"Can you tell me how you trained this Gardevoir of yours?"
While Sun was making tea, Professor Kukui could not hold back and started asking questions.
He had seen Gardevoir in action in videos, and it was completely unbelievable.
"Among us Pokémon scholars, there has actually long been a concept of psychic power."
"It's just that no one ever turned this power into true combat strength. Most of the time, it was reflected in bonds."
"More niche than that would be the Z Power we research, and the Mega Evolution that appeared over in the Kalos region."
"Including Professor Rowan and myself, no one ever imagined that psychic power could display such direct strength!"
Axel thought for a moment. After training so many Pokémon, he could actually be considered a master in this area himself.
On top of that, what he had seen at Rowan's place today, that the essence of evolution was making life more perfect, made him feel like he had gained some sudden insight.
"Professor Kukui, what do you think perfection is for Pokémon?"
"Perfection?", Kukui froze for a moment.
Axel nodded, "Yes, perfection."
"I used to be half a breeder myself and trained quite a few Pokémon. Under my training, they all grew stronger and stronger."
"When I make Pokémon stronger, I usually do it in two ways. One is to stimulate their potential and make that potential even stronger."
"The other is to make their mimicry of a more perfect lifeform."
Professor Kukui listened in a fog, feeling like he had grasped something, yet unable to put it into words.
He quickly pressed on, "What do you mean?"
Seeing Professor Kukui look like an elementary school student thirsting for knowledge, Axel grinned.
"It's actually very simple. Whether it's stimulating their potential or letting them mimic gods, the end result is making them perfect."
"It might not sound very intuitive. Do you have any training equipment here? I'll show you."
"Yes, yes. I often use it when researching Pokémon exclusive Z Moves. It's all top quality equipment."
Professor Kukui hurriedly led Axel into another room. Axel gestured at Gyarados.
"You go first. Use Waterfall and Dragon Pulse on that machine, one after the other."
"ROAR!", Gyarados roared and used both moves with the same amount of force.
The machine displayed nearly identical values one after the other.
Professor Kukui frowned, then his eyes suddenly lit up.
"I get it. I get everything now!"
"Gyarados is originally a Water plus Flying type Pokémon. When using moves of the same base power, a Water type move should be stronger than a Dragon type move."
"But just now, using the same amount of effort, the power of the two moves was almost the same."
"You've changed his typing to Water plus Dragon!"
"And combined with the spatial power he used at the door earlier, was he taught by one of the Sinnoh Creation Trio, Palkia?"
Professor Kukui rattled off several sentences in a row, his voice even turning hoarse with excitement.
Axel nodded in surprise, starting to feel that professors were all monsters.
Just by watching two of Gyarados's moves, he had deduced almost everything correctly.
Seeing Axel nod, Professor Kukui felt like the clouds had parted and the sun had appeared. His heart felt wide open.
"No wonder you said you wanted to make Pokémon perfect!"
"Under Professor Rowan's evolution theory, gods are the most perfect Pokémon. By letting Pokémon simulate the gods' attributes and adding the gods' guidance, they can become even more perfect."
"And then there's the other kind of perfection, stimulating potential… your meaning is that you pushed one of Gardevoir's attributes to the extreme?"
"It seems you guessed wrong this time," Axel grinned, "Do you think Abilities are important?"
Seeing Axel's smile, Professor Kukui felt his mind explode with a bang.
Abilities were also an extremely important part of Pokémon.
And one of Gardevoir's Abilities was precisely related to the mind. Telepathy.
"No wonder your Gardevoir has such powerful psychic strength, such a unique evolution, plus the development of her Ability…"
"Axel, you're simply a monster!"
"All of us focus on researching a single layer, but you're different. You've fused multiple systems together!"
Kukui stared at Axel with blazing eyes, "Do you want to become a Professor? On behalf of the Alola academic community, I'm inviting you!"
"And the League has recently been negotiating with the Alola region. If you're interested, serving as a lifelong Champion here wouldn't be bad either."
Axel: "..."
Sometimes he really wondered whether there was some kind of system tag on him that he still had not discovered.
Why did these people always want him to be a Champion?
Axel politely declined, "Let's forget it. I'm too busy right now. The Aether Foundation still hasn't been found…"
"Alright then," Seeing that Axel was not interested, Professor Kukui did not press further.
"But there's one thing you absolutely must not refuse. I want to research an exclusive Z Move for your Gardevoir. When you're not busy, you can tell me the effects you want."
Axel's eyes lit up and he nodded like crazy. This was something he definitely wanted.
"As for the disappearance of the Aether Paradise, I've just learned about it too, and I have some clues."
"But wait a moment. Let me write it down in my memo first… after working out so much lately, I've actually gotten a bit forgetful."
Axel glanced at the Buzzwole squatting outside and nodded in agreement.
At the very top of the blackboard, Professor Kukui wrote the words "Research Exclusive Z for Gardevoir", then began talking about the Aether Paradise.
"Actually, Island Kahuna Hala noticed something was off about the Aether Paradise a long time ago."
"They rescued a lot of Pokémon, but there was one characteristic. No matter what their personality was like before being rescued, after going there they all became very willing to battle."
"This was already unbelievable for Pokémon like Snorlax and Alcremie."
"So Hala suspected that under the pretense of rescuing Pokémon, they were training large numbers of them."
At this point, Professor Kukui took out a notebook.
"Look here. This is my diary from a while back. Almost every time I went out to do research, I could see people from the Aether Foundation rescuing Water type Pokémon."
"I had Sun help tally it up for a few days. During this period, the number of Water type Pokémon they rescued was even more than all other types combined…"
Axel understood what Kukui meant, "You're saying they hid the Aether Paradise underwater?"
Kukui nodded, "We can't rule out that possibility."
"Hoo! Then it's going to be very hard to find."
Axel started to feel a headache coming on. It really looked like he had guessed right. The probability that the Aether Paradise was underwater was very high.
The problem was that the ocean area in the Pokémon world was enormous, almost equal to the land area.
A small island entering the seabed would not stir up any waves at all.
If he knew people from Team Aqua, it might be easier. The problem was, he only knew people from Team Magma, which was really annoying.
Looks like if he wanted to find the Aether Paradise, he would still have to place his hopes on Sun.
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