The rest of the month after Mom's victory at the Senior League Tournament was both calm and amusing. It was calm since nothing significant happened to either myself or my Pokemon, and amusing because of the banter between Mom and Dad.
Mom was obviously still happy with her championship victory and she occasionally teased Dad by reminding him of it or flashing her golden cup in front of him. It was all done in good humor, and I was not worried about one of them taking things seriously or too far.
Dad even teased Mom back by saying that he was letting her enjoy the moment since her cup and title would look cute beside his once he won the Grand League Tournament. Theoretically, he was right since the GLT was a higher-ranked competition between ACE and Elite-Class trainers.
Honestly, whenever he brought that point up, Mom did not disagree with him since she believed him and she did not want to disagree/contradict him on the matter, even if it was just in a joking manner. Hence, whenever Dad brought up that counterpoint, the air between them quickly turned pink because Mom simply supported his claim instead of disagreeing.
Besides, Mom's achievement certainly motivated Dad as well as his team even more and I was sure that it was only a matter of time before his Pokemon were strong enough for him to qualify for the advancement to the Elite-Class.
Actually, there was a little event that could probably count as special. I finally decided to hand over the Magikarp to Mom and Dad. Honestly, the two Magikarp left me no choice since both managed to advance to the (high) iron stage within this month, and I was worried that they would break through or evolve if I kept delaying the decision.
Regardless, both Dad and Mom were rather happy with my present, which honestly had been a relief since up until that moment I still had not been sure if they would even want a new member to their team or not. Thankfully both showed genuine happiness when I brought out the MagiBalls and told them about my presents for them.
The Magikarp themselves had been told months in advance that they would most likely be presented to my parents to join their teams to protect them in my stead, and both were more than happy to accept the job/"responsibility".
Well, at least they agreed in their own way while understanding the gist of what I was saying. Near-Sapience was still not full sapience after all, but it worked well enough, with neither Magikarp showing any aversion to joining my parent's team before or after being handed over to them.
Honestly, a lot of people were going to be jealous of Mom as well as Dad once their Magikarp evolved and turned into a Dragon as well as Poison Gyarados respectively. Well, at least I was pretty confident that the two Magikarp would turn out like that.
I was 99.99% certain that the two would undergo a variant evolution and I had told my parents just as much. I had already prepared and handed over all the supplements I could make to push the issue once they began to evolve. The two were looking forward to it as well, especially Mom since it would be her first dragon-type Pokemon.
Well, she did not say that explicitly, but she mentioned a sentence or two that was close enough, so I was sure that was the case. I mean everyone wanted a dragon on their team. Anyone who said otherwise was either an extreme type specialist, delusional, or a liar, and Mom was neither a type specialist nor a liar.
Oh, and she wasn't delusional either. Yep, Mom was perfectly sane, which was why I was confident in my assumption. Anyway, I was just really happy that my parents truly liked my gift, and I felt better knowing that the two had each gotten another future powerhouse on their team.
I was confident in that assumption because both Magikarp had a very good chance of upgrading their potential to light purple before their evolution to Gyarados, considering that they'd have to wait until the (high) bronze stage to evolve.
Yeah, the two definitely had the potential to become powerhouses and I was confident that Mom and Dad could help them reach that point. Seeing how well-behaved my Magikarp were, Mom even suggested that I give one each to the girls. The Magikarp in question were regular ones with good potential.
Still, unlike Mom, Dad thought that any such considerations should be shelved until they had seen how their Magikarp behaved after evolving. He also added that she should not forget Aaron, Kinji, and Ace since they were my good friends as well. He himself forgot Yu, but I decided against reminding him of that.
Also, while he was right about including Aaron and Ace, along with the forgotten Yu, I was not sure if Kinji would accept a Magikarp considering his bug-type specialization. Kinji belonged to the group of specialists that truly had no Pokemon without the typing they specialized in, and I, somehow, seriously doubted I could find a bug-variant Magikarp for him.
Honestly, I knew that the newest generations of my Magikarp stayed rather well-behaved and calm even after evolving to Gyarados, which was a rather big difference from the usual behavior of a regular Gyarados. Still, Dad's idea was sound, and I had just handed out some rather impressive/excessive gifts not too long ago, so I sided with him on this one.
Anyway, I used the last few days of the vacation to note down the key points to finishing up the bunny project for my return to Varon Labs. I also informed my parents that I would be moving back to my dorm room in Pallet City a month after the break to give them a heads-up.
I was not the only one with some news. They also had some rather important news that they wanted to share with me. No, it was not the news that I was suddenly going to become a big brother.
