At the end of my first month here at the military hospital, I could freely say that I had seen some sh*t, both literally as well as metaphorically, and sadly I had to clean up most of the aforementioned sh*t as well. Though not everything was bad since acting as a glorified coolie was not all I did.
I managed to work through all medical practices that the alliance expected me to learn, at least according to Doctor Bethany. I could find a patient's vein in a matter of seconds, and inserting the needle was child's play.
I had mastered all three suturing techniques, at least as far as one could master them while applying them on the special sheets, bananas, and fish. Additionally, I could wrap bandages and set casts like a pro, while CPR was something I could apply in my sleep. Yet, aside from being allowed to insert needles at the start of week 3, I was not allowed to apply any of my learning in practice.
The whole thing was honestly a bit frustrating, especially because I was forced to do the other sh*t but couldn't do the medical stuff even though there were enough changes to apply bandages, set casts, and stitch people/soldiers up.
Well, at least there was some good news on the personal front that made the month less sucky than it actually was. First of all, Kimura/Hitmonform actually completed his second round of limit-breaking, and all I could say on his case was that his talent was truly enviable as far as advancement speed was concerned.
I was confident that Kimura would be breaking through to the gold stage before long, and as things stood, I suspected that he might even be able to break through to the dark gold stage before most of the current high-level golden club members.
Interestingly enough, there were some among the high-level golden club members, who were really close to actually breaking through to the dark gold stage, which surprised me a bit since their progress was faster than I had expected it to be. I heavily suspected that to be related to Utopia's upgrade, though the addition of a third dark gold stage Pokemon with a deep bond might have been helpful as well.
Regardless of the reason, Moka/Crobat and Ignis/Gyarados were only one more parameter away from completing their limit breaking, while the other Slythering Squad members and Manami/Lapras were biting at their heels, even though neither really had any heels to bite.
Anyway, a matter that involved me personally was my "breakthrough" with my clone project. I finally managed to reduce the number of necessary thought streams to control the clone body from two to one, which meant that I could now control two additional bodies at once.
Having three Mikails to do stuff certainly speed things up during cooking, and crafting, along with some of my other routines that did not require a touch of the "real" me or any actual energy manipulation on my part.
Actions that required me to manipulate/use energy were currently impossible using one of the clones since the thought stream directing the body was already busy keeping up the necessary energy manipulation to keep the body itself running, so any further energy manipulation was impossible without causing the clone body to fail/fall apart.
Still, this was enough for now. Besides, the situation would improve as the "cost" of controlling the clone body kept decreasing, so all I had to do was to keep working on my control.
Ultimately, the first month led to me respecting medical workers more than before, and I had to admit, that nurses, at least some of them, had to do some pretty nasty stuff. On my pity ranking, they got first place, followed by the on-call doctors of the ER.
Thankfully, Doctor Bethany declared me competent enough at the start of the second/final month, so I was allowed to actually take over a few of the cases that came to the emergency room, as long as those cases were limited to bandaging, setting casts, or simple suturing.
Honestly, if my stay here at the hospital has driven one point in, then it was that the people/humans of this world had all kinds of ways to deal with injuries regardless of their severity. Straightforward broken bones, muscle ruptures, gashes, and even full-blown cut-offs were seen as relatively uncomplicated cases.
Only serious internal damage, such as severe internal bleeding and organ injuries were considered more serious problems. While infections and diseases could be classified as cases that were treated truly seriously. It was a simple concept really. The harder it was to deal with a problem, the more serious the hospital/doctors treated the case.
Still, most of those issues had nothing to do with me. I spent the month wrapping bandages whenever the doctor or nurse told me to do so. Sometimes I got to put on a cast on someone, and whenever the doctors felt truly generous, I was allowed to perform some uncomplicated sutures.
Naturally, the last one was only allowed with the explicit consent of the patient, and unsurprisingly only soldiers who were informed that they would end up with a scar regardless agreed to let me have a go at it. It was not surprising that the other patients declined, even if I was pretty sure that I was by now better with the 3 suture techniques than the actual on-site doctor.
Still, to show my appreciation to the soldiers who let me "treat" them, I applied my aura to the needle and threads. Not only did it make the suturing easier, but the healing properties in my aura would also ensure that the wound closed/healed faster and with much less scarring.
In short, my aura took away the need to use a healing spray to speed up the actual healing process or a scar "remover" to deal with the scar, which would have cost extra, though using them would have certainly sped up the process even further.
Anyway, to me it felt like the time passed much faster now that I was no longer simply wiping sh*t and running around, even though I was still doing that whenever I was not "doctoring", and before long, we approached the end of the month and with it my time at the military hospital.
