I woke up rather early on Arcday morning so that I could skim through my notes on the two exams that I would be writing today before my breakfast. I was up and ready by 6 a.m., and spent 90 minutes looking through my notes on the first exam before I prepared a light breakfast with OO juice.
I made sure to prepare an extra two bottles of OO juice to drink during each exam before I made my way to the Pallet City Trainer school. The first exam was scheduled to start at 8:30 a.m. I made it to the assigned class/exam room with ample time to spare, so once I had my writing utensils as well as I.D. laid out on the table, I closed my eyes and spent the next five minutes relaxing.
While I still had another 3 minutes until 8:30 a.m., I was interrupted by the teaching assistants handing out the exam papers and checking the I.Ds, so I was forced to open my eyes and focus on the matter at hand. Once the assistant was done with me, he moved on and I checked the exam he left on my table.
Unsurprisingly, the topmost paper only had a column for me to write my name on along with the exam title, so it seemed the final exams followed the usual standards as well. Satisfied with that, I pulled out my bottle of OO juice and placed it on the table as well before listening to the examiner who decided to speak up at the last minute before the start of the exam.
The examiner explained the rules of the exams or more like what we had to pay attention to, and as soon as the clock struck 8:30, he told us to start. We had until 10:30 a.m. to finish our exam papers, but I honestly doubted I would need that much time to be done with the whole thing.
I began working through the problems while occasionally sipping my OO juice, and as I had expected, I only needed half that time to go through all 9 pages. Naturally, the cover sheet was not included in that number.
We were allowed to leave early until the last 30 minutes, after which we had to wait until the end of the exam to leave. This meant that I still had 30 minutes before that deadline, and I spent the next 20 minutes going through my answers twice to ensure that everything was in order.
That was just a safety measure on my part to ensure that I did not make any stupid mistakes and that nothing I wrote could be misunderstood or misinterpreted. I wanted full marks in all my exams after all since I wanted the special reward promised by the alliance.
Once I was sure that everything was perfect, at least as far as I could tell, I raised my hand to signal that I was done. One of the assistants came over to collect my exam papers. After he did that, I began packing away my stuff, before quietly leaving the room.
The second exam was at 1 p.m., so I had a few hours to kill until then. I let Mothra/Butterfree out and like most of the time, she was already in her chibi form. She honestly seemed to enjoy staying in her chibi mode more than her usual size. According to her, being small was more convenient, and she proved that statement by staying in her chibi form whenever she was not fighting, training, or trying to appear "serious".
Anyway, Mothra settled on my shoulder and we went for a walk. I had one of my thought streams skim through my notes on the upcoming exam, while I simply joked/talked with Mothra. We headed for the city center, more specifically to the Aldini's branch there since I wanted to eat a light lunch before my exam.
I deliberately walked at a sedated pace since it was still too early for lunch, so it was already 12 by the time I made it there. I had to admit that I let myself be distracted by the shops on the way to the restaurant, or it would have never taken so long to arrive there.
Well, it was more Mothra, who got distracted by the stores, but the end result was pretty much the same. Just with me spending time checking them out to satisfy mostly her curiosity instead of mine.
Anyway, after a light lunch consisting of only a 5-egg omelet and some Orange juice, I began heading back to the trainer school. However, this time without allowing any additional distractions. It was just me walking back to the trainer school with Mothra chilling on my head. Though, I was softly singing a song since Mothra asked/puppy-style begged me to do so.
I purposefully kept my voice from spreading too far to avoid any extra attention due to my superb singing, so the only ones that heard me sing were me, Mothra, and everyone else inside Utopia since I was allowing my voice to spread there too.
I made it back to the trainer school with more than half an hour to spare, but since I had nothing else to do, I directly headed to the exam room and took a seat at my designated spot. Aside from me, only an assistant was in the room right now, so after I set my writing utensils and my I.D. on the table, I closed my eyes and waited for the papers to be handed out.
In the end, it took me even less time to finish the second exam than it did the first since the simple knowledge recounting part was bigger in this one. Even after I spent 20 minutes looking through my answers twice, only slightly more than an hour had passed.
Still, I saw no reason to delay the submission, so raised my hand to signal that I was done. Once the assistant had accepted my papers, I tied up my stuff and left. It was only 2:18 when I made it back to my dorm room, so I spent the next few hours until dinner with my Pokemon inside Utopia before I spent a few hours after dinner preparing for the two exams tomorrow with Mothra and Luna/Clefable by my side.