Rather than that, Dad shared that he wanted to face some new opponents in preparation for the Grand League Tournament, so they would be traveling to the western continent as soon as my break was over, and unless something really important came up, they would stay there until the end of my final term at Oak Labs.
That meant that they would be gone for around 8 months, which honestly was not that long considering that it was not even a quarter of a year. Still, I wished them fun, and send them off on Grouday morning before leaving for Rota myself.
I was starting my work a few days early since I did not want to wait until Giratiday for the new month to start. In the same vein, I was going to stay until Kyoday of week number five instead of leaving on Palkiday, which happens to be the last day of the new/9th month, and considering that it was my last month at her lab, Professor Varon agreed with my decision.
The first thing I did upon my return to Varon Labs was to show Professor Varon the improved formulas I had "come up" with during the break. Each of the 4 external supplement formulas had now achieved a 200% efficacy increase compared to the original formula, meaning that they were 3 times as effective as the original supplements.
Obviously, the professor was quite impressed with what I achieved. Nonetheless, just like the last time, we still had to corroborate my findings/claims with real-life data, so we spent my first week back at the lab testing the 4 improved formulas to verify my findings.
Naturally, the result simply confirmed what I had disclosed. Once the results were out, I had officially improved both the internal as well as external supplements used by Varon Labs for the Buneary/Lopunny project by three times.
Still, I was not fully done with my work since the set of accompanying exercises and massage techniques I had promised were not fully done yet. Since coming up with a complete and mature set of techniques in less than a month was simply illogical I claimed to have been slowly working on it since I began participating in the project.
I had in fact been mentioning the idea once or twice before, so no one could claim otherwise, which was enough for me to go ahead with my plan. I chose to deal with the massage techniques first and spent the next two weeks correcting minor kinks in the massage method through real-life applications.
That meant that I spent the next two weeks massaging a lot of Buneary and Lopunny before doing some final "adjustments/improvements" to my massage technique according to the feedback given by those numerous Buneary and Lopunny.
I spent the last two days of week no.3 giving some hands-on guidance to some of the other assistants in those massage techniques to make sure that there were a few people present that truly knew how to perform the massage.
While I had written a report that contained the instructions on how to apply the massage, I wanted to avoid the possibility of a wrong adaptation during the process of applying the theoretical to the practical.
With the presence of the assistants that already knew how to apply the massage, anyone that wanted to learn the set could go to them for guidance after reading through the manual to avoid making unnecessary practical mistakes and to save time.
With only two more weeks left before it was time for me to say my goodbyes to Professor Varon and her team, I "threw" myself into work and conscripted a lot of the available bunny population into my "exercise improvement fever". I worked them hard for a full two weeks, and none of them complained about it.
All bunnies fully cooperated with me, and sometime before Kyoday noon, I declared the exercise routine complete. Everyone cheered, and Professor Varon congratulate me on my/our success. Throughout the two weeks, we had obviously documented the effects of the exercises, and they roughly had the effect I wanted.
As long as the internal supplements, as well as external supplements, were used in tandem with the massage and exercise routines respectively, the supplements could be "digested" within half the time they would have normally been "digested".
Moreover, using the methods allowed one to unearth more from the supplements, and the efficacy increase was close to 100% just like I aimed for.
To top all that off, I suggested to Professor Varon that they should use "aura infusions" in tandem with the internal and external procedure since that would decrease the period it took for Buneary and Lopunny to develop an aura affinity even further. The same was true for the period it took to upgrade the aura affinity.
Anyway, that was pretty much my last contribution to the bunny project and since it was my last day at the lab, Professor Varon actually decided to throw me a farewell party. I believe it was obvious, but everyone at the lab was happy to throw me a party since it meant that they had the rest of the day off, so to say.
Well, at least, I thought that having to take part in my farewell party beat having to work, so I happily went along with it. The whole thing went on until 5 p.m. and we finished it with an early dinner that Professor Varon ordered.
She along with the main assistants then accompanied me to the "door" of the lab and sent me off with well-wishes. I headed for our Rota home for the last time for the foreseeable future to cover the furniture and lock everything that had to be locked along with turning off everything unneeded as well.
Since it had already been 5 p.m. when I came home, cleaning up took until close to midnight, so I left covering my bed until the next day and spent the night in Rota. On Grouday morning, I left for Pallet City after I had cleaned my bed, covered it, and locked the house.
Once I was back in Pallet City, I first bought myself some breakfast before heading to my dorm room. Cleaning that one up to standard took less than an hour since it was a small place, and after a shower, I went back out to the city to meet up with Jessie.
We had some fun together until it was time for dinner. We then met up with James and Layla at the local Aldini's branch and had a fun evening with the two. The next morning, after being away for months, I went straight to Oak Labs and directly headed to Professor Oak's office.
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