After I made a mental note to deal with the fabric and plushy issue as soon as possible, I focused back on the present and my immediate surroundings. I saw everyone curiously watching me, which was not all that surprising since I had spent close to 45 minutes focusing on Utopia. Still, before Mothra/Butterfree could pose her question, I moved all of us, the ghost parade included, to Utopia since I knew that I did not want to give the answer to the question I knew was coming in such a public space even if we were, not really in the middle but still, in the desert.
There was a momentary commotion among the ghosts at the sudden shift, but everyone calmed down swiftly when they noticed that we were now inside Utopia. Mothra just shrugged before asking me how things went and what took so long since things usually went decently fast whenever new stuff got introduced to Utopia. I saw no reason to keep Utopia's new additions a secret, so I freely told Mothra about the new Ghost Nurturing Matrixes that had been added as well as the two that would be added once I managed to get my hands on the missing components.
I was aware that everyone else heard my reply, but I did not mind. I kind of enjoyed the awe/feelings that radiated from the platinum ghosts and the rest of the ghost parade/army. My Pokemon were more controlled in their reaction to the news since they were already somewhat desensitized by all the stuff I and/or Utopia kept pulling, though I could still feel that they were impressed, even if they did not show it. Well, except for Hades/Gengar, who released a *woop* of joy before declaring that he would take very good care of his future juniors while rubbing his hands together in obvious anticipation.
I had to laugh a bit when I saw his eagerness. Seeing him like that, I made the decision to leave their training to Hades, so I told him to take good care of them in my stead before adding that he would be responsible for the training of all Gastly and their eventual evolutions, which had Hades grin very widely. At least he did until I told him that he was also going to be in charge of keeping them in line to ensure that they did not cause any excessive chaos. Witnessing Hades going from near psychotic grin to slightly stupefied had me chuckle which had Hades put on a pout. That finally had the others lose control and they all began to laugh. Hades, being who he was, ended up joining in as well after pouting for a few more moments.
Anyway, once things calmed down I turned to the platinum ghosts and their parade/army before thanking them for their help. I told them that things would have gone nowhere near as smooth without them, and I made sure to reward each of the 1149 ghosts, platinum leaders included, with a generous amount of snacks and food intended for ghost-type Pokemon. The army saluted at my words, and once I was done handing them their rewards, I had them disperse before leaving Utopia with my desert exploration group.
After we reappeared at the ruins, I decided to move on and head for the second/final Trapinch spot on the northern Trapinch trail. Maybe it was the prior excitement but Seb/Nidoking chose to not mess with my sand surfing this time around. He talked with Gaia/Nidoqueen, Mothra, and Hades about the new additions, or rather, Hades kept chatting about all the things he was going to do with the Gastly once they started coming in while the others indulged him by listening to him brag and boast. I naturally listened in as well but mostly kept quiet, content with letting them/Hades do the talking.
Their conversation took a turn when Hades shifted the focus to Seb and Gaia. He mentioned that Mothra had Optimus/Butterfree along with the many Butterfree minions I prepared for her and him to an extent. Hades proudly added that he himself was going to get a lot of minions as well thanks to the latest development, not minding that he was reiterating the obvious. Nonetheless, after he did his bit of bragging he brought up that he had heard me mention that the Nidoran-line was a communal one and he also added that we had seen examples of that. He followed that up by asking both Seb and Gaia if they were interested in adding a Nidoran community to Utopia for them to lead.
Hades mentioned that only the two and their parents as well as their sibling lived there so far, and he glanced in my direction before saying that he was sure that I would be happy to gather a bunch of Nidoran for them. I chose to confirm that and the Nido siblings traded looks at that. Gaia admitted that she had thought once or twice that it would be nice to have more Nidos in Utopia when she saw the many groups living there, but she had not genuinely considered the issue or the possibility of leading them since she had been more focused on training while spending her free time with either her friends or family.
Seb nodded in agreement when she said the last bit. He proclaimed that he had been focusing on his training and was generally satisfied with being able to spend the rest of his time with his family and friends, so he had not really thought about the matter of adding more Nidos to Utopia, though he added that he would not mind doing so now that the topic had come up. Seb reasoned that they had already become pretty strong and that their training was likely going to be a long-term thing once they broke through to the next (sixth) stage, so leading a tribe as a side gig would probably be a nice distraction/past time for whenever they were not training.
