I called for a halt a bit less than a kilometer from the tribe's nest. Since I did not know how the whole situation at the nest was going to go down, I decided to store the balls of all Ekans and Arbok in Utopia. This way there would be no risk of any of them coming out of their balls out of their own initiative and adding chaos to the situation.
"Alright, Horus and I are going to be scouting out the place from above, and I want you to stay hidden in the meantime," I shared with everyone after deciding against simply storing them inside Utopia.
Horus/Xatu and I watched as Tatsumaki/Alakazam, Gwen/Gardevoir, Ali/Kirlia, and Optimus/Butterfree moved on top of different trees around us. They, each chose one of the upper branches to rest/sit on and made a pretty good job of staying hidden. At least, I did not think that anyone would spot them unless the individual was pretty lucky or was looking for them on the particular branch they were hiding on.
Meanwhile, Enji/Arcanine was looking at the others and how they were hiding on top of the trees before looking back at himself and whining sadly, obviously disappointed that he was unable to do the same due to his body/size.
I kinda felt bad for him and just as I was about to go up to him to pat his head, his head sprung up, and he happily barked "I got it". Thankfully, he seemed to have remembered that we were undercover since his bark was rather quiet. I watched curiously as Enji began observing the area, before heading to one of the larger bushes.
He began using Dig to make himself a burrow below the bush while using the bush to hide the hole/entrance to the burrow he dug. It did not take him long to finish, and after moving in front of the bush, I looked for the hole. The bush did a pretty good job at covering it, and I made sure to get rid of any of the excess dirt that got thrown about while Enji was digging.
Still, I knew what I was looking for, so I had no problems spotting the hole, and I saw Enji peeking over from there, his eyes shining in the shadow of the hole he dug. I gave him a thumbs-up before moving back beside Horus. I did a final sweep of the area and gave a satisfied nod after confirming that everyone was not visible at first glance.
"Let's go," I told Horus afterward, and we both took off into the air. We moved up until we reached a height of approximately 3 kilometers, which was high enough that no one on the ground would spot us, but still close enough for Horus to perfectly see anything on the ground.
Now, one would wonder, if I was going to simply leave the scouting to Horus, then why did I not just send him out on his own and chose to accompany him instead?
Well, I was taking part in the scouting because I wanted to personally get a picture of the situation and the way I was going to do that is by using/establishing a mental link between Horus that allowed me to share his eyesight, or rather, it allowed me to see what Horus was seeing.
This technique currently required me to be within a kilometer of Horus unlike the regular telepathic link, which we could keep up at more than ten times that distance. That was why I was here instead of staying back with the others.
Anyway, we began looking through the whole area that was considered the main ground of the Arbok tribe. Naturally, we could not look into the burrows and caves, but since the sun was up, most Ekans and Arbok were outside enjoying its warmth. The number I saw was pretty high.
I was not going to count them one by one, but by my estimate, there were somewhere between 800 and 900 Ekans out there. I also spotted a bit more than 100 Arbok, and this was without any of the Pokemon that were staying inside their burrow/cave for one reason or the other. If we added those, there were probably somewhere around a thousand Ekans, and 150 or so Arbok in the tribe.
Well, even that was my estimate, and this number did not include the ones that died during their excursions into the western and northern territories, which from what I learned from my interrogations cost the lives of a lot of Ekans. Furthermore, I seemed to have captured close to a tenth of their current total population, so they probably used to have about 30%-35% more Pokemon in their tribe.
Regardless, the battles did happen, and I did capture a portion of their tribe, so I was going with the assumption that they currently had about 1000 Ekans and around 120 Arbok. Collaborating what I was seeing with the information I gathered, the Arbok tribe currently had a (low) dark gold stage boss, a (mid) and 3 (low) gold stage subleaders, 15ish (high) silver Arbok, 30ish (mid) silver Arbok, and 40ish (low) silver Arbok.
The reason I was not entirely confident in those numbers was that I did not know how many ended up perishing. Regardless, the rest of the Arbok were either at the (high) or (mid) bronze stage since Ekans were forbidden from evolving before then. I also knew that the strongest Ekans would be at the (high) bronze stage since their boss apparently set that as the limit before evolution.
Still, according to my intel about a tenth of the Ekans was below the iron stage, around half was at the iron stage, and the rest were in the bronze stage, so 100ish stageless Ekans. 500ish iron stage Ekans, and 400ish bronze stage Ekans.
I had to say that I could not help but be surprised when looking at those numbers and the strength of the tribe in general. There were a surprisingly high number of strong Pokemon compared to the number of weaker ones.
I was curious whether the tribe had a "get strong or die trying" philosophy going, or if something else was afoot. I mean there was the thing with the boss breaking through to the dark gold stage, the additional gold stage subleaders, and now the surprisingly high number of silver stage Arbok.
Anyway, we spent roughly half an hour observing the ongoings on the ground, which helped us determine who the boss and sub-leaders were, and where they were staying the same was true for the strongest "regular" Arbok. We simply had to see which of the Arbok were treated the most deferentially, or as some would say, which Arbok the Ekans and the rest of the Arbok were the most afraid of.
