While I was going to try to recruit some Pokemon whose lifespan was starting to run out, there were a few factors that affected my options. First of all, I had no interest in any Pokemon below the gold stage, which unsurprisingly accounted for the majority of the old Pokemon, leaving me with a limited number of choices.
Something else to note was that there were no dark gold stage Pokemon among them as well. It was not as if no Pokemon of that level could be found in the stretch we were responsible for, because there were and I had seen 3 of them during these 2 months, but none of them were running out of time, which disqualified them from operation "Old Folk".
Another point that affected the number of potential recruits was whether the Pokemon in question was a loner or belonged to either a family, group, or even tribe. I did not even bother with those belonging to a tribe, but all my attempts at talking to the "limited" belonging to a group during these two months were rebuffed as well, and I stopped trying after the seventh one.
I had more luck with the families in that matter and managed to establish contact with 4 elders who were part of a family, though their families could be considered small ones, which was probably why I succeeded considering how my attempts with the medium and large ones failed.
Anyway, adding those 4 elders, I had managed to form a decent rapport with a total of 25 old Pokemon that were close to running out of time, and I was going to make them my offer one by one. I did not need to go out of my way to search them out since we were bound to come across them during our patrol. Not that I could have done so if I wanted to since I had to follow Ranger Elisabeth's lead, which meant sticking to her and not going out on my own.
My first "proper" week ended up being quite unlucky, at least as far as my recruitment was concerned. Our route allowed me to meet up with 6 of the 25 "oldies", at least it should have done that. Unfortunately, two of them were apparently gone and I failed to find them in the area. One of the places had signs of a struggle/battle, so things were looking bleak for that Pokemon.
The second place had no signs of struggle, so it was possible that the Noctowl simply decided to retreat somewhere else instead of meeting an early end. Either way, I missed the chance to recruit those two from the get-go, leaving me with "only" 4 more attempts. Sadly, none of those meetings went the way I wanted as well.
The first one, a (mid) gold stage Victreebel declined my offer despite listening to my proposal and explanation till the end. Victreebel straight-up told me that she had no interest in living longer than she was currently going to. She did not want to talk about the reason why she said that, but I could feel her resolution and a deep-seated sadness when she said that, so I did not dig deeper knowing I had no way to change her mind unless I messed with her emotions as well as memories, which I was not willing to do.
The second one was arguably worse. When we arrived in the area where the old Breloom I was interested in was living, Breloom was in the middle of a struggle against a Fearow, and it was losing. Sadly, Elisabeth stopped me from interfering on Breloom's behalf. She said that we as rangers, or add-on "rangers" in my case, were not allowed to interfere in an ongoing hunt like this one.
Had we arrived before the conflict happened or even at the beginning of the conflict she would not have stopped me, but since the struggle had been going on for some time, I was not allowed to interrupt the Fearow from attaining what it "earned". I honestly did not like that at all. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do but watch as Breloom lost and died. Well, at least he died fighting like a warrior.
Fearow threw a look in our direction after dealing with Breloom but ignored us when it saw that we were moving away, which we did because Elisabeth was not interested in seeing Fearow devour Breloom, and I had to agree with her on that point. Honestly, that ended up being the worst "encounter" that week, but the final two were not much better for my plan since both Pokemon ended up disagreeing.
After my experience with Raticate, I had thought that operation "Old Folk" would be quite easy, but reality seemed to be intent on proving me wrong. Still, I was not giving up hope. I mean, there was no way the other elderly on my list were going to be as "suicidal" as the three who declined my offer, right? Okay, maybe calling it suicidal was a bit much since they were not actively trying to unalive themselves, but I was having a problem with their lack of interest in living longer since it was messing with my plan.
Anyway, after the events of the prior week, I began my second week praying/hoping that it would go better than the first one. We would be meeting 8 of the leftover 19 "elders" if everything went well, and I would already be happy as long as 2 or 3 ended up joining, though I was naturally hoping all of them would join.
Unfortunately, the encounter on Arcday left me disappointed since the Ariados I talked to proved to be uncooperative. Ariados said that she was willing to join, but I was feeling a lot of negative emotions despite the agreement, so after some deliberation, I went ahead and took a peak into her mind.
