Chapter 26: Recovery
Pseudo legendries were a little different however as each recorded tribe or group of the things were kept fairly well hidden from the public to prevent rank amateur's from getting themselves killed trying to catch a member of the species. In a not so surprising reveal I learned that while it was possible to do as I did and acquire a pseudo without dealing with the older and usually fully evolved members of the species it was a very small chance. That chance dropped even lower however when that pseudo happened to be a variant at the same time.-
Variant pseudo legendries were almost always extremely well protected since their eggs informed the elders of the species of it's exceptionalism as they were always very different from the normal eggs. While possible for such an egg to get mistaken as normal and left in a random wild zone to grow up on it's own it was less than a single percent chance of happening. So when I showed up with Gaia there was bound to be a small commotion as a result but nothing I couldn't deal with. If I started taking the gym challenge as well I would actually enter a list of protected individuals since I had a high chance of becoming an elite or even champion level trainer in the future.-
That list wasn't a joke either as if anything untoward happened to anyone on that list the pokemon league would find the perpetrators and come down on them like the hammer of god. I came across several reports about that exact thing happening before when the list was first established and a gang attacked a guy with a Dratini to snatch it. The nearest gym leader tracked them down retrieved the Dratini and slaughtered the entire gang and their pokemon before leaving their bodies to rot to send a message.-
This world was not a kind or gentle place and this made that abundantly clear to me and I was perfectly fine with that. That guy with the Dratini eventually went on to become the patriarch of the Wataru clan after marrying into the head family. With an example like that it became much less likely some sort of criminal would be willing to take the risk involved with attacking me to steal Gaia or Vulcan after I become a trainer. -
I spent the rest of the day going through the internet to try and learn all that I need to know such as history and laws. The laws imposed by the pokemon league were pretty much the same as you would expect really. No murder , stealing , kidnapping , terrorism , rape , or streaking , you know the usual stuff. There was very much exceptions to these rules however depending on the intent and situation of the crime. For example if someone else attacked you yet didn't intend to kill you but you killed them then you would not get in trouble.-
Logical little addendums like that that made sense existed in the laws and altogether made this system function well. Obviously there were laws that had very specific circumstances around them that I didn't see being an issue for my self such as not conducting inhumane experiments. Otherwise I didn't see any problems that I may run into after heading to Littleroot in the future to see the Professor there. The reason I planned to see Professor Birch before anything else was that It would be that I wanted to get my name on that protected list as soon as possible and with a direct line to the upper levels of the league he could make that happen.-
Unlike usual Gaia needed a couple of days to heal up fully and Vulcan was no different so there was no real training to be done at the moment. Instead I took them both out with me to put my new foraging skill to use. I almost wanted to cry at just how many edible plants existed not more than fifty feet from the cave. Wild potatoes , ginger , turmeric , leafy greens and even hot peppers that were actually tiny red things that I originally thought may have been poisonous.-
Like most wild herbs they all had a sort of bitterness to them but the other flavors I got from them made it totally worth it. The biggest haul though easily had to be the extremely abundant amounts of mushrooms all over the place. Chanterelles , lions manes , chicken of the woods and portabellas were all over the place. We feasted well after that though I did run out of orans to help both of my pokemon heal faster. I finally got an answer about weather Gaia's quick recovery was because she was special or not thanks to Vulcan though as it was recovering just as fast despite having considerably worse injuries.-
By the end of the third day both of them were in peak shape meaning that it was finally time to get Vulcans training started. I hadn't just gone foraging during this time either as I had Gaia excavate the cave some more with Vulcans help. I did this because not only was the cave kinda crowded with all three of us living here but also because Gaia was showing more and more signs of an imminent evolution as her color was growing slightly darker and her spikes slightly longer.-
I wasn't worried about her evolving into a Pupitar since even though it would cause her speed to drop considerably her defense stats would grow to stupid high levels in exchange. My biggest concern with her evolving was her size since she would become REALLY big after evolving. About the size of a normal Tyranitar in fact so the cave needed to be expanded to contain her ahead of time. Now the cave was nearly fourteen feet tall and twelve feet wide all while extending twenty feet into the mountain side with reinforced sides courtesy of Gaia using her ground type energy to harden the walls and ceiling.-
My plan at the moment was to get Vulcans moves up to at least Adept mastery each before we made our way to Littleroot. I woke up on the fourth day at dawn and yawned before sliding off Vulcan waking it up at the same time. I got rid of my collection of feathers the same day Vulcan joined my team because that fur of his was WAY softer. It was resistant to me sleeping on it's back at first but I can be very very stubborn when I really want something.-
The best part in my opinion about having Vulcan had to be the fact it could make a brand new fire whenever it wanted. This meant I didn't need to worry about keeping the fire active all the time which was a relief. "Wake up , we have stuff to do." I said while shaking Gaia awake as Vulcan opened it's mouth to yawn loudly. She grumbled a bit which I roughly translated to something about having a good dream. "You can sleep later Gaia , we only get about eight hours of light to work with after all." I said with a chuckle.