Once I was satisfied, we made our way back to the others, who came out of their hiding spots upon seeing us. They were pretty curious and asked us about the situation in the tribe. I decided to call out Mothra/Butterfree, Stan/Gyarados, Seb/Nidoking, Gaia/Nidoqueen, and Moka/Crobat for this as well.
However, I made sure that we retreated at least another kilometer, and I also asked them to restrain their presence before I brought them out of Utopia. I considered bringing out the other Slythering Six as well, or at least Ignis/Gyarados, who was also at the (high) gold stage, but one enormous Pokemon was risky enough, so I didn't.
Tatsumaki, Ali, Enji, and Optimus were the only non-gold stage Pokemon present thanks to being part of the scouting group, and aside from them, as well as Gwen, who was at the (mid) gold stage, everyone else was at the (high) gold stage. Anyway, once greetings were exchanged, I began sharing what we learned, and they all calmly listened to the number, distribution, and strength of the tribe.
None of them looked worried about anything they heard, but they did maintain their seriousness, which was good enough since I could understand why they were not nervous. We currently had 7 (high) gold stage, and 8 (mid) gold stage Pokemon on our side after all. Not to mention that 3 of our (high) gold Pokemon had proven themselves capable of matching and possibly even besting some "weaker" (low) dark gold-stage Pokemon.
Furthermore, we had 15 (high) silver-stage Pokemon at various stages of their limit-breaking, and each one could handle multiple of the opposing silver-stage Arbok with ease. If that was not enough, we had about 60 Gyarados and around 40 Butterfree as well as 40 Beedrill living inside Utopia as underlings. The weakest among them was at the (low) bronze stage, while there were a scant few (low) silver stage ones as well.
We truly had the capacity to deal with a tribe of this size even if it became a numbers game. This was the basis of their confidence and mine as well. It was also why I dared to accept 4 missions at once and why I decided to keep going even after learning about the boss Arbok's breakthrough along with the existence of the two extra sub-leaders.
Anyway, after I finished my explanation, we began discussing how to approach the Arbok tribe. In the end, our group ended up being divided into 3 due to different opinions. Mothra/Butterfree, Gwen/Gardevoir, and Optimus/Butterfree thought we should approach the tribe while displaying our strength, but with me flaring my aura to negotiate with the boss Arbok.
Seb/Nidoking, Gaia/Nidoqueen, Moka/Crobat, and Ali/Kirlia felt that Mothra's group was not cautious enough and that they should preemptively deal with the weaker ones by using the same tactic we used to subdue the smaller groups. They wanted Moka to immobilize and sedate the Ekans, or at least a majority of them. They felt establishing a more prominent position would be better for the negotiations.
The last group made up of Stan/Gyarados, Horus/Xatu, Enji/Arcanine, and Tatsumaki/Alakazam thought that the negotiations would break down or not happen whether we used the first or second approach and that it was better to use the preemptive strike and then directly subdue the whole upper echelon. Only after that would we deal/negotiate with the boss Arbok, but from a distinctly superior position.
To be honest, I kind of agreed with the opinion of the militarist faction, but I felt that directly going for the attack, just because I knew, or thought that I knew how the boss Arbok was going to react, did not truly sit right with me. Moreover, it did not fit with the modus operandi of the Aura Guardian Order, which I was kinda representing at the moment.
Capturing the ranging parties could be considered okayish, it was one of the missions after all, but directly attacking a tribe without even initiating any talks would probably be held against me. Still, as I said I did agree with the militarist group, so I could not agree with the idea of the pacifist group under Mothra.
The idea of going leaving my back open to a large number of potential enemies, fully knowing that there would most likely be violence before I could complete my mission did not sit right with me at all. Especially to a predator/ambush species like the Arbok line.
Hence, it was no surprise that I was more inclined toward the moderate faction, even if I knew that the act of sedating a majority, if not all Ekans would be seen as an act of provocation that could lead to a battle. At least this way I gave the Arbok tribe a chance to settle the negotiations without harming anyone or directly instigating the conflict.
Nonetheless, the groups were pretty even, so I decided to share the situation with the other 8 gold stage Pokemon inside Utopia to see which idea they were supporting. In the end, Manami/Lapras along with Jade/Gyarados supported the pacifists, Ignis/Gyarados, Ryujin/Gyarados, as well as Medusa/Gyarados supported the militants, and Nyx/Umbreon, Hera/Pidgeot, as well as Abyss/Gyarados, supported the moderate group.
Seeing how balanced the situation was between the moderate and militant groups, I mentioned that the decision would come down to one of them. Unsurprisingly, everyone in the pacifist faction joined the moderate group after that announcement, so we ended up deciding through a majority vote to go with the moderate approach.
For that, I decided to temporarily put Stan back inside Utopia, along with the non-gold-stage Pokemon before moving back towards the Arbok tribe with the rest of the (high) gold-stage Pokemon plus Gwen.
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