"Did you forget anything? ID card, enough bag space? All the pokemon you want coming along?" Vivian's loud voice rang out as Pete walked toward the entrance.
"Yep, just finished getting the veggie broth off the stove!" Pete shouted back.
He had just finished his, by then, very late breakfast after spending a good hour with Zorua, Blitzle, and Golett.
He had unlocked his Ground-type affinity, which he was really giddy about, but it could wait. Thanks to his instant bond with Golett, the affinity was jumpstarted, but before it grew and he spent some time getting a feeling for it, he couldn't do much with the affinity. It will take some time. Getting the ground affinity was still a really great thing for Pete as an aspiring farmer.
After he calmed down, Pete talked a little more with Zorua and inspected the grey-furred fox together with Professor Elm, who was positively beaming to get the chance. The illusive Zorua line was rarely studied because its Illusionist ability allowed it to almost always get away from unwanted company.
Rapidash had more or less adopted Blitzle, who was given another serving of breakfast after Ponyta stole a bit. If she wasn't still very hungry at the time, it didn't look like she minded, though. It looked like the start of a great friendship between the two young foals.
For Golett, Pete symbolically broke apart the automaton's old pokeball and placed him in a luxury ball. Pete would wait a little to ask Zorua and Blitzle if they wanted to join him first.
After a while, the two Minccino finally joined them outside. They were a little sad to have missed the action but were bonding with Zorua after their short pout. They tried teaching the fox Rock-Paper-Scissors, but it looked like his paws lacked the needed dexterity. If his determined glint was any indication, that wouldn't be the case for long.
However, now it was time for Pete's shopping trip. Solosis had asked to stay behind with Zorua, but Pete guessed she wanted some time alone to train a little. She did just learn a new move before sleeping last night with the help of the TM.
With the rest of his pokemon outside at the pasture bonding, Pete only had Golett with him in his pokeball. Protection wasn't needed from his side because Vivian brought her Quilava, the assistant chef of the house, with them.
"Okay, I think you'd want to start at the Silph Co department store. They are the only shop in town that sells clothes for young people like you. There'd be more variety in a big city, don't worry," Vivian explained as they started walking into town.
Coincidentally, the Silph Co store was the first destination they walked by. The store was catered towards pokemon trainers, especially league trainers, as they got discounts on most of the stuff sold here. Which meant they had pokemon utilities like pokeballs and potions, survival gear like tents and climbing gear, and clothes clearly meant for active outdoors people.
It didn't matter much to Pete, as what needed most was underwear and a few shirts and maybe some back-up pants and shoes. If they were durable and meant for outside, all the better.
Thrifty as he was, Pete didn't overdo it with buying the clothes. Maybe he'd find a cheaper store with better clothes in a bigger city. It was his first store in the pokemon world, after all. So he only bought two of each of the listed items, except for the underpants that he bought a few more of. Can't ever pack one too many pairs of boxers.
For sizes, Pete really had to rely on Vivian's critical eye because the sizes were a lettering system he wasn't familiar with at all. It was a good thing that most of the clothes were made with a stretchy material and the shoes he had obviously tried on before. They were a kind of sturdy sneaker with a deep profile at the soles that would give you traction even on wet rocks.
When he was done with choosing the clothes, Pete went over to the food section to get some cooking utensils. Pete didn't have much of a prizing sense, so he listened to Vivian she said he could get proper pots, knives, and pans somewhere else.
However Pete did get a portable electric stove that he could hook up to the generator he had gotten and a large 'berry box' that allowed you to store berries inside a bag of holding more comfortably and extend the time plucked berries remained fresh. It worked as a kind of module you could place into the prepared slot in the bag, a real nifty piece of engineering that went completely over Pete's head despite his education.
He got an extra large variety berry box that cost a whopping P$35.000. As a small town store, Pete bought the actual show piece because they didn't even have this expensive variant on stock here. The prize of the box was almost half the pokedollar he had received as a 'signing bonus' from Professor Elm, but Pete thought of it as an investment. He would, after all, plant a lot of berry trees at his farm later.
Done picking up what Vivian suggested he get at this store and then some, Pete went and rang up the items. The only employee of the store wore a bright smile because apparently he would get a comission for every purchase over P$40.000 and Pete's total came to P$45.400, most of which was the berry box, the stove at P$3.350 and a cooling box that sadly wasn't a bag module that cost P$3.100 because of its durability and the fact that it worked inside a bag of holding or as this store employee called it 'pokebag', but he was wrong.
That left P$3.950 for all the clothes, two different sizes of fur brushes, and a small mountain of different flavor poketreats he wanted to try out with his various pokemon. Maybe Pete would find one of his pokemon's favorite flavors among these.
With everything paid and safely stored inside the empty bag he brought, Vivian brought Pete to the next store, a metal workshop run by a middle-aged woman called Clara with a Lairon and two Aron lounging around in the shop.
"Hey Clara, I brought the newest addition to my husband's team of pokenerds. Pete, meet Clara, one of my oldest friends. Clara, meet a young man from Unova who's in dying need of some great cookware," Vivian introduced.
Clara, a tall woman with fiery red hair and steely grey eyes, stepped forward and held out her hand with a bright smile.
"Always nice to meet a fella who knows his way around a kitchen," Clara quipped.
"Oh, like you wouldn't believe it! He cooked for us twice and I already loathe the fact that my husband had to hire him before I could get him as a personal chef," Vivian praised and Pete actually started blushing as his hand was held in Clara's vice-grip of a handshake.
"Is that right? Tell me then, little Pete. What do you need?" Clara let go of his hand and patted his shoulder with a wink. Likely telling him to relax because they were just teasing him. At least, that was what Pete thought this whole interaction meant.
"Uh yea, I'd like to see some extra large pans, think serving sizes for ten plus pokemon, and same goes for pots. I'd especially like one pot that's more high than wide and then I'd like to see kitchen knives, if you have any," Pete got his composure back and started listing some kitchen stuff he needed first and foremost.
Clara nodded at the list. She liked when people had an idea of what they wanted, especially if they needed so much. She brought Pete over to the items he requested and he directly chose three pans of varying sizes, five pots, only three matching lids for the pots, a wok that he saw by the side and a few long-gripped ladles and extra large spatulas that were stored close-by. Though he had to double check if they would all even fit inside his bag first and had to choose a number smaller than he would have liked on the pan.
When it came to the knives, Pete was really excited. Kitchen knives and how to sharpen them was something he really bonded over with his grandfather while his brother was outside rummaging in the dirt with their grandma.
Due to his excitement and the amazing quality he found them in, Pete probably bought a few too many knives, not that Clara minded.
He got a full set of knives, from a regular chef's knife that was a little larger than usual to fives different parings knives for all kinds of vegetables, to a boning knife all the way to even a big cleaver to get through actual bone, if needed.
He even custom-ordered a tomato knife with a serrated edge in a wave cut that Clara didn't have in her shop. Lairon had helped make it after he explained what he wanted to Clara and the pokemon, and from an already made knife to using some precise steel-type energy, the knife was done in less than five minutes.
Pete demonstrated what the serrated edge would do to a tomato she had in her kitchen, and Clara immediately agreed that the design helps a ton with softer vegetables.
In a small town like this, