Pokemon Alternate Universe Adventures

I put the Luvdisc out of my mind for now since their matter had to wait until I was done with the Marill and Azumarill in front of me. Seeing them observing me curiously, I decided to take the first step and introduced myself as well as Mothra/Butterfree. I frankly told them that I had heard about their place from a friendly Machop and decided to visit since I was interested in Marill. I did not hide that I wanted to see if I could recruit some of them, provided that they were interested.

Granted, I was never worried about being unable to lure a Pokemon to my side using food, benefits, and Utopia, as long as the Pokemon in question was not a leader of a group or too attached to its current bonds. Both could be handled as well, though it depended on whether the Pokemon I wanted to recruit was worth adding some extras into the equation or not.

Anyway, I naturally opened up my aura while I said all that to prove/underline that I was being honest, and I could sense the feeling of caution I felt from the few stronger Azumarill lessen at my use of aura while the collective curiosity rose. I had barely finished my introduction when three Marill came right up to me and curiously asked why I wanted to recruit more than one of them.

It seemed they were aware that trainers usually only added one member of a species to their team, but that was not all that shocking since they had to have seen a lot of trainers come and go through the Metero Falls even if they usually hung out at this secluded space. I frankly told them that I had an energy-rich sanctuary with an abundance of food as well as a no-conflict rule and that I wanted to add some Marill line members to the place because I thought their line was great.

That bit had all Marill and Azumarill puff out their chests since everyone was obviously listening in on our conversation. I then shared that I thought that Marill would most likely make very good starter Pokemon since they were friendly, had a good typing, and could evolve into Azumarill who could become really strong Pokemon if trained well.

'Provided they had Huge Power as one of their abilities,' I mentally added but kept to myself. I was honestly only exaggerating a bit since most of it were my genuine thoughts. While an Azumarill without any modifiers could likely not compare to some of the more impressive starter Pokemon out there, including the iconic ones, they still could work as very good starters that could accompany a trainer for a lifetime as long as their potential was good enough and they had Huge Power.

The collective happiness and pride I felt shot up by a lot once I said my piece, so I followed up with my plan to possibly provide young aspiring trainers, who had earned the honor, with a young Marill partner once the number of Marill and Azumarill in the sanctuary had reached a certain number. I obviously added that it would depend on whether the Marill agreed to leave with the young human/trainer or not. That along with the honor bit had to be said to show that I was truly appreciating their species/line.

It made it easier to persuade/recruit them and cost me nothing since I truly planned to hand them out with their approval. I did not bother mentioning my Professorship since they likely did not know what that meant, but I had my aura so I didn't need to mention it since they could feel that I was not just talking nonsense. The reason I explained so much was that I wanted to use the same strategy I used before. I was going to utilize the Marill here to find more Marill and make it easier to recruit them.

Anyway, the persuasion checks passed, and the Marill as well as Azumarill allowed me to check all members of their group, including the few Azurill they had. Those had been hidden away (underwater) and only came out after the Azumarill called them over, but to be honest, I was the least interested in them due to their evolution requirement as well as low training efficiency before then. Nonetheless, I still checked them just to avoid missing out on a potential gem.

I was not sure if I should have felt disappointed or not, but none of the four Azurill had good enough potential to qualify for recruitment. I did find some worthy Marill among the 93 present, and there were also 2 Azumarill among the 24 that passed the screening. The two leaders were not included in that for obvious reasons. I did not plan to let go of the two Azumarill I spotted since the Azumarill had the leading duo, but I decided to only recruit 6 of the 11 qualified Marill I found to leave the group with some members with good potential.

Sustainability and all that, even if I had not paid that much attention to it before. Alright, I could admit to myself that I just did not want to be the reason for this (Azu)Marill group to decline too much in the future. I had honestly been surprised to find so many Marill and Azumarill with good potential in a group of this size. The colony I found outside was not that much smaller than this one, but they only had two qualified members, one of which had been the leading Azumarill.

The difference between 2 out of 80ish and 15 out of 121 was very large. Either that previous group was really unlucky or this one was very lucky during their egg/development phase. Given what I knew about eggs and general potential trends, I could confidently say that it was the latter case. Now the question was whether that truly was just because they were lucky or if their living environment had anything to do with it.

The environment part could be divided into the Meteor Falls in general and their pond/chamber specifically. I would be able to check if it was related to the Meteor Falls or their chamber when I inspected the other Marill/Azumarill living here. If they also had an unusually high number of members with good potential, then the issue lay with the Meteor Falls. If it was just this group that stood out, then the issue had to be related to either them or their place.

I could naturally also check the many other Pokemon living in the Meteor Falls for reference sake, but in that case, I would need to check every single Pokemon we came across, which would slow us down considerably, so I decided to keep it to the Marill. If we ended up finding some other interesting tribes, I could check them as well, but until then I was not planning to check out every Geodude, Diglett, Zubat and so on we came across.

Anyway, once I had convinced the Marill and Azumarill I chose to follow me, I balled them before I let them out again so that they could talk to their friends/family until we left. I also took out a lot of food and snacks for all of them to enjoy. I had promised them to leave a few bags that could feed them for a month or two, so this kind of worked as a preview. While the Marill group was busy eating and sharing opinions on the taste, I finally took the time to properly check the pond.

The pond had a decent depth ranging from about 1.5 meters to around 4 meters at the deepest area in the center. As far as Pokemon were concerned, aside from the Luvdisc I saw, I also spotted some Goldeen, and Barboach in there, along with the one fish no body of water could do without, Magikarp. While there were no Gyarados, I did spot two Seaking and a Whiscash, though I honestly only did a cursory check so there might have been more than that.

Unlike Gyarados, Seaking as well as Whiscash were not at a size that was impossible to miss. Granted, Whiscash were rather territorial, so there was probably not a second one of those either. Not to mention that I was more focused on finding and checking the Luvdisc that swam around inside the pond. Either way, I ended up finding an underwater channel that I was sure led to the other side of this place, connecting the pond with the waterfall/stream.

That explained where these Pokemon/fish came from since unlike the Marill they couldn't have come through the tunnel I used. When I briefly went up to ask the Azumaril about the channel, the Azumarill leader shared that their predecessors had come to this chamber through the channel as well, so there was that. Azumarill then added that they used it whenever they wanted to leave.

It appeared that only the fighting types that came to bother, sorry battle them on occasion used the tunnel in the wall. He also added that the hole/tunnel had been here before them unlike the large number of luminous moss that grew everywhere inside the chamber; That was apparently their work. I went back into the pond after that, and I ended up checking 27 Luvdisc but caught none of them since the best one among them was a (low) silver stage Luvdisc with light yellow potential, which was not really trashy, but was nowhere near good enough for me to gift to one of the girls.

If Jessica and Rose insisted on adding a Luvdisc to their roster, the least I could do was make sure that it has at least 5-star potential to ensure that it did not suck too much. Ah, my bias was coming through again. Still, biased opinion or not, the lowest potential I was willing to accept in a wild Luvdisc was deep green so that Utopia was guaranteed to raise it to light blue, with a chance of it becoming blue. If I ended up giving them Luvdisc which had 6-star/purplish potential, all the better.

As for the possibility of finding only a single 6-star fish and whom to give it to, I would cross that bridge when it came down to it. The existence of the underwater channel and the fact that there were Luvdisc here meant that I would be able to find more Luvdisc during my exploration of the Meteor Falls, and I was sure that I would be able to find two good ones among them eventually, so once I had let go of the last Luvdisc, I left the pond once more and told the Marill/Azumarill that it was time to go.

I waited a minute for them to say goodbye before I recalled them and placed them inside Utopia, where I released them at the Marill habitat so that they could undergo Utopia's welcoming treatment. Once the Pokeballs had been transferred, I took out the bags of food I had promised before I began to instruct the Azumarill to ensure that they knew not to unseal more than a few bags at a time to ensure that the food stayed fresh until they had gone through everything.

After I did that, I said my goodbyes and began to levitate again. Just as I was about to head/fly to the hole/tunnel, I heard a loud splash behind me. It attracted my attention, so I turned my head, and I saw a Whiscash jump out of the water before striking a pose following which it fell back into the water. No idea why, but after seeing the Whiscash at that moment, a Pokemon I had seen in the Paldea Record flashed through my mind, namely Dondozo.

Yet, the two Pokemon did not really have any real similarity, so I attributed that flash to the fact that both were catfish-like Pokemon, but then Barboach and its shape came to my mind. It made me contemplate the idea for another moment before I chose to discard it again since I thought that it still seemed rather fantastical, especially since Barboach also had a water/ground typing like Whiscash while Dondozo was a pure water type.

Once that issue had been put to rest, I could not help but wonder why the Whiscash had suddenly jumped out like that since they usually stayed put when they were not fighting or hunting for food. Not to mention that they preferred staying closer to the bottom of their chosen water bodies, likely due to their water/ground typing.

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