I went to bed at slightly past 10 p.m., and once again woke up at 6 a.m. After repeating the same routine as yesterday, I once again made my way to the Pallet City Trainer School for my second set of exams, which I once more finished without coming across any problems.
I chose to follow pretty much the same pattern today as I did yesterday, with the exception that I spent less time going through my notes for tomorrow since I had only a single exam on Giratiday instead of two.
Unsurprisingly, I had no problems with the exam on Giratiday, and due to there being no other exam that day, I had much more free time at hand. Seeing how it was not even 10 a.m. yet, and taking into account that I did not have to return to the trainer school, I did not bother heading out for lunch. Instead, I directly headed back to my dorm room, and from there to Utopia.
I was not surprised to see Mothra and Horus/Xatu appear by Teleport as soon as I announced that I had come inside. What did surprise me was to see Stan/Gyarados coming over as quickly as he did. Usually, he and the rest of the Sinister Six took their time to come over to avoid the initial rush.
Hence, my surprise at Stan's swift arrival. Though that surprise gave way to understanding when he shared that he had gotten the feeling of fullness an hour ago. He admitted that he decided to hold off sharing the news because he knew I was in the middle of an exam.
Nonetheless, he asked me to check him, which I naturally directly did, and as it turned out, Stan was absolutely right. His last parameter had finally advanced to SSS, which meant that he was officially done with his limit breaking. He could now break through to the dark gold stage without any worries.
Well, at least he should have been able to break through without any worries, but now that it had come down to it, a rather crucial question wormed itself into the forefront of my thoughts, and I could not help but groan at the fact that I had not dealt with this question before.
For all my improved intellect and memory, I occasionally overlooked or passed over the most obvious things. In this case, it was the question of whether having three dark gold-stage Pokemon would disqualify me from participating in the senior league tournament. That had been a problem for Mom after all.
Considering Mothra/Butterfree, and Toedscruel, I already had two dark gold stage Pokemon, so Stan would be the third "official" one once he broke through. The reason I was including Toedscruel here was that he was officially registered under my name.
Whether I carried him around or not was not important in this case, since nothing was stopping me from using him during the tournament after all, at least hypothetically speaking.
As for the usual tournament for beginners, I had no illusions about that one since I had long been informed that I would not be allowed to take part in the Junior League Tournament because I was deemed extremely overqualified for that one. My trainer rank and my performance during the global student league three years ago alone were enough to serve as proof of that.
Yet, while I might not have minded missing out on the Junior League Tournament, because even I felt like doing so would waste my time, regardless of the golden cup I could earn, I did want to participate in the Senior League Tournament.
Seeing the potential problem I was faced with, I requested Stan to wait with his breakthrough for a while, before explaining my worry to him and the duo that was listening in on the side. Stan understood my dilemma and agreed without any complaints.
I did not want to delay the issue more than necessary, so after briefly pondering whether I should go to Mr. Cameron for help or Professor Oak, I ended up heading to Oak Labs. Not only was the lab closer, but the Professor had better connections with the alliance as well.
The receptionist was surprised to see me when I showed up since she, and probably everyone else at the lab knew that I was busy with my exams. Still, she chose to respect my privacy and did not try to find out more than I was willing to share.
When I asked her if Professor Oak was in, the motive for my visit became apparent. Luckily he was in his office, so I did not have to wait or come back at a later date/time. After a quick call on her part, she told me to go ahead and make my way to the professor's office.
Once I made it there, I greeted Professor Oak before I began to explain to him the reason for my visit. The professor seemed a bit surprised as well when he heard my dilemma, and he chuckled a bit before commenting that this was probably the first time something like this happened in alliance history.
There had been cases of people being overqualified for the Junior League Tournament in the past, but this was the first time he heard about someone being potentially excluded from both the JLT and the SLT before the start of his or her journey.
Nonetheless, he quickly became serious and complimented my decision to come to him with the problem. He admitted that he was not sure how the ruling would fall out in this situation, but he added that I should theoretically be allowed to participate due to multiple factors, such as my current trainer rank, and the fact that this would be the first tournament of my official journey.
Still, seeing how this was a decision that had to be ultimately made by the alliance, he actually cleared his schedule for the rest of the day and accompanied me to the Alliance Headquarters in Saffron City.
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