章 2: C002 - First egg hatches
Pete wasn't very fast running along the beach. The heavy wind fought back every step or two. The combination of sand and rain made his steps heavy and sluggish. However, he stayed on the beach near the tree line because running in the forest would be just as stupid as running near the water.
Near the water, any kind of water pokemon would gladly attack him, and inside the forest, all kinds of territorial pokemon could see him as a trespasser and finish him. Sure, they could be out and about and simply kill him anyway, but Pete was hoping the heavy rainstorm meant the pokemon would rather wait and stay dry somewhere hidden.
Eventually, a good two tiring hours later, Pete found a cabin. It didn't look like much, though oddly enough, it had glass windows and what appeared to be an electric lamp outside that was currently not on. So far away from any normal society, such a 'modern' cabin should stand out, but apparently, there was currently nobody inside seeking shelter. Well, the lights were off, so chances were good nobody was home Pete mused
Slowly and with a mind to appear as non-threatening as possible, should someone be home and mistake him for a burglar, Pete stepped closer and knocked on the door.
"Hey! I'm a stranded guy looking for shelter. Anybody home?" Pete shouted. Nobody answered, so he knocked and shouted again, but nobody answered the door.
Pete took that as a sign that nobody was home, so he turned the doorknob and entered cautiously.
The cabin was a simple one-room shelter. One corner held a bed, another held a dusty desk with a simple wooden chair, another held a book case with two big tomes, what appeared to be a tall but thin atlas of some kind, a notebook with no title and a few thin books on the local plants.
Deciding to find whatever gifts this little cabin had for him at a later date, Pete put down the bags, stripped out of his wet clothes, took out two firestones, the metallic case with the egg and pokeballs, a sleeping bag and then blocked the door from getting opened with the wooden chair.
There was a clothesline next to the fireplace where Pete hung up the wet clothes, and he placed a fire stone on a clay bowl under the wet clothes. Next, he set up the sleeping bag on the dusty bed, careful not to disturb the dust too much and placed the metallic case with the egg and a firestone instead of the used pokeballs on the nightstand next to where his head would be.
Again, careful not to disturb the dust, Pete slipped into the sleeping bag and enjoyed the warmth the firestone radiated on his face. Wading through wet sand during a storm drained him of all his energy, so he quickly fell asleep.
A few hours later, Pete woke up, and it was noticeably darker in the room. It was still nighttime. However, Pete woke up because he heard movement.
He gingerly sat up, making as little noise as possible, and looked around the room. He wouldn't hold it against a Ratatta or other rodent to break in in search of shelter, but he was positive a random Ratatta could hurt him, much less kill him if a group of them arrived and was immediately hostile.
The occasional lightning outside lit up the room from time to time, and Pete got a good look around. If anything or anyone beside him was inside the cabin, they were hiding well. Which was when he noticed the sound again, this time clearly noticing where it came from. The next bolt of natural lightning showed him that the egg that was inside the metallic case had cracks all over it and was shaking on the spot.
With rapt attention, Pete focused on the egg and hatched plans on how to best convince this newborn pokemon to be friendly with him. Should it choose to stay with him, a luxury ball would surely be a good first impression. Also, food was always a good plan, so Pete slowly got up and looked for the bag he had put all the food and vitamin samples in that he found in the two containers.
Thinking that a bottle of highly concentrated supplements was too strong a dose for any newborn, Pete decided on diluting a portion of a carbos bottle in one of the wooden buckets that caught water from the leaking roof. Other than that, he opened a back of all-purpose, highly nutricious poke-treats that apparently the vast majority of pokemon liked eating according to the box it came in.
Ready with his preparation, Pete sat down on the bed again and carefully watched the egg. To fight off some of his own hunger, he tried one of the poke-treats because, sadly, he didn't find any human food in the containers or in this cabin.
One little block, roughly the size of a marble, was enough that Pete no longer felt hungry, which was a good thing. Though, he wasn't a huge fan of the taste. Not that he tried it before, but his best guess was that it came close to dry cat food with an after taste of day-old cut grass.
Slowly, but surely, the cracks were all over the egg, and enough of the shell came off that Pete should have been able to see inside if he had a light source. Moments later, the baby pokemon fully awoke and flexed its powers from inside the egg, gently prying every piece of shell off of its body with a barely noticeable pink hue surrounding the pieces.
Another lightning bolt lit up the cabin, and Pete got a good look at the pokemon. It was pretty much the exact same size as the egg, and if he didn't know any better, Pete would have thought the egg white and the yolk were still intact.
Solosis, a psychic pokemon that looked like two balls of vanilla ice cream mushed together, with two black beads for eyes. A poker card's suit of diamonds right between the eyes for a mouth and a little curly horn on the left side of its head, all wrapped up in a sack of transparent bluish fluid.