When he mentioned that they might prove useful to me at some point, Gaia nodded in agreement, and she did so again when Seb added or rather emphasized that he would rather wait until they broke through to the platinum stage before we went about adding a herd of Nidos to Utopia. He looked at me when he said the last bit; I just shrugged and told him that I agreed with him on that. Gaia silently acquiesced to her brother's proposal while Mothra bragged that she had Optimus to take care of all that bothersome stuff, which had all of us chuckle at her carefree attitude.
The conversation then switched to Hades who began to openly brainstorm on how he should go about training his future underling. I considered telling him that there was still a month before the first Gastly appeared, leaving him more than enough time to think about how to handle everything, including their training but decided to let him go on seeing how enthusiastic he was about the whole thing. I even ended up chiming in quite a few times when I saw that Hades was making serious plans. We did some serious brainstorming and finally put together a few move sets that the Gastly would focus on with different levels of priority.
After considering everyone's input, Hades finally decided to let the Gastly first focus solely on the most basic moves a Gastly could learn made up of Smog, Lick, Confuse Ray, Hypnosis, and Poison Gas. He had initially been planning to let them keep to those until they had raised them to advanced mastery, but after discussing things with us, he decided to let them focus on them until they attained proficiency instead following which they would learn another 5-move set made up of Night Shade, Astonish, Will-O-Wisp, Spite, and Hex. Those would then be the focus until they were raised to beginner mastery.
Once that happened, Hades would let the Gastly focus back on the first move set, specifically Confuse Ray and Poison Gas until they managed to raise them to advanced mastery. There was a decent chance that the Gastly would be ready to evolve by then, so it would likely be Haunter that would start learning the third 5-piece move set made up of Shadow Ball, Curse, Shadow Punch, Mean Look, and Toxic. They would then be free to choose 5 of the 10 beginner moves they knew depending on their personal preferences and raise them to proficiency.
After they managed to do that, they would start working on the final batch of moves Hades/we expected all his minions to know which was made up of Sucker Punch, Venoshock, Dark Pulse, Dream Eater, Payback, and Destiny Bond. It was possible that some of the Haunter would have evolved to Gengar at that point; Either way, they would be free to focus on whichever move they wanted after that, though we agreed to use the mastery levels of their moves along with their strength and battle prowess as criteria to select Hades' deputies among the Gengar/Haunter. We naturally knew that it would take some time before their numbers became high enough to actually justify that.
Just as Hades began to make an argument about his future deputies receiving the same resources as the reserve and main team, despite the fact that that was going to take at least 3 to 4 years, we finally arrived at the final Trapinch settlement on our to-do list. Our group stopped roughly fifty meters away from the Trapinch, who had noticed our arrival and seemed to be alert. I spread my aura as well as psionic senses and located 114 signals/life signs, so I wasted no time and let out 30 Trapinch, who then headed towards the Trapinch ahead to negotiate in my stead.
Their discussion seemed to go well with no attacks on my Trapinch. They spoke for around three minutes before my Trapinch called us over. I was informed that the tribe was willing to let me see if I could persuade some of them to leave with us in exchange for setting up a small berry orchard for their tribe. I accepted that and asked the Trapinch at the forefront to call over all Trapinch so that I could check them out. The Trapinch bobbed its large and before it released a cry following which Trapinch began to come up one by one. I directly began to check them out, and by the time I checked the 10th one I noticed that no more Trapinch were coming over.
A quick check with my senses showed that 18 Trapinch had not come up and were still underground. They were actually gathered together and when I turned my head in that direction the Trapinch representative told me that the younglings and their caretakers were there, but it made no move to call them over. Seeing that it had no intention to follow up, I decided to leave the matter alone seeing how there were still 85 Trapinch for me to check. Hence, I turned my head back to the Trapinch in front of me and continued to Observe them.
I was happy when the 23rd Trapinch happened to have green potential, which was a bit funny since I had not seen even a deep yellow potential Trapinch until now. My luck seemed to see a small spike after that since I ended up finding three deep yellow and one light green Trapinch by the time I observed the 50th Trapinch, which was nice. I did not know if it was because my expectations went up, but I ended up having to wait until the 88th Trapinch for another deep yellow potential Trapinch, making me believe that I had exhausted my luck in the first half. I released a sigh before I checked the last 7 Trapinch, though none of them attracted my attention.
One green, one light green, and four deep yellow was not too bad I guess. Just because I felt like it I checked the leader as well even though I knew that I could not recruit it without forcing things. Naturally, that one ended up having deep green potential, making me regret having checked it in the first place. Ignoring the pang I felt, I brought the 6 Trapinch to the front and told the leading Trapinch that these were the ones I had chosen. It threw them a glance before giving me the green light, so I balled them all, before turning to Seb and Gaia to start working on the orchad.
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