It had been 6 days since he had helped his mother with choosing her new Pokemon, and he had to say it had been an amusing yet idle time for him. Idle, because he still could not continue his journey towards the coast and amusing, because of the consequences of his action in helping his mother.
Before they had returned from Honeydew City, his mother had reserved a potential check for her new Pokemon on the next day. So, the next morning after breakfast, he accompanied his mother to the test center in Honeydew City.
She told him that all Tier 6 and many Tier 5 cities had such test centers available and that they were established by the alliance so that trainers could check the potential of their Pokemon for a respectable fee. She mentioned that the fee was priced as it was to prevent lower-ranked trainers from mass-catching and releasing Pokemon since it would cost a fortune for them to pay for a huge number of tests.
As far as higher-ranked trainers were concerned, the high price made no big difference to them, because being strong paid well enough that the price was affordable enough. Now, from what he had seen/heard during their visit, the actual price seemed to be divided into 4, depending on the stage of the Pokemon that was being checked.
The reason the league wanted to prevent that was that such actions usually led to an unacceptable increase in the number of Pokemon tides. The alliance had witnessed such events in its history and did not want a repeat. They outlawed the willful mass capture by organizations and created a permit that was necessary for any such action.
Organizations that tried to do so without a permit were prosecuted harshly, but for individuals that mass-caught Pokemon to check their potential, another measure was found. The alliance did not want to interfere even more with their trainers, so they found a compromise by increasing the price of the test.
Of the 4 options, only 3 were available at the test center they visited. Still, it did kind of make sense, since the stronger the Pokemon the higher the cost, which meant that those of the 4th category were extremely strong, thus rare. So, procuring the necessary equipment for the test center was not worth the cost.
Checking Iron to Silver-stage Pokemon cost 100.000 Poke. The cost for Gold-stage Pokemon was 1.000.000 Poke, and the cost for Dark Gold-stage Pokemon was 10.000.000 Poke. Following that trend, Mikail assumed that the next stage would cost 100.000.000 Poke, which was a massive sum in his eyes.
The test itself happened behind closed doors and was executed by equipment produced by the alliance. The results were encrypted before they were saved in one of the databases of the alliance and it seemed that no more than 100 people worldwide had the privilege to access those databases.
The result of the test was then printed out by a specialized printer, produced by the alliance, that sealed the paper so that no one could check the result before the owner of the Pokemon. At least not without breaking the seal, which would expose them.
Anyway, his mother paid 200.000 Poke to have the potential of her Pokemon tested. After they returned her Pokemon together with the test results, she was astonished by the result. Mikail had known what those results were going to be, thanks to his observe function, which was superior to the means of the alliance.
The same could not be said about his mother, who according to her own words expected the potential of her new Pokemon to be 3-stars, or at most 4-stars. So, when she broke the seal and saw the result with her own eyes, she was really surprised.
It is quite funny to see the pupils of someone widen like that, especially when their face also shows an astonished look. Still, she managed to school her face quite fast, and put away the paper and her Pokeballs, before leaving the test center with him in tow.
After they had left the test center, he asked his mother about the test results, since he, obviously, had no way to know the results without her telling him. She quietly told him that Ponyta had 5-star potential and that Sneasel had 4-star potential. After that, she added that they would talk more in a moment and led him towards a park.
Once they sat down on one of the benches, she let out Emerald and told her to make sure no one was listening in on them. After that, she turned towards him with a serious look and asked him more about the "feeling" he told her about during their shopping trip yesterday.
He told her that if he came really close to some Pokemon, or if he touched them, then he would get a certain "feeling" from them. The stronger the feeling the better, but most Pokemon gave of a weak "feeling", like most of the Pokemon they had checked yesterday.
They quietly talked a bit more about it and he stuck to his story the whole time. After they were done talking, they visited "PokeDreams", the store where they had seen the Poochyena with light green potential, and his mother asked him to point out the one he told her about yesterday.
She bought him after he identified the right one, and then she asked him to compare the "feeling" the Poochyena gave him with the "feeling" her Sneasel and Ponyta gave him. He told her that Poochyena gave of the same "feeling" as her Sneasel, and she nodded at that.
She made another appointment at the test center for the next day and they returned home. During and after dinner they talked about what had happened that day and they decided that if the result really came out as Mikail had told her, then they would occasionally take him to stores selling Pokemon, to see if there were any Pokemon worth buying.
In case they found some, they would check their potential at different test centers after a while, before selling those they did not want to keep for profit. So, after they verified that the Poochyena did indeed possess a 4-star potential, his mother took him around multiple shops for the next two days to check out certain species if there were any with good potential.