'Wait, bluish? Wasn't the 'egg white' supposed to be green? If it's a shiny, it has to be the favorite of that lady who prepared the egg specially for me,' Pete thought in wonder as the two black beady eyes of the pokemon fell on him.
All of a sudden, Pete felt like someone foreign tried to gently think from inside his head. It was an odd sensation unlike anything he had ever felt, and weirdly, it didn't feel out of place. Surely, nothing he could do at the moment, short of running away, would stop this process. So Pete tried to think happy thoughts to make a good impression.
'Solo...' a high-pitched, unsure thought, for lack of a better word, rang inside his mind.
"Uh, hey? You're a Solosis, right? I found your egg in a container after a ship wreck and brought you with me. I'm, uh.. new to all this. Same as you, I guess. Would you mind if we stick together?" Pete softly spoke to the pokemon that had just now started to slowly float out of the case and away from the egg shells it just broke out of.
Instead of answering, the pokemon softly prodded a little inside Pete's mind, and regarded its trainer-to-be while floating around his head with eyes wide open.
'Sol!'
The pokemon took a few moments in deliberation and eventually decided. It agreed to stay with Pete by expressing positive feelings through the psychic connection and softly booping his form against Pete's head.
"Cool beans. This is my first time with a pokemon, much less one that is freshly hatched. I, uh, have this pokeball here that's supposed to be really comfy that you could stay in," Pete explained as he held up a luxury ball. The pokemon floated toward it and booped its face against the button. With a flurry of red lights, Solosis was sucked up inside the ball.
The button shone with a red light, and a soft click sounded out in the room.
"Oh... how do I get you out now?"
Pete looked at the ball, rolled it around in his hand to look if there's anything more to see other than the big button, but there was nothing. He pressed it with a short press and pointed forward to release his shiny Solosis. But instead of spitting out the pokemon, the ball shrunk down in size.
"Oh lord, have mercy. Come on, you went to four years of college as an engineering major, Pete. You can find out how to operate a one button machine," Pete admonished himself.
With another short press, the pokeball got back from its golf ball size to roughly the size of an apple. The next button press was a little longer, around a second or two. And this time, instead of shrinking, the pokemon appeared in the cabin once again. However, while it did look like a white blob of light shot out and slowly formed into the pokemon, it wasn't really all too bright. That was good to know for the time he left the cabin and had to be sneaky outside.
"Great, hatched a pokemon, caught a pokemon, learned how to operate a pokeball, and didn't die in the half a day I have been in this world. I'm doing better than I had hoped," Pete narrated with a bright, though a little self-mocking smile.
His little new friend tilted its head a little in confusion but didn't think much of it and then started floating in the room to observe it.
"Ah yeah, I've been here for a few hours only, so it isn't very presentable, I guess. But we're not out in the storm getting rained on until my skin and your... is it fine if I call it egg sack? Well, less offensive it is... until our skins get all wrinkly," Pete explained, then corrected himself when he felt Solosis was a little irritated when he called its skin 'egg sack'.
"I think it's rude to call you 'it' in my head. Are you a girl?"
The pokemon showed positive feedback in his mind in response.
"Alright, good to know. So, I know moomoo milk would probably be best to raise you, but we have very little resources right now. Sure, I'm probably loaded in terms of money, but concerning food, we're out of options right now. I have these treats for food. One of these marbles should probably be enough for a while, and that bucket over there is carbos infused water. Carbos are an additive that should help you in training your speed," Pete said as he pointed to the bucket of water.
Solosis' first choice was dunking herself in the bucket and, through what looked like sheer will itself, slowly filled its skin sack with the water as it floated on the bucket's content.
When there was only half of the water in the bucket left, Solosis looked a little too inflated, but her diamond shaped mouth was inhaling the fluid quickly, fighting the high pressure her skin appeared to be in. It was a surreal sight, to be sure. But he had plenty of those ever since his unfortunate robot induced entry to the afterlife.
After taking only half of the poke-treat marble thanks to her psychic abilities and dragging it inside her form, Solosis made herself comfortable on top of Pete's stomach, who was once again inside the sleeping bag. Pete had suggested they should both try to sleep a little before the day was fully started.
When Pete next opened his eyes, the oddly calming noise of the storm was still raging outside, even louder than before.
It was still dark in the room, but clearly, it was already past dawn. Solosis was still sleeping. It had rolled off his stomach and was now leaning against his side on the bed. The sleeping bag, luxurious as it was, was completely silent as Pete opened it and slid out of it to get ready for the day.
