mega Stone, and if I managed to slip the stone inside Utopia for a few seconds I would be able to see if I could get a stone of my own or not. Due to this, I was really hoping that I would be present when we managed to find the Ampharosite.
Still, there was nothing I could do for now, so I simply left for my extended weekend, and since there would be a party on Kyoday, I decided to directly head to Hope Town instead of hanging around in Celadon City until then. Once I was home, a simple sweep was enough to clean up the dust that had accumulated over the last 4 days. With the house clean, I went ahead and entered Utopia to spend the rest of the day with my Pokemon.
The next morning, I decided that since I was already in Hope Town, it would be better to settle the matter with the rest of the orphanage employees, so I made my way to the agency. Originally, I was only missing 5 regular caretakers, 1 clerk, and 1 live-in matron to complete my potential employee list, but I decided to add 2 more cooks to the list.
The reason I decided to add two more was because I chose to add a six-hour shift during the evening/night, which would be used to prepare the ingredients for the next day. This way the cooks would be able to focus only on the actual act of cooking without having to prepare the ingredients, and thanks to Silph.Co's storage we did not have to worry about the prepped ingredients not being fresh.
Anyway, a minute after I reported my arrival at the reception, Viola came to receive me, and I followed her to her office. As usual, she handed me the tablet and let me look through the applicants. Since I had set the interview dates with the marked/possible employees to the first Kyoday of the new year, 04.01.2185, I wanted to be done with the selection itself.
I went through all the caretaker candidates and marked 3 females as well as 2 males for the interview. I then looked at the matron candidates, leaving the clerk for last. Amongst the possible matrons, none were better than either Martha or Penny whom I had previously highlighted, so I ended up having to choose between the two of them.
Both ladies were a bit older so I had been hoping to find a slightly younger person for the job, but none of the younger applicants came close to having a resume comparable to those of Martha and Penny.
I ultimately picked Penny Carter since I liked her resume slightly more than Martha's resume. She used to be a trainer who joined the military a decade into her journey. She stayed with the military for a few decades before she retired and switched to being a teacher.
Penny then worked as a teacher for a few decades before she was offered a position as a principal of an elementary school, which she accepted. Another few decades as a principal later, she retired after having worked for nearly three centuries.
It had been nearly 12 years since her retirement and it seemed to me that Penny had enough of it considering that she had applied for the job. Honestly, aside from the age issue, some of my initial hesitation had been due to her and Martha being overqualified for the job of orphanage matron.
I wanted someone who would be willing to work as a matron for a few decades at least and I had been worried that they would want to stop or switch to something better a few years down the line. I guess I would simply have to bring that up during the actual job interview.
Anyway, I marked Penny for the position and told Viola of my choice. This left only the clerk spot, so I looked through the list of applicants. I had initially been planning to select a lady for the job, but one of the male applicants caught me off guard due to how utterly overqualified he was for the job.
Honestly, it was absurd how overqualified the guy was, and I could not believe that someone like this would apply for the position of clerk in my orphanage. I mean I had some applicants who were somewhat overqualified for the positions they applied to, but those were in the realm of the possible/acceptable in my mind, so I ended up selecting most of them.
However, the resume of Leon Schnitzel was so exaggerated that I was unable to accept that someone like him would apply for a position like this one. This was either the most obvious plant of all time or the system glitched and accidentally added his profile amongst the applicants for the clerk job I issued.
I turned to Viola and asked her if there really was a former Elite 4 candidate among the applicants, and she looked awkward as well when she heard my question. Nonetheless, she confirmed that "Sir" Schnitzel did indeed apply for the position more than a month ago, but that he added the stipulation that he would resign after 6 years.
The mention of the application time, as well as the employment period, gave me an idea of what this was about. Looking closer at the application, I saw that she was right about the time limit, and looking at the date of the application, I saw that it was a day after the first attempt at my life due to the bounty on my head.
For me, this confirmed my suspicion that "Sir" Schnitzel, as Viola said, had been asked/tasked by the alliance to apply for the position. This seemed to be a blatant offer by the alliance. They gave me the option to employ Leon Schnitzel if I wanted, and if I was not wrong, it was to ensure that the orphanage would not be used against me.
The period was limited to 6 years since they seemed to expect me to handle the issue by then. The fact that they went about it in such a roundabout way and gave me the option to refuse, really made me feel respected.
Still, this was just my own inference, so I asked Viola to excuse me for a moment before I called Professor Oak to ask if I was right or if it was some plot. The professor confirmed my suspicion. He also congratulated me on my junior professorship before giving me a heads-up that the news of my professorship would be released on the first of the next month. He then laughed and told me to have fun with that before hanging up.
With the confirmation from the professor, I marked Schnitzel as accepted since declining such goodwill would be stupid. Anyway, that marked the end of my visit, so I wished Viola a wonderful new year in advance and left.
With nothing else to do, I made my way to Mt. Moon to pay Elder Clefable as well as the rest of Luna/Clefable's tribe a visit. I let everyone out during our stay there. The tribe's main cave had a large lake where the water types could stay, so no one got left out. We stayed on Mt. Moon for the rest of the day, and I only traveled back to Hope Town an hour before midnight.
The next morning my parents came home, and we prepared the house for the party. A few of the guests came early to help with the preparation, and by 5 p.m. everyone had arrived, and when I said everyone, I meant that literally.
This was the first time all my friends, and their families, had gotten together simultaneously. Usually, at least one person ended up being otherwise busy, but this time everyone had come. Heck, Yu even brought along his parents.
Anyway, everyone congratulated me on becoming a Junior Professor, and we spent the rest of the day celebrating my success. It was definitely nice to see everyone. I could not help but feel a bit sad seeing them starting to leave after 10 p.m. Still, that was how things were, and by 11 p.m. everyone was gone.
Grouday was spent with my parents, though I did make sure to reserve two hours after breakfast for the routine check-up of my Pokemon. At the end of the day my parents left, and I made my way back to Celadon City.
The next day was not only the start of another week for me. No, this Arcday also signaled the start of the last month of my police phase. Furthermore, it also happened to be the last month of 2184.
On a side note, due to Raquaza's patrol, Palkiday of the fourth week would be the last day of my police phase since Arcday of week 5, along with Mewday, the last day of the year 2184, were holidays.
The same was true for the rest of the days of the first week of 2185, and because of that I only had to report for the next phase of my practical year at the start of week no.2. It would be a lie to say I was not interested in seeing firsthand how one of the existing orphanages was being run, so I was looking forward to the next phase, even if the phase was only a month long.
Anyway, the beginning of the day went as usual, I went to the Police HQ for work, met up with Detective Monroe, and looked into the progress of our current case. I could not help but be a bit happy when I saw that they had not found the culprit yet, even though I knew that it was somewhat inappropriate to feel like that.
Yet, there was nothing I could do about it since I was just a human as well. It was a matter of interest to me as well, so my feelings on the matter were a semi-automatic thing. Still, personal feelings aside, we resumed our work on the case, and were busy investigating any of the clues that had been gathered over the weekend.
We were interrupted two hours before the end of my shift by none other than Chief Junsa himself. He came up to us/me and congratulated me on becoming the youngest Junior Professor in recent history. His words surprised a lot of my fellow officers and they all chimed in as well, expressing their admiration for my feat.
Apparently, the official announcement that Professor Oak had told me about had happened, and Chief Junsa happened to catch it, so he came to congratulate me in person. We chatted for close to 10 minutes before he rounded up the conversation. The chief then told everyone to get to work, much to the disappointment of everyone else, and left.
I naturally followed his orders as well and resumed working until the end of my shift. Once my shift was over, Detective Monroe as well as Loneson approached me along with a few of our colleagues and invited me to dinner to celebrate my professorship. I accepted the invitation, and we made our way out of the HQ.
As soon as I/we stepped outside, I got ambushed, but not by any assassin. No, a bunch of reporters crowded me and tried to interview me. They threw out a bunch of questions, and I heard my esteemed colleagues snickering at my predicament.
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