บท 579: CH52 (574), Police (22)
I had nothing planned for this weekend anyway, so I decided to check out the various stores in Celadon City to get an idea of the going rate for the Mareep line. The simple fact that Mareep wool was a useful resource meant that the price was a bit higher than it would have been otherwise. Not that it would have made a big difference since I needed a rather big number of Mareep line members if I wanted Utopia to produce an Ampharosite.
Considering the average price of a single 4-star Mareep at the (high) iron stage that I had seen by Kyoday evening, buying the amount of Mareep I was planning to add to Utopia was a pipe dream without spending at least around half a billion Poke.
Even if I went ahead and only bought unidentified or 3-star Mareep, I'd have to spend close to 300 million Poke. Moreover, this was without considering the price I would have to pay for the stronger Pokemon such as Flaaffy and Ampharos.
Adding those would exceed my current cash capital, and I was not planning to sell some of my stuff to get more cash if I could just go out to catch the Mareep I needed myself. Sure it would take a lot more time and effort than buying them, but I wouldn't have to spend billions, so that was a fair exchange in my opinion.
Still, if I learned one thing from this, though I already had an inkling when I investigated the Miltank market, it was that the Pokemon farmers here were stinking rich simply due to the amount of "farm" Pokemon they possessed, even if it was just a herd of Mareep, though their wealth was not in the form of "ready" cash.
Anyway, after confirming once more that buying Pokemon only made sense if the number remained small, I resolved to catch the Mareep line members I wanted/needed myself. For this, I made use of the privileges granted by my Junior Professor title for the first time. I accessed the up-to-date information on areas in Kanto known to contain wild Mareep/Ampharos tribes.
The maps were compiled by the Ranger's Union and Alliance personnel, so they were pretty accurate. The Rangers usually ensured that the local ecosystem did not get unbalanced too much due to the actions of trainers, humans, or migrating Pokemon/tribes, but certain species got some special attention due to their nature.
That could be both due to their good nature or their bad nature, and in this case, it was because Mareep belonged to the good kind. Due to the Mareep lines' apparent classification as a strategic species, along with these tribes/areas being within the Kanto border, I took a look at the capture/number guidelines set by the alliance and the ranger's union.
The alliance/rangers kept an eye on the Mareep tribes to ensure that they could continue to propagate without problems, so the numbers they set determined the degree of reduction the tribes could endure before the loss of members became critical.
Obviously, the quota/ratio changed depending on the size of the tribe, but due to the guidelines, I knew how many Mareep I could poach without getting into trouble in case my actions got noticed. Consequently, this meant I could not simply grab a whole tribe and be done with it. Instead, I would have to move between the various tribes until I managed to reach the number I wanted.
Honestly, going into the true wilderness outside the border and poaching a whole tribe seemed easier/less of a hassle, but I did not have the necessary intel for that, so I would have to search for any such tribe myself, which translated to a lot of work as well.
Thankfully, the capture of the Mareep line members was not urgent, so I marked/noted down the areas that seemed to have the highest number of Mareep, and made a note to catch some for Utopia once I passed by those places after I started my official journey.
That meant that I would need to wait until I was done with my Senior League Tournament since it currently seemed like I would go to Hoenn for my first year. I was planning on doing the Grand League Tournament/Circuit in Kanto afterward, and that was when I could deal with the Mareep issue.
Still, Mareep's example had shown that my go-to action for any Mega Stone-producing tribe would be to capture them myself, which made me question the likelihood of providing Utopia the capability to produce certain Mega Stones, such as the ones belonging to the Royal Pokemon, or even worse the pseudo legendaries. Leaving that issue for future Mikail to worry about, I spent the rest of Kyoday inside Utopia with my Pokemon, and I did the same on Grouday as well.
Arcday started off the last week of my police phase, as well as my first and only week with the SPU (special police unit). I reported for duty on time, and (Officer) Jenny Junsa was the one who welcomed me to the SPU. She brought me straight to the conference room where she briefly introduced me before everyone returned back to discussing the raid on an important hideout of one of the major gangs in Celadon City.
Apparently, tomorrow a rather big deal would be taking place in that hideout. The SPU was planning to bust the deal, and capture everyone involved in the act. For some reason, the deal was going to happen at 4 a.m. instead of taking place during the night, which was why we left to scout the area around the hideout at 1 p.m.
Jenny, and I, along with two other unit members kept an eye on the north of the hideout until 5 p.m. before another batch of SPU members came to replace us. We returned to HQ and wrote a report on our observations. With that, my shift was over, and before I left, Jenny told me that my Mewday shift would be dragged forward for the operation so that I could participate as well.
I stayed inside Utopia until 2:30 a.m. and then made my way over to the HQ. We prepared for the mission and left for the hideout at 3:30 a.m. The gangsters were surprisingly timely. The other side arrived at the hideout at 3:55 a.m., and while they were having their tense stand-off during the exchange of goods, we were eyeing them like a Talonflame would watch its prey.
The moment the exchange was completed and both parties relaxed a bit, we struck. Taken off guard by a bunch of police officers storming their place, the criminals were only able to put up minimal resistance before all of them were immobilized and pressed to the ground.
Honestly, the raid itself took less than 10 minutes, but the aftermath took the rest of the day, is what Jenny told me on Giratiday since I left at 1 p.m. due to the end of my Mewday shift. Upon my return to duty on Giratiday, Jenny brought me to the interrogation room and they brought in key criminals for me to look into. Since they had already identified the important ones yesterday, I only had to mind-read 5 people.
I passed the information I unearthed to Officer Jenny, who relayed it to someone else in the SPU. The rest of the day was spent analyzing the information I had gotten, so I was more idle compared to the previous two days. At the end of my shift, I said my goodbyes to Jenny and the team, before heading to one of the steak houses I had heard about since I was in the mood for some steak.
I had Mothra/Butterfree out as well, and she was lounging atop my head. While we were passing through one of the parks in Celadon City, we came across an old Raticate that seemed to have approached the end of its lifespan. It was lying beside a bush relaxing/dozing off, and I only noticed it due to its light brown/greyish fur standing out from the green of the bush.
I usually would not have bothered with it since aging was natural and this was not the first old Pokemon I saw. However, while I was passing by, the old Raticate got harassed by a Meowth, so it opened one of its eyes and stared at the Meowth before displaying its strength, which scared the Meowth off.
Regardless of Raticate's old age and its likely waning strength, its (high) gold aura was enough to send the mischievous bronze Meowth hightailing out of there. Seeing the Meowth scuttling away, Raticate closed its eyes once more and returned to relaxing/dozing off. I had to chuckle a bit at that, finding Raticate's retired boss style a bit funny.
Still, seeing Raticate's strength made me halt for a moment because I suddenly got an idea. We already had the 36th month, and the opening of my orphanage moved closer and closer. I had already made an appointment with the agency at the beginning of the next month/year for the interview with all candidates, so that ball was about to get rolling.
On the other hand, while the numbers for the starter project had yet to reach the numbers I wanted, the development was steady, and would probably reach the expected numbers sometime before or after the start of my journey.
Anyway, the idea I got was to see if I could persuade the Raticate to act as the live-in bodyguard for the reserve/habitat, though whether I would go through with the offer or not would mostly depend on how old this Raticate truly was.
As far as I knew, a (high) gold Raticate should theoretically have a maximum lifespan of around 500 years. However, most wild Pokemon were unable to reach their theoretical limit due to a reduced lifespan caused by multiple factors, such as hidden injuries, sequela of old injuries, or the over-drafting of their bodies.
If this Raticate was such a case then my plan would work since Utopia would be able to deal with most of the reasons for its potentially reduced lifespan, "restoring" the years it had "lost". On the other hand, if Raticate had truly come close to the true limit of its lifespan, then my plan would fail.
With that in mind, I chose to approach Raticate while radiating goodwill using my aura. Raticate, who had no doubt heard me approaching, briefly lifted its head and opened its eyes. Raticate looked at me, and I saw its gaze briefly flitting to Mothra who was chilling on my head, before it seemingly chose to ignore me/us, and returned to its previous relaxing state.
Well, it was unable to keep doing that when I stopped in front of it and crouched down before greeting it with a "hi". Mothra joined in and greeted Raticate as well. It appeared as if Raticate planned to act as if could not hear us since it showed no reaction to our greeting. However, I did not let that discourage me and simply decided to wait and see if Raticate would continue to ignore us if I remained crouching in front of it.
In the meantime, I considered how to check its status sheet without it noticing it since I doubted that it would appreciate being touched right now. Luckily a breeze appeared at that moment and I had my psionic energy lightly brush its body while the breeze was ruffling its fur. Using that contact I observed its status, and I could not help but be amazed by what I saw.
I was not impressed because Raticate's status was great. No, I was impressed because I saw that Raticate's potential was actually worse than I thought it would be. It had deep yellow potential, which meant that it should have theoretically reached its strength/stage ceiling at the (mid) gold stage.
Raticate however had managed to reach the (high) gold stage, which was only possible through sheer hard work and guts. It had to have gone through a lot, and I meant a lot, to break through the natural strength limit imposed by its potential.
Despite its rather painful potential and probably life story, this was actually good news for me since it meant that this Raticate almost definitely fell into the group that had a reduced lifespan due to overdrafting its body and hidden injuries/sequelae.
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Azrail93 Thank you for reading.
This is chapter 2/4 for this week.
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