The Dialday of the next week was the last day of the 27th month, and starting on Arcday the following week, I would be working at a PokeCenter instead. This made today my last Grouday here at Aero City before I had to move to Ivory City for the PokeCenter phase of my practical year. Not that this changed my routine for the day.
After dealing with the post-breakfast clean-up, I began our weekly check-up routine. I was happy to see the progress that some of them had made, though the highlight so far was probably seeing the move we had been working on actually appearing on Tyson/Machamp's move section.
Punch Barrage was a move that took the essence of Mach Punch and infused the repeat strike aspect of Double Hit as well as Dual Chop. We built up on that to create our very own fighting type multiple strike move. That kind of move combined with his four arms, was why we decided to call it Punch Barrage.
Now that the move had shown up as an in-progress move, it meant that the essence of the move had finally formed, proving that the idea was feasible, so all that was left was to keep refining the move until it moved up to the novice subsection, which would signify its realization as a true technique/move.
Anyway, aside from Tyson's success, there were a few cases where one of my Pokemon managed to raise the mastery of one of their moves or raise one of their parameters by a grade, though none of those led to an important milestone.
Well, at least it didn't until I looked through Igneel/Charmeleon's status sheet. That one gave me a super pleasant surprise. It appeared that Igneel had finished the first round of his limit-breaking phase, which meant that he was finally ready for his evolution to one of the "all-time favorite" Pokemon, Charizard.
Besides, Igneel's upcoming evolution also indicated that Osiris/Marowak's evolution to Skellibra was not far off, though I had no idea if the evolution would trigger as soon as Igneel evolved to Charizard or if it took a while before his evolution got triggered as well.
Honestly, I was assuming that it would take a while since I was guessing that Osiris would need to interact with Igneel/Charizard for a period of time to prove to himself?/the world? that their bond was going strong even though Igneel was now a Charizard. In short, I thought that this was a spiritual thing that would take some extra time to resolve.
Regardless, I shared the news with Igneel and everyone else, before asking Igneel to wait for me to finish the rest of the check-ups first. Maybe I/we'd get lucky and another surprise was waiting for me/us, though it appeared that was not the case.
Still, once I was done checking the rest of the status sheets, I announced the news over UtopiaFM, so that everyone who wanted to witness the evolution but was currently not present, such as the Spinda Quartet, could head for Igneel's area.
Afterward, we made our way there as well, and while we were waiting for everyone to arrive, I pulled out all the supplements I had prepared for this occasion. I had gone all out while preparing these but despite that, I was not expecting any significant increase in potential during the evolution.
Igneel's current potential was simply too high for me to cause a significant increase with the materials I had access to. Yet, each percent counted, which was why I went all out during the preparation of the supplements.
By the time Igneel had gulped down everything that could be ingested, and I was done applying all external supplements to his body, everyone had arrived, so I gave Igneel a final encouragement before stepping back. Fortuna/Togetic came up to wish him good luck, though she only tapped his snout a bit instead of hugging him since his body was fully was pasted with stuff.
I saw Igneel smirking before he pulled Fortuna into a hug, which caused some of the paste to stick to her body. That made him laugh but had Fortuna pout. She tickled his nose in revenge, forcing him to sneeze, which released a small black cloud that covered his head. Seeing him like that made her laugh, and after she had her little revenge, she wished him luck once more before joining us at the circle as well.
Once the smoke had dissipated I gave Igneel the go-ahead signal and he lit up like a light bulb. His evolution went perfectly fine, and as soon as the light died down, we saw a fire dragon standing where a Charmeleon used to be. Igneel directly began checking out his new wings, while I began heading in his direction to congratulate him.
I naturally also observed him to see if I could spot any changes outside the norm, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary. He was a bit taller than me, at around 195 cm or so, but that was not unusual for a Charizard, and I was pretty sure that he would still grow quite a bit before he reached his maximum height.
Igneel was after all still rather young with his less than 4 years as far as Charizard were concerned. In fact, for most Charizard, Igneel could be considered to be barely out of the youngling age period.
Anyway, his young age aside, I hugged Igneel and congratulated him on his evolution. As soon as I finished uttering those words, Osiris asked me to make room so that he could have his turn, and I had to smother the laugh that came up at his brotherly enthusiasm before I stepped aside to let him hug Igneel.
Still, I did not see Osiris light up during or after the hug, so I guess his evolution would take a while after all. Regardless, Osiris letting go served as the signal for everyone else to come up as well, and I used the time they were busy to check out Igneel's new/updated status sheet.
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