บท 771: CH151 (765), Stepping Into The Hoenn Desert
I left Bowl City right after breakfast the next morning, leaving my Earth Clone to supervise the morning training session while Mothra/Butterfree, Nyx/Umbreon, Thor/Raichu, Hades/Gengar and I resumed our journey. Thor was rather happy to be able to leave Utopia again, and we actually held our breath for a beat the moment Thor made his appearance outside. Still, thankfully neither Tapu Koko nor another legend showed up to question Thor/us, though we did wait for another hour to see if they had simply not paid attention to us, but once that hour passed, Thor's travel ban got lifted without any hiccups.
The next stop of our journey was the Hoenn Desert, and as far as I managed to gather from the map, we would be arriving at the periphery of the desert within 7 or 8 days at our usual travel speed. From there it was up to us how long we actually wanted to walk around the desert since one could leave the desert behind in just 1 to 2 days if one stuck to the periphery, or one could walk around the desert for months if one actually tried to explore it. We obviously belonged to the group that wanted to explore the desert, though I didn't plan on spending months there, or even a full month for that matter.
I might decide to do it if the situation develops that way, but my current plan was to wander around the desert for 2 to 3 weeks to see if we could stumble upon some interesting stuff like some ruins or a Trapinch tribe or something along those lines. Frankly, if we did come across something worth exploring and I decided that we had spent too much time in the desert, I would at worst come back once I had earned all Badges and spent the rest of the time until the tournament exploring the place(s) I had marked as interesting.
There were still close to 30 months until the tournament, and I honestly did not expect to take more than 24 to earn the rest of the Badges and that was including the time I was planning to spent to explore interesting areas like the Hoenn Desert and the Meteor Falls. If things went according to my plans we would still have 6 months to take a closer look at the areas that roused my interest.
Anyway, we made our way towards the desert, and on the way there I did not forget to partake in some wild as well as trainer battles to allow the "weaker" members of the main and reserve team to gain more battle experience. I even let Garp, the Giant Magikarp, participate a few times even though the battles were taking place outside the water. It was always funny to see the other side's reaction when a giant red Karp appeared across from them. Garp used a combination of Splash and Tackle to deal with most of his opponents only seldomly using Water Gun since he enjoyed flattening them more.
I had to say that it was impressive to see a giant Magikarp flop/jump meters into the air before falling/slamming into the target while using Tackle, which was likely to upgrade to Body Slam if he kept this up. Yet, no matter how interesting it was to watch Magikarp, he was still only at the (mid) iron stage so his opponents were also limited to iron-stage Pokemon which made the resistance they could put up a bit limited. I decided to upgrade Garp's opponents to bronze-stage Pokemon once he advanced to the (high) iron stage. I also told Stan and the others to stress to Garp that training/mastering his Water Gun was essential so that he spent more time working on it at least until he had raised it to advanced mastery even if he did not want to master it.
It was shortly after dinner, as we were relaxing and just talking about what we wanted to do for the rest of the evening that Osiris/Skellibra suddenly advanced to the (high) dark gold stage, so we left the decision on what to do to him after everyone congratulated him on his advancement. Osiris shared that he wanted to watch funny videos on PokeTube, so that was what we did until it was time to head to bed. Giratiday morning began the final day of the month, but that had no impact on how our day went, which followed the same pattern as Mewday, just without the surprise advancement.
The following day/Palkiday signaled the start of the new/23rd month, though Palkiday itself went by in the same vein as Giratiday. Dialday on the other hand was a bit special in my eyes because we reached the halfway point to the desert shortly after lunch that day, and even more interesting than that was that Garp advanced to the (high) iron stage during a battle against a wild Lombre a bit more than an hour before dinner/9 p.m. With his advancement, McSpearow was the only one among either team who was still at the (mid) iron stage.
I was not counting Munchlax since he still had to grow out of the stageless phase. As for the ones with the most progress among our iron members; We had Squirtle who was working on raising the last two parameters to complete his limit-breaking phase, which I suspected would happen within a month or two. A bit behind Squirtle was Nidoran, Seb/Nidoking, and Gaia/Nidoqueen's little sister, who was working on finishing the second round of her limit-breaking. The others had a bit more work to do before they reached a noteworthy point.
Regardless, the days following that passed by rather quickly and it was an hour into our stroll on Mewday of the second week that we noticed that the vegetation was starting to recede. By the time we entered Utopia that evening, the trees and grass had been replaced by increasingly eroded earth and the occasional shrub. The next morning Hera came to me before breakfast and revealed that she had advanced to the (high) dark gold stage. She seemed to have advanced overnight while she was sleeping, probably as her body was completely relaxing/recovering from the stress/strain of the day.