He naturally could not check every single Pokemon inside a store since that would take too much time, so his mother would ask the employees which species they had available, and then she would choose some of them for him to check out.
He spent the next two days checking a huge number of Pokemon for their potential. They visited around 30 small as well as large stores, that sold Pokemon, during that time, and he did indeed manage to find some Pokemon with good potential.
He was not exactly sure how many Pokemon he had checked during that time, but he was confident that it was more than a thousand. Out of that number, he had located 6 Pokemon with 4-star potential and 1 with 5-star potential. At least that would be their potential according to the alliance standard.
The one with 5-stars was a light blue Hoothoot, and the 4-stars were a light green Pidgey, a light green Pikachu, a light green Sentret, a green Sandshrew, a green Voltorb, as well as a deep green Sunkern. Since they did not plan to keep any of these Pokemon, they decided to sell them all.
They gave the Pokemon to his father, who spent some time on Kyoday to take 4 Pokemon to the test center in Lime City and 3 Pokemon to the test center in Emerald City. After Edward saw that Mikail's "feeling" was accurate once again, he went around the stores of both cities to check out the prices of the species they had bought.
Once he had an estimate, Edward went around different stores to sell all 8 Pokemon. After some haggling, he managed to sell the 5-star Hoothoot for 3.200.000 Poke, and the 7 4-star Pokemon for 4.365.000 Poke. So, after subtracting their expenditures, they earned 4.435.000 Poke.
Mikail saw the happy look on his mother's face after she heard how much they earned from simply reselling some Pokemon and decided that it had been a good idea to tell them about his "feeling". They talked about the reselling business after celebrating for a bit and came to the decision to reserve 1 week every 3 months for the whole thing.
Mikail and his mother would spend 5 days going around stores to buy any Pokemon that caught Mikail's fancy and his father would spend the weekend selling those Pokemon. Additionally, it was also possible to keep one of the Pokemon, in case one of them really wanted the Pokemon for their team.
Anyway, that had happened yesterday, and today while they were watching the Grouday evening news, they saw that there has been major progress on the missing case on Route 4. Apparently, the investigators had managed to track down the suspect, after said suspect released all missing people except for one. The suspect turned out to be a Tangela, that used to belong to the last missing person.
As it turns out the Tangela had been abused by its trainer and had been enduring the abuse for quite a while. After it managed to break through to the gold stage it rebelled against its trainer. It first put to sleep the Persian of his trainer and then broke its Pokeball. Afterward, it beat the crap out of its former trainer, before he could call out any of his other Pokemon.
The others did not come out of their own violation, because they did not like him enough to muster the effort it took to leave the ball on their own. The reason for the other missing people was that some people tried to interfere when they saw the actions of Tangela. Tangela beat their Pokemon, and captured them, taking away their Pokeballs, after forcing them to switch them to sustenance mode, because they interfered.
After that, it took everyone involved into the Viridian Forest, where it made those people help it build a home for itself as punishment. It provided them with berries as well as water. After they were done, and Tangela was satisfied, it returned their belongings and released them all, except for its former trainer.
The investigators found and caught it after that. After a thorough investigation, it was decided that it would work for the alliance at one of their plantations for 6 months, before being released to the Viridian Forest.
The reason for such a lenient verdict was that it did not harm anyone except for its former trainer, and even made sure the others were alright during their time with it. Additionally, it promised to help teach a move it knew to one of the Pokemon of every trainer it abducted.
As for the former trainer of Tangela, he did not have as much luck. During the investigation, it came to light that the guy did not only abuse Tangela but also all his other Pokemon, except for his starter Persian. Tangela was simply the one that got the worst of it. Additionally, the guy seemed to have done some minor crimes such as petty theft and running away after losing.
His sentence was pretty harsh I think, which showed that the alliance did not like those that abused their Pokemon. He was forced to release all his Pokemon except for his Persian and was sentenced to 5 years of jail, as well as a 10-years service at the border.
According to his parents, the guy would have a really hard time at the jail, because most people disliked people that abused their own Pokemon, a bit like with child molesters in his old world. Furthermore, his time at the border would probably be even harder until he caught new Pokemon and trained them while doing his service.
Mikail asked them if it wouldn't be dangerous if the guy returned even stronger after 10 years at the border, but his parents assured him that after 10 years of service, the military would have instilled some serious discipline and acceptable principles into the guy.
Mikail went to bed that day happy that he could resume his trip to the coast tomorrow, which also happened to be the first day of the new week.
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