I ended up capturing that Skarmory though I could not help but wonder if Skarmory was blind or stupid since he dared to attack Hera/Pidgeot with his (low) gold stage prowess. Still, possible delusions or stupidity aside, Skarmory had deep yellow potential, so I chose to capture him anyway. Once he was inside Utopia I had ways to get Skarmory to behave even if he was delusional or stupid, though thankfully it turned out that that was not the case. Apparently, Hera had not bothered radiating her power as she was flying so Skarmory had assumed she would be at his stage at most before he attacked her in an attempt to subdue her for the chance at some nsfw action.
I honestly felt a stab of irritation at Skarmory for that, but chose to disregard it since Hera had beaten him up and stuff like that was admittedly something not so uncommon for Skarmory and many other species in the wild. Anyway, only after Skarmory attacked did Hera show off her power as she proceeded to beat him up. Hearing that part made me smile a bit and made things easier since all I, as in my 2nd thought stream, had to tell Skarmory was to behave after introducing him to his fellow Skarmory who took over and began to share details on Utopia.
Skarmory had been very attentive ever since I brought the female Sakrmory over, and I was happy to see him get along with the female I already had. With her light green potential and his now improved green potential, their affections could likely result in some decent offspring. Not to mention that it would ensure that the horny bird would not bother any of the other birds since Skarmory females did not tolerate any nonsense from their partners, they bonded for life and expected the same from their partner. That was a really long-term commitment right there since Skarmory had the steel typing, which made their basic lifespan quite long, even if it was not as long as that of pure steel types or that of some of the other steel type combinations.
Meanwhile, after balling Skarmory and letting my 2nd thought stream deal with it, I asked Hera if she was planning to continue flying around, stick with us, or if she wanted me to move her back to Utopia. Hera chose to return to Utopia, so after completing the transfer, we continued traveling. As it happened, the rest of our journey was quite calm with nothing outstanding happening aside from some battles against either wild Pokemon or people we came across while walking. Unfortunately, since I was traveling close to the main path of the route, the wild Pokemon and trainers were not that strong, so it was Squirtle, Vendrak/Salandit, Fortuna/Togekiss, and her fellows who got to see most of the action.
I only had to resort to gold stage Pokemon twice, and that chance went to Kimura/Hitmonform to reward him for his diligence and Hades/Gengar to thank him for his steady presence in my shadow. There were some light complaints from the others, as in my other gold stage Pokemon along with some of the dark gold ones, that they would like the chance to work off some stress against strangers as well, but there was honestly not much I could do about that aside from promising them that I would pay a visit to the Battle Club in Fallabor City to let them let out steam there. That had them cheer and I made a mental note to not forget what I just promised.
Grouday morning had me go through with our weekly check-up first before I left Utopia, so I sped up a bit to compensate for the delayed departure. Nonetheless, we were still going at a relatively relaxed pace as I was not even power walking. According to my calculations, we should have been able to reach the periphery of Fallabor City around dinner time if we kept this speed up; Yet, by the time we usually entered Utopia for dinner, we had still not arrived at Fallabor City's boundary. That was due to me forgetting to consider lunchtime in my calculation and lowballing the number of challenges/attacks we would experience. I should have considered that the number of people/trainers we would meet would rise as we came closer to Fallabor City, but I hadn't.
Those two points were why I still had roughly two more hours to walk, at my current pace, if I wanted to make it to Fallabor City; More if I wanted to reach the inner area of the city. Honestly, I had kind of expected a call from my parents and some messages from my friends or a call at some point of the day due to the Gym Challenge tomorrow. I had kind of assumed that some of them would want to be present for that, and would thus call me to arrange the meet-up before the challenge, but no messages or calls came, so I was not in a particular rush to arrive early. Hence, I decided to cover the rest of the way tomorrow, so I went ahead and entered Utopia for dinner on time.
After dinner, I finally talked with my Pokemon about our battle plan for tomorrow, or rather the roster for the Gym Challenge. Everyone was curious about who would get to fight, and I straight up told them that the fighters were chosen from among the dark gold Pokemon and that there were only two possibly three exceptions that were chosen because we were going into the challenge nearly entirely blind, and I wanted to be prepared for any eventuality.
The exception was simply because while I was certain that the Gym Leader would use dark gold stage Pokemon since this was an 8-Badge 3 Star challenge, there was a possibility that at least the 1st Gym Trainer would use some gold stage Pokemon, and I wanted to match that if it happened, which was why I would open the first match with Kun-Peng/Azuraid, who was at the precipice of completing his limit breaking phase. If he got to face a gold stage Pokemon, good, then he got to battle more; If he faced a dark gold stage Pokemon, just as good since I went with him in hopes that the battle(s) would push him enough to complete his limit breaking.