I naturally congratulated Hera on her advancement, and hearing me the others congratulated her as well. I told her to think about what she wanted until dinner before finally moving on to breakfast. After we had eaten, our usual group left Utopia and continued heading for the desert. As we came closer the earth began to turn into sand, and an hour in we came across a Sandshrew, which was the first "real" desert dweller we got to see, though it was definitely not the last one. More Sandshrew, a few Geodude, and a bunch of Diglett showed up before we even arrived at the "official" periphery of the Hoenn Desert.
I knew that there was an actual "official" point because I saw a pretty large sign that said so. Interestingly enough, the reason the sign was so large was that there were instructions printed on it telling people who wanted to explore the desert the most important points one had to take into account when one traveled through a desert. There was a stamp from the ranger union at the bottom left of the sign, showing who decided to turn the sign into a pseudo-desert guide, but I honestly thought that anyone who came here should already know these since the instructions were truly basic ones.
I knew for a fact that the same "tips" could be found online on many sites and the ranger union had a whole desert survival manual that one could access for free. The ones on the sign were actually stuff that anyone with a functioning brain should be able to think of themselves. Stuff like bring along a lot of water in your storage bag, and if you want to spend the night in the desert make sure you bring along a decent tent capable of keeping out the cold and retaining heat. The most important one was to keep out a Pokemon as company and to be alert of the possibility of the sand below one's feet since not only could wild Pokemon appear from under the sand, whether that was out of surprise or to ambush you, but it was also possible to step into a quicksand pit.
While deserts usually had a low number of naturally occurring quicksand spots due to the lack of water, the existence of Pokemon capable of manipulating the ground/sand, changed things up. It was possible that a Pokemon was lurking in the sand waiting for a victim or one had set up the trap and left it there, so while natural pits were rare, artificial ones were not that uncommon, especially since with the Trapinch leading the way the local Diglett and Sandshrew population had adopted the strategy as well. Luckily for any potential victim, Diglett and Sandshrew did not care about any humans so they ignored them unless the human had already died.
In case of death, they adopted a waste not want not philosophy. The ones one had to look out for were the Trapinch since they reflexively bit anything that got dragged into the center of their pit. Honestly, the best thing one could do in such a situation is to stop moving and bring out a Pokemon that could help one leave the sand pit's area. The most useful ones in such a situation were flying types, who could lift one up, and ground types, who could harden the sand to prevent any further sinking before pushing one back out, followed by Pokmeon capable of extending limbs or other appendages like vines; Examples of those were Onix or Tangela or any Pokemon capable of using vines really.
Anyway, seeing nothing I did not already know, I moved past the signpost and made my way deeper into the desert. I was not planning to waste any time in the outer area since I was sure that I would need to head deeper if I wanted to come across any ruins or bigger groups of Pokemon. A few minutes into our walk Nyx complained about the sand getting on her nerves. She requested that I switch her out with Seb, Gaia, or Osiris, who would not mind all the sand. Seeing her step forward like that Thor asked to be swapped out as well, though he could have simply levitated/surfed along if he switched to his alolan form or even in his regular form for that matter.
Mothra, who continued to lounge around on my head naturally did not have any such problems; Neither did Hades, who was chilling inside my shadow. I was naturally not going to refuse their request, so I moved Nyx and Thor inside Utopia before asking Seb and Gaia if they wanted to accompany me through the desert. The two agreed, interested in seeing a desert with their own eyes. None of my Pokemon had seen one so far or rather they had seen one in videos but not in person. I was honestly considering if I should bring out Osiris as well, but I decided against it for now since we were already intimidating enough.
The presence of a dragon would definitely impact our chances of coming across wild Pokemon more than the combination of Seb and Gaia, even though their combination was definitely more dangerous. Nonetheless, even though the Nido siblings were less intimidating, I still told the duo 10 minutes into our stroll to follow Mothra's example and restrain their aura as much as possible since the wild Pokemon were staying away, which went against my plan to see if I could stumble upon anything interesting. So far the desert Pokemon were proving themselves to be more skittish than the ones outside.
Thankfully, once the duo restrained themselves, and we had moved a bit further, we finally started to come across some wild Pokemon. At first, I only noticed some Geodude and Sandshrew as well as one or two Diglett but roughly 20 minutes after spotting the first wild Pokemon, I finally got to see my first wild Trapinch.
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