The minds of bug types were always harder to read than that of others, but I still learned that she was not planning to hold up her part of the deal if what I promised her worked, and honestly, aside from messing with her mind and forcing her to keep her word by manipulating her memories/being, I had no way to enforce our agreement.
Since I was unwilling to do that for various reasons, I ended up aborting the negotiation. Ariados did not like that at all which ended up with her attacking me in "retaliation", but Hades easily stopped her, and sent her sleeping. He refrained from doing more due to the presence of Ranger Elisabeth, and we continued our patrol, just leaving her sleeping there.
Thankfully, Mewday ended up bringing some good tidings or I would have started thinking that my idea might have been a bit too naive. Nonetheless, I ended up successfully persuading the (high) gold stage elder Jumpluff into joining the protection program, though Jumpluff only agreed provided she could bring along her little family, and that I allowed them to live inside the safe haven/Utopia.
Naturally, that was totally fine with me so I ended up adding the elder Jumpluff, two "regular" Jumpluff, along with a few Skiploom and Hoppip. The recruitment of this small family definitely helped rekindle my belief in my plan, though I nearly stumbled upon another problem when Elisabeth told me that this was pretty much the limit of what she could allow me to recruit at once, which meant that I could not "touch" any groups above 15 members.
That was no problem per se since my main targets were loners, but it would end up interfering if one of the other 3 family possessing elders insisted on taking them along as well, and I knew that they had more than 15 Pokemon in the family. There was nothing I could do about that, and I would have to deal with that if it came down to it.
After a good Mewday, Giratiday ended up bringing me some more good news, though this time it was not related to operation "Old Folk". The good news came from Abzu/Milotic, who asked me to check his status, which confirmed that he had completed his limit-breaking phase. Since there was no way that I would make Abzu delay his breakthrough for an extra 3ish weeks just so that I could be present in person, I ended up attending the event using an earth clone, though I did make sure to speak about it with Abzu in advance to confirm that he was okay with it.
Abzu did try to say that he was okay with waiting until the break, but after some back and forth he admitted that he did not mind me using an earth clone either since in his opinion I would still be present. I would just be there in an earth body instead of a flesh and bone one which he did not mind. Once I got that assurance, we called everyone to Abzu as well as Tiamat/Milotic's area and began the pre-breakthrough tradition.
Everything went as usual, just with an earthen touch on my part, and the breakthrough went pretty smoothly. There was some brightness/light, but that was normal since his potential was supposed to rise to light aurora. Once the breakthrough was over, and his (mid) dark gold undulations spread, Tiamat and I went up to him to congratulate him first. My hug was an "earthy" one, while Tiamat's was a Milotic one, where they entwined their antennae and touched foreheads.
Anyway, once the others joined in as well, I proceeded to check out Abzu's new/updated status sheet.
'Name: Abzu
Species: Milotic
Gender: Male
Age: 14+ Years
-
Type: Water
Potential: Light Aurora (22.58%)*
{Deep Purple (63.98%) -> (65.16%) -> Light Aurora (22.58%)}'
His new potential was as expected, though it was interesting to note that his percentage was double that of Tiamat. Regardless, I directly checked which third ability he ended up unlocking, and unfortunately, I did not end up being surprised.
'Abilities: Marvel Scale, Competitive, Cute Charm*'
Against the odds, I had hoped that Abzu would gain something else, but it seems he was destined to become a lady killer after all. Well, at least the ability was somewhat decent. That was what I thought until I moved on to the next section and saw that he had actually unlocked a talent.
'Talents: Daunt*'
The title alone already gave me an idea of what Daunt did, but I still read its description to be sure, and the effect was kind of like I expected it to be, but also better. Daunt had two effects that could be triggered.
The first one applied to the start of a confrontation. There was a certain chance for the opposite male to be apprehensive due to Abzu's daunting aura/presence, which might cause it to hesitate, giving Abzu time for a first strike. This was essentially a starting "flinch" so to say.
The second effect was one that could happen during battle. There was a chance to trigger a "flinch" whenever Abzu got attacked. What could happen was practically the other party being intimidated by Abzu's daunting aura/presence being released as a result of his reaction to being attacked, which was practically what Cute Charm did to females, just with intimidation instead of infatuation.