First, he used another bucket to freshen up a little and get some water in him, immediately wishing for a toothbrush and toothpaste. Then, he put on the clothes he had hung up next to the fireplace that finished drying overnight thanks to the firestone.
Next, he used the little light he got from the windows to finish looking through the cabin. At the desk, he found a mounted flashlight he was going to take with him for sure. Well, if he decided to leave which he probably should. This cabin was still too close to the ship wreck for his liking.
The weather wasn't doing him any favors, though. In any case, food would eventually become a problem. It wasn't like he was anywhere close to civilization or knew where to find what food he could eat. Which was when he remembered the books on the bookcase.
Getting the books on the flora and spices, Pete rested on the bed with his back against the wall and the flashlight resting comfortably on his shoulder with the mounting gear it had.
A few hours of reading what was essentially four volumes of plant picture books. These thin books were divided in edible plants with clear markings which were edible by what type of pokemon and human, poisons plants and what to do with them, plants that could be used as remedies and the thinest book of them all, berries.
It was his brother in his last life who studied agriculture and how to grow food, but he was definitely keeping these books. Even the berries book had a short tip section on how to properly grow and tend to the berry bushes and trees.
A little on how to go about farming had definitely stuck with Pete, and it seemed a nice choice of profession.
Whoever had placed these books here had earmarked the pages with notes on plants that grew close to the cabin, so after he was done with that, Pete got up again to get the two big tomes from the book case.
The first one's name was titled 'A coward's tale: Cautionary stories on how to not handle dragon pokemon', no author, and the second tome's name was 'Root of all growth: Tips and tricks to raise your grass and ground pokemon' by Celadon's gym leader Erina.
'Erika was a rather young woman, so she isn't gym leader yet? Or well, it could be a rather old book... Is this Erina her mother? I hope not. The similar names are a little on the nose,' Pete thought with a helpless smile.
'In any case, I'll definitely keep those. I got a Snivy, a Sunkern and a Trapinch egg, and Trapinch will eventually become a dragon. They are notoriously hard to raise according to the game and the anime... and my influence on the story didn't change that.'
Leafing through those tomes, Pete reached the last page of the second tome and was surprised by two CDs falling out on his lap. Their cases were marked as 'TM22: Solar Beam' and 'TM37: Sandstorm' respectively.
They came together with a note: 'Given what I know about you, I doubt you'll find these anytime soon, but Silph Co agreed to make me a couple extra when my cutie Cubone and Exeggutor worked on these. So even if you don't need 'em, give 'em to your daughter, Regina. Cheers, your friend Erina'
"No golden finger, my ass. Clearly, I was set up to live an easy life the minute I get to safety," Pete scoffed under his breath.
'To be fair, if I go through with my plan to go to Johto instead of Kanto, that's going to be quite the journey with my spotty knowledge and singular baby pokemon.'
After he was done with the tomes and deciding they were coming with him too, he got up again to look at the large atlas.
The maps were in higher detail than the maps of the early pokemon games and painted quite the picture of a gigantic landmass that Kanto, Johto, and Sinnoh were a part of on its southern coast line.
However, according to the atlas, most of it was uninhabited by people and largely undiscovered, except for the general outline of the continent. In the later pages of the atlas, the maps included common routes between cities and what appeared to be spotty, incomplete data on habitats and large pokemon colonies for Kanto and Johto.
It would come in handy for almost any kind of future profession he could think of. Be it trainer, breeder, farmer or something in between, knowing where pokemons are will surely be a big help.
And even if he fondly thinks back to the games, there was no way he would remember where to catch whatever pokemon he wanted, save for a few outliers like the Safari zone pokemon or some annoying caves like Mt Moon.
And even then, he wouldn't remember 100% of them, and they might be totally different in this realistic pokemon setting. For a few forests and routes, he was sure they were different because he wrote it like that personally, and this was after all his version of the world.
One thing was for sure, being as big as the planet was, the diversity was much, much bigger on the well-known routes. And since it is a long time before his story began, migrations and territory fights still needed to happen.
According to the atlas, up to 20 different species or 'evolutionary lines' could be found in Viridian forest, for example. There was no way there were more than 7 in the games, and that's including the rare Pikachu spawns. And in his story, Pete's MC found both his Bulbasaur and his lost Larvitar in the forest.
Done with his musing about the higher pokemon diversity in well-known places, Pete found a potential place for a base if he wanted to become a breeder or farmer.
However, nobody had claimed the supposed meadow on the coast line west of Ilex Forest and south of route 34, and there was a reason. A reason he knew and would need to find a solution for during his probably very long travel time.
To reach there, he would need to climb a mountain, cross two towns and another mountain minimum anyway, so he had plenty of time to figure something out.
Especially if he had to do all that on foot.
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