After Kun either lost or beat 2 of the 4 Pokemon of the 1st Gym Trainer, I would send out either Ali/Gallade, if the opponent was using gold stage Pokemon or (low) dark gold ones since it might help him complete the first round of his limit breaking, or Abzu/Milotic since he was close to advancing to the (high) dark gold stage. I had considered using Gwen/Gardevoir, but honestly, unless I made things purposefully hard for her the battle would benefit her much less than those two, which was why I went with them instead.
Either way, I was sure that those two could handle the first battle, but if they fell a bit short, I was ready to send out Kimura to close things up. That could be seen as a reward for his diligence, though it was his only chance to participate in this challenge, so he had to hope that the battles would be more challenging than I was expecting them to be. The second battle, which I was certain would be solely against dark gold stage Pokemon, would be left to Parvati/Beedrill, Gaia/Nidoqueen, Seb/Nidoking, as well as Luna/Clefable, and I was planning to let them fight a battle each.
Parvati got a turn because I was certain she would sulk if I did not give her the chance to participate at all. Seb and Gaia got to battle as a reward for accompanying me across the desert since they were among the ones who wanted to let out some steam. Luna got to participate/close up due to her typing and because I wanted to let her battle even if it was not against Gym Leader Ryujin. As for the final Gym Battle, Ryujin/Gyarados as a fellow Ryujin would definitely be participating. Along with him, I would be using Osiris/Skellibra, Nyx/Umbreon, Manami/Lapras, Dilong/Stan/Gyarados, and possibly Shino/Yanmega.
I would not necessarily use them in that order or even all of them since I was going to let them go at it until they could not continue anymore, but this was who I was planning to use if it came down to it. The only way I might change it was if I suddenly ended up facing her ace Salamance or something of that level because she decided to test/push me. In that case, I would have to pull out Mothra/Butterfree, and possibly follow up with Luna to rely on her immunity.
There was some laughter as I presented my plan, especially when I mentioned that Parvati would pout if I did not let her participate, which had her protest much to everyone's amusement. Still, no one complained against the line-up and I was happy to see them accept it along with the fact that they might not get to fight even if they made it on the list depending on how the battles went. We spent the rest of the night playing hangman, and even though everyone was still happily playing, I eventually had to call for a stop when I saw that their enthusiasm had not waned even after midnight.
The next morning I left Utopia straight after breakfast, and I was not sure if it was because it was the last spurt but I ended up coming across a little herd of Numel led by a single Camerupt about an hour later. I had no problem getting close to them and after earning their favor by offering them some food, I checked them out. I had honestly not expected much since there were just 11 Numel in the herd, but I found 2 Numel that qualified for Utopia and one of them even had green potential. It turned out that that one was the son of the Camerupt, but thankfully Camerupt did not mind letting Numel go with me after I convinced her that her Numel would have as much to eat as he wanted.
I briefly considered taking the whole herd in but decided against it when Camerupt shared that they were migrating to the mountain range to join up with other Numel/Camerupt to work on the next generation. Hearing that, I even considered if I should let the green Numel go to help raise the number of decent Numel in the future by a bit, but eventually just forwent taking the deep yellow one and only brought away the green Numel. I also let them all eat their fill before I let them go their way while we continued along ours.
Anyway, there were no further surprises after that, and as I had expected yesterday, I made it to the periphery of Fallabor City roughly two hours after I left Utopia. Knowing from experience that it could take me hours to reach the inner city if I took things at my usual pace, I chose to rush ahead instead. That way it took me just 15ish minutes to arrive at the edge of the inner area of Fallabor City. Once I made it there, I took out my phone, and after confirming once again that there were no calls or messages to ask me to meet up, I opened the web browser to look for a few things I was planning to deal with while I was in Fallabor City.
I looked up the reputable 2nd hand and antique stores across the city center as well as the inner area since that was where I was most likely going to find the old plushy I needed for the Mimikyu Nurturing Matrix. I also looked up the best fabric shops in the area since I needed quite a bit of that for the Mimikyu Matrix as well. The only other thing I needed aside from those was bee/candlewax for the Litwick Nurturing Matrix, so I also checked out where I could find that. I had to exclude smaller/casual stores since I needed a lot of wax, possibly up to a ton. Once I had a list of stores, I marked them on the map app and made my way to the closest one.
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