To me, it was pretty apparent that Daunt had a pretty high chance of being related to his new ability. It kind of presented a somewhat superior mirror to Cute Charm, with it targeting males, but instead of "charming" them, Daunt "intimidated" them. I called it a somewhat superior mirror due to the possible starting flinch it could cause, which Cute Charm did not have a counterpart for.
Regardless, his new talent made his new ability much more pleasing in my eyes. I went ahead and shared the good news with Abzu, Tiamat, and the others. Abzu's reaction was quite positive and that was what counted. While everyone was busy congratulating and teasing him, I continued to look through the rest of his status sheet.
'Bond: Mikail (deep)*
Quirks: None
----
Parameters:
Stage: Dark Gold Stage (mid)*
Vitality: D
Strength: E
Endurance: D
Agility: D
Energy Capacity: D
Energy Density: C'
As usual, I had felt our bond deepening, and that even though he was inside Utopia while I was outside, which was interesting to know. His starting stage had already been revealed as well, though looking at his starting parameters, I could only say that this was about as mid as one could get.
It was clear that it would take him some time to reach the (high) substage, though I was confident that it would happen before the end of my journey's first year. Moving on, I took a peek at his type-relation section, only to be let down.
'Resistance: Fire (Minor), Water (Minor), Ice (Minor), Steel (Minor)
-
Weaknesses: Grass (Minor)
-
Standardized:
Electric, Grass (in progress)'
This section was the one point where Abzu was without a doubt ahead of Tiamat/Milotic, at least where it truly counted, and I had to admit I had been hoping that he would get lucky again, allowing him to get rid of his final weakness, but that did not happen. I guess Abzu would have to do it the old way after all, and he was still ahead of Tiamat who had yet to standardize her electric weakness, so there was that.
'Techniques:
-
(Unofficial) Initial:
Scorch Pump (C)
-
Beginner:
Hail (new)
-
Proficient:
Brine (new), Rest (new), Icy Wind (new), Breaking Swipe (new)
-
Advanced:
Muddy Water (new), Aqua Ring (+)
-
Mastered:
Hydro Pump (+), Surf (+)
-
Combo moves/Custom moves:
Scorch Pump (in progress)'
Anyway, I finished looking through the rest of Abzu's status sheet before I began to bring out the stuff for his celebration. Since we had gone ahead with the breakthrough, there was no need to delay the party either, and I took part using my Earth Clone.
---------------------
---------------------
This part is purely to display Abzu's status screen in one piece and does not count toward the word count.
'Name: Abzu
Species: Milotic
Gender: Male
Age: 14+ Years
-
Type: Water
Potential: Light Aurora (22.58%)
(Genetic) Modifier: None
Abilities: Marvel Scale, Competitive, Cute Charm
Talents: Daunt
Affinities: Water
-
Bond: Mikail (deep)
Quirks: None
----
Parameters:
Stage: Dark Gold Stage (mid)
Vitality: D
Strength: E
Endurance: D
Agility: D
Energy Capacity: D
Energy Density: C
----
Resistance: Fire (Minor), Water (Minor), Ice (Minor), Steel (Minor)
-
Weaknesses: Grass (Minor)
-
Standardized:
Electric, Grass (in progress)
----
Condition: Healthy, Happy, Excited
----
Masteries:
Water Energy Manipulation (Advanced)
----
Techniques:
-
(Unofficial) Initial:
Scorch Pump (C)
-
Novice:
Attract, Captivate
-
Beginner:
Water Sport, Hail
-
Proficient:
Splash, Tackle, Life Dew, Safeguard, Dragon Tail, Twister, Refresh, Flail, Wrap, Disarming Voice, Recover, Blizzard, Hyper Beam, Double Team, Swift, Iron Head, Avalance, Mud Shot, Brine, Rest, Icy Wind, Breaking Swipe
-
Advanced:
Water Pulse, Ice Beam, Endure, Coil, Rain Dance, Protect, Iron Tail, Aqua Tail, Whirlpool, Dragon Pulse, Dragon Dance, Muddy Water, Aqua Ring
-
Mastered:
Water Gun, Scald, Hydro Pump, Surf
-
Combo moves/Custom moves:
Scorch Pump (in progress)'
-----------------------------
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