I questioned the Gligar on their past, and I found out that the (low) bronze blue potential Gligar was the great-grandson of the leader of a much bigger Gligar tribe; One that had actual Gliscor among the upper echelon of their tribe. This particular Gligar did not like the fact that he would not be able to inherit the leadership of the tribe and decided a year ago to strike it out on his own, or rather with his own little group. He managed to recruit the Gligar I had captured, and the strongest one was sent by his family to aid/guide him. YM (Young Master) Gligar had planned to go back and poach some more Gligar to increase their number once they had properly established themselves.
They began their "journey" somewhere in the core area of the Hoenn Desert, but quickly learned that with their strength there was no place for them in that area, so they were forced to leave the core area for the inner zone. However, while they were at less of a risk in that region, the bronze-stage prowess of their leadership was not enough for them to establish themselves there as well. After wandering around for a month or two, unable to settle down due to a lack of strength, they were eventually forced to once again move on, this time to the outer area.
Even in the outer area, they were slowly but surely pushed closer to the periphery before they managed to actually deal with any challengers and aggressors, which allowed them to settle in the place I found them in. I felt a bit of chagrin as well as dissatisfaction in him while he shared all that, but I could feel that he meant it when he laughed self-mockingly and said that he learned the hard way that life outside of their tribe was not as easy as he had imagined it. It appeared the "young master" had accepted reality for what it was, and he actually admitted that he had been considering temporarily returning to his home tribe; At least until he and his deputies reached the gold stage before setting out again.
The environment in these parts was, according to Gligar, quite a bit worse compared to the inner and core areas of the desert, so he wanted to wait until his group was at least strong enough to establish itself in the inner area. Well, that had been his plan before I came across them. Now that I had captured them those plans obviously fell through, but after seeing what Utopia/I had to offer Gligar did not seem to mind their situation, especially after I told them what I was willing to provide to them as an incentive to get strong.
I promised an E-rank Razor Fang to any Gligar that reached the (high) silver stage, a D-rank Razor Fang to any Gligar that reached the regular limit of the (high) silver stage, which meant all As across the parameter board, a C-rank Razor Fang to any Gligar that broke through the silver stage with at least one limit breaking round complete before reaching the regular (high) silver stage limit, and finally B-rank Razor Fang to any Gligar that broke through the silver stage with at least two limit breaking round complete before reaching the regular (high) silver stage limit. I was naturally going to be the one to tell them how far along they were for obvious reasons, but no one was worried that I would lie to them about their progress. This was actually the plan I was going to implement for all trigger evolution lines living inside Utopia since this should motivate everyone to go beyond their usual training pace.
Anyway, after learning of their past, I asked YM Gligar and the rest of the Gligar if they had come across any interesting places such as ruins, oases, or any curious Pokemon during their journey through the desert. They began to throw out some suggestions, and while most of them were unimpressive, some stood out. They mentioned coming across a bunch of Dwebble at the border between the outer area and the inner one. They apparently tried to hunt the aforementioned Dwebble which ended with them being shot at by a Crustle. The rock barrage forced them to abort their dives and they flew away when a second Crustle showed itself.
The Gligar also saw a bunch of Sandile, a Skorupi, and what seemed to be a Drilbur. Besides, they also mentioned the usual ones like Sandslash, Cacnea, Geodude, Diglett, Cubone, and Trapinch, but the ones that roused my interest were the Trapinch, for obvious reasons, the Skorupi, and the Sandile. Besides the Pokemon, they also mentioned four oases; 2 small ones, a medium-sized one, and a large one. Along with that, they also mentioned two places that could have ruins, though they added that they did not get close to those places since they felt uncomfortable around the places, which was rather interesting. I could think of three reasons for that; One, there were some pretty strong Pokemon living there that were not bothering to contain their aura. Two; some psychic types were living there and three, some ghost types were living there.
Well, it could also be a combination of two or even all three options, but either way, I was interested in both locations. In addition to the possible ruins, they also mentioned a rocky area that had ridges where a bunch of mean birds occasionally rested. From what I was able to understand the birds in question could either be Braviary or Mandibuzz, and while I was not really a fan of Vulabby/Mandibuzz, I was pretty interested in Rufflet/Braviary. As for the oases, those naturally also directly made it on my list of places to visit since all oases were gathering places of all kinds of Pokemon.
Still, even though they mentioned quite a few interesting things, only a few of those were within the outer zone of the Hoenn Desert, and even fewer were not too far away from our current position, so we obviously had to prioritize stuff and set up a proper travel route. I pulled up a clean copy of the Hoenn Desert and put a red cross roughly on where I deduced our current position to be. Then with the help of the Gligar, I approximately marked the areas where they said they saw the things they mentioned. I also made sure to mark the area where the Gliscor tribe was supposedly living before putting the map away and taking out a blank paper.
I turned the paper and put a dot close to the bottom of the paper's center before marking it as our position. Then I asked the Gligar for more info on any Trapinch groups they knew around their place which I marked with their help. I used their gliding time to determine how far away the Trapinch were, and by the end, I had 11 marked positions, excluding the Trapinch group I already met. It could have been more, but I only marked the ones where the Gligar were sure that there would be more than just a handful of Trapinch.
The closest Trapinch group was a roughly 15-minute walk to our west, and the furthest one was 3 hours to our east. Since some could be placed in one "route", I divided the 11 positions into 3 routes. The eastern route had 5 Trapinch groups, the western one had 4, and the one to our north, which led deeper into the desert, had 2 Trapinch groups. Satisfied with the provisory Trapinch map, I told the Gligar to hang out with Gaara/Gabite and Osiris/Skellibra before leaving with my desert exploration group to follow the Trapinch map.
I decided to head east first, so we began to trudge our way to the first of 5 stops on this route. A minute into our walk I decided to spice things up a bit since just looking at the sand was honestly a bit boring. I chose to manipulate the sand/ground beneath my feet, compacting a small area around my feet before manipulating the sand around that to push me forward. I was essentially using my ground manipulation to do some sand surfing. I was still moving at the same speed, meaning I was still slow, but since I was essentially doing two ground manipulations at once, it still served as a pretty good exercise. That it was more fun than just watching the sand along the way was a definite plus as well. As for keeping an eye out for any ambushes, I left that to Seb/Nidoking and Gaia/Nidoqueen.
The two just chuckled at my slow sand surfing, and Seb occasionally used his own sand/ground manipulation to interfere with mine to mess with me. The first time he did that, I ended up hurtling forward landing face first in the sand, which had Seb, Gaia, Hades/Gengar, and Mothra/Butterfree, who took off on time to avoid a face-to-face meeting with the sand with me, laugh on my expense. Further attempts did not have such "successful" results, but I did stumble nearly every time since his ground manipulation was much much better than mine. The only reason I avoided any further intimate moments with the sand was that I was actually looking out for any interferences which allowed me to balance things out even if I lost control of my "surfboard".
Once Seb noticed/felt that just messing with "my" sand was no longer challenging enough, he began to mess with the sand in front of me. He suddenly raised it, which had me take off, causing me to lose control of the sand the first time it happened, though I avoided diving head-first into the sand by levitating. When I got used to that somewhat, Seb caused a small eruption, which destroyed my sandboard and once more sent me flying the first time; A few minutes later he began to also harden the sand in front of me into obstacles, which once again had me leave my sandboard behind the first time it happened, forcing me to levitate to avoid a head to sand meeting.
Honestly, what had started as a bit of leisurely sandboarding got turned into extreme sandboarding by Seb, but I did not stop him since it was pretty fun and it served as a much better exercise. Still, we had to stop 30 minutes into our trip since we arrived at our first destination spot. I was able to spot 6 or so Trapinch lounging around the sand not far from us, and they saw us as well, which had them sound the alarm so to say. More Trapinch began to surface from the sand and within a minute their number had grown to 32.
Seeing them gathered together like that, watching us as we approached I decided to be diplomatic first and sent out my new Trapinch ambassadors. I brought out my two Trapinch and told them to go and see if they could persuade the Trapinch to let me check them out to see if I would be interested in any of them. The two nodded and told me to leave it to them before ambling over to their fellow Trapinch, who did allow them to come close without attacking them. Everything looked good, and the Trapinch duo began to speak with them.
No idea what caused it but less than a minute into the talk some of the Trapinch began to attack my diplomats, so I went ahead and interfered since I could naturally not let my duo get beat up. I immobilized the attackers while telling Mothra to send them all to sleep. Some of them were actually smart enough to dive under the sand as soon as I stopped the attackers, so they ended up avoiding the Sleep Powder, but Mothra dragged them out of the sand using psychic, and before they could react they got a dose of Sleep Powder as well.
Once all Trapinch were asleep, we made our way over to their side and I asked the diplomats why the other side suddenly attacked them. They were just as confused and they said that they just told the truth, but that one of the Trapinch accused them of lying about impossible stuff before they attacked them. I guess the things they mentioned were a bit hard to believe without something to guarantee that one was not lying and maybe just two Trapinch were not enough to make their claims believable. Nonetheless, at least I gave them a chance to solve this peacefully. Now that they had been subdued by force, I was simply going to check them all and capture any Trapinch that proved worthwhile without giving the rest anything in return.
-----------------------------
Advertising plug-in:
Currently, the lowest number of advanced chapters available on patre'on is 6, while the highest number of advanced chapters is 10.
Sketches, drawings of the MC, Variants and maps can be found on my Patre'on. A patre'on exclusive Legendary Lore and Pokemon Lore/Info series can be found there as well.
Help me stay motivated.
patreo*n/Azrail93