I arrived in Fuchsia City with no problems and only stayed long enough to look for some maps of the surrounding area of Fuchsia City as well as one that even showed the big area between Fuchsia City and Rose City, which was the area that was mentioned in the rumors.
Unfortunately, that area extended roughly 500 km eastward and 400 km northward, so a space that encompassed more than 200.000 km², which was something I couldn't check in a year much less 2 weeks. Hence the reason I was using maps.
I was planning to mark areas that I suspected could be attractive for the suspected Tentacruel-variant, and then start with/check out those areas. I bought the local maps since they might have had more useful details compared to the map I found online and saved on my smartphone.
I then transcribed all interesting tidbits from the saved map as well as the smaller local maps onto the large map that contained the whole area between Fuchsia City and Rose City. Obviously, the details considered important here were any bodies of water, such as lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, and even creeks.
Any place that had a big enough supply of water to satisfy even a single water type, or rather even a Pokemon with an additional water type, was marked. I made sure to mark them in such a way that they referenced which of the smaller maps had a more detailed map of that area in case I had one among those I procured/prepared.
Once that was done, and I did a last check to ensure there was nothing else I had to buy, I made my way out of the eastern side of Fuchsia City. I, or rather we, would be traveling in a snake pattern to make sure every part of the map was covered, and the distance between each trip back and forth would be 5 km.
That would allow me to finish the first 500 on 100 km block within 20 turns. We naturally had to stop at every marked point on the map, but I was estimating that we could still finish the first block within 3 or 4 days, thanks to Enji/Arcanine's speed, who was going to act as my transport between marked spots.
We had to check 4 such blocks in total, and I was hoping that we would be done in less than two weeks since I only had that much time at hand for this investigation trip.
Anyway, I brought out Enji and told him the plan before I gave him the signal to start running. It took him less than 30 minutes to reach our first stop about 220 km from our starting spot, and that was only because we stopped twice when we came across some smaller ponds.
I only called out Tiamat/Milotic and Abzu/Milotic to check out those ponds, while Hera/Pidgeot, Horus/Xatu, and I did a quick sweep of the surroundings, but all of us failed to find anything useful.
Still, my good boy was a comfy and super-fast ride, and I pat his head and praised him each time we stopped. I did the same this time around before I called out everyone to search the area since the place we stopped at was a large lake that was roughly 300k m² in size.
Sweeping the whole lake was left to the water types. Mew knew I had enough of them for them to do so. Meanwhile, the area around the lake was left to everyone else.
Well, at least everyone else, except for Mothra/Butterfree, Seb/Nidoking, Gaia/Nidoqueen, Mars/Ursaring, Tyson/Machamp, and Osiris/Marowak, along with everyone else that was at or below the bronze stage.
I was not planning to send out those below the silver stage on their own and only called them out to give them the chance to play around, or explore the outside, while the stronger ones I kept back would act as the supervisors as well as protectors of the weaker ones just in case.
Or rather, Mothra, Seb, Gaia, and Tyson would do that. Mars and Osiris were going to accompany me and Charmander while we searched for clues as well. I was planning to use the times we were searching to spend some time with Charmander on the side since I only could spend an hour a day with him during the vacation for the last two weeks.
The others, such as Eggy/Salandit and Bruce/Zubat, had already grown out of the clingy phase, so I was not too worried that they would become jealous of the extra attention Charmander was receiving.
After leaving the others back at the lake, I made my way through the area with Charmander in my arms. He was curiously moving his head from side to side to take the new sights in and occasionally addressed either me or Osiris, who was on my right when he saw something that excited him.
Mars accompanied us on my left, attentively watching our surroundings for any Tenta-traces or possible hostiles. We did not find anything on our part, but Charmander had fun, so at least that was a plus. At some point, I let him down since he wanted to walk on his own, but I made sure he did not leave my sight, and Osiris stuck to him to stave off any ambushes/dangers.
Roughly 90 minutes after our arrival Mothra contacted me telepathically over our bond and told me that the water types had resurfaced, so my group made it back to the lake. I saw that some of the others that had set out had already returned as well, but I decided to question the water types first.
Apparently, they checked the whole lake, including the bottom, but forget a variant, they did not come across a single Tenta-line member. That was a bit disappointing, but finding my target so easily would have been super lucky, so I thanked them for the hard work and asked the others that had already returned, but none of them had found any suspicious traces.
I had shown and described to them what the traces left behind by the target's tentacles were supposed to look like before I sent them off. I even mentioned that there had to be two prints/traces, but there could be more in case it decided to use one of its other tentacles.
Everyone began lounging around while we waited for the others to come back, and 10 minutes later only Nyx/Umbreon and Optimus/Butterfree were left. I was hoping their delay meant that they had found something.
Optimus came back 3 minutes later and confirmed that he did find some suspicious traces on some branches 15 minutes ago, so he followed them. Unfortunately, it ended up being a Tangela using its vines to move around and not our target.
Nyx ran back cheerfully just a few minutes after him and announced that she found some tracks that led away from the lake, but that she returned to call me when they kept going after she followed them for 5 minutes.
I praised her before telling the others to stay put while Gwen/Gardevoir, Thor/Raichu, and I followed her to the place she found the traces.
Once we made it there, I confirmed that the traces did indeed look like the ones we were looking for, and we began following them to their source, or until they ended. Whatever happened first I guess.
15 minutes and nearly three kilometers later, I was starting to think that we were starting to get away from the lake a bit too much for a Tentacruel. Variant or not, a water type, especially one that normally preferred living inside the water, would prefer living close to water.
Still, we kept going and a few minutes later we were rewarded for our efforts. We found the source of the traces. Unfortunately, the Pokemon in front of our eyes had nothing to do with the Tentacruel we were looking for.
No, what was in front of us ended up being a Gloom instead. I checked the tracks, Gloom's feet, and the picture I had of Tentacruel as well as Tentacool, specifically their tentacles, and confirmed that the traces left behind by Gloom did look a lot like the ones a Tenta-member should theoretically leave behind.
Nyx pouted when it became clear that we had been following a Gloom, disappointed that we tracked the wrong Pokemon, and I had to tell her that it was okay. She got over it after a few head scratches, so it was fine.
Still, after that I began going over the "footprints" left behind by Pokemon while moving, both mentally as well as on my phone, and I found a few more that looked quite similar, including Oddish and Vileplume, which was not that good for my investigation. I just knew that this would cause me headaches during my search.
Anyway, we left the poor Gloom, who had frozen in fright when it was suddenly surrounded by a bunch of Pokemon that were much stronger than itself, alone and made our way back to the lake. The return trip took only two or so minutes since we did not have to keep track of any trails.
After we made it to the lake, I told the others that it ended up being a Gloom and that we were leaving. However, before that I gave everyone some snacks to eat, and only after that did I start calling them back, leaving only Enji outside.
However, I ended up calling him back as well since it had already become quite dark due to it being close to 9:30 p.m. That was not surprising since it had been 6:30 p.m. by the time I arrived at Fuchsia City.
Anyway, I decided to stop for the day, and because I was not planning to spend the night in the wild when I didn't have to. I initiated a teleportation to the same position I was standing. Still, I only used the teleportation as a cover to enter Utopia, so while it seemed I was teleporting away, I was in fact simply entering Utopia.
After I appeared in my mansion, I just gave Charmander the formula I prepared for him before I began my personal training routine. I kept at it until midnight before I decided to go to sleep.
It was only 6 a.m. when I woke up the next morning, and I did an hour of morning meditation and another hour of physical exercises before I began handing out everyone's breakfast. I ate mine once everyone had received theirs, and left once Enji was done eating.
I called him out after appearing in the position I had entered Utopia from, and we directly resumed our trip to the next point on the map. It was only halfway through the third day, not counting the day of my arrival, that we finished checking the first block/stretch of the map.
Unfortunately, we found no traces of our target during that time, or rather we occasionally did find something, but each one ended up being a dud.
As I had thought, the Pokemon that left similar footprints ended up creating headaches for me since the duds we ended up following led us to some Poliwag, Poliwhirl, and two Jigglypuff, along with a few Marill, Azumarill, and some more Gloom line members.
All I was missing was following a track only to meet a Wooper, Poliwrath, or Wigglytuff to complete the list of possible false leads. Well, at least those below the bronze stage got to have some fun and earn some experience since I had them go through some battles under either my supervision or that of their supervisors.
Besides, I had only checked one-fourth of the total area on the map, so there were more than enough opportunities to find the target, and with that happy thought I asked Enji to head to the next spot.
6 days later we had gone through three-fourths of the map and still failed to find anything. I still had more than 5 days before I had to return to Pallet City, which was more than enough to finish everything and then some, but I was starting to worry that I would fail to find anything while checking the last fourth as well.
No, I shouldn't think like that. So what if I failed to find anything even after completing the map once, that would simply mean I failed to mark the area the target hung out at.
There were some places that I did not bother stopping at, such as small or medium-sized stretches of forests since no water body was marked in that place, but I could check them out once I was done. Just in case there were some ponds over there that no one bothered noting down.
Well, a bit more than two days later, on the morning of my 11th day, it came to just that. I had checked all marked areas on the large map, but I had failed to find anything that resembled a variant Tenta-line member. I did come across a grand total of 4 Tentacool in total while checking the rivers, but that's it.
Understandably I was somewhat disappointed, but I still had three days until I had to return to Pallet, so I resolved to check the suspicious places I had noted down as well. There were more than 20 of those, but I would hopefully manage to clear them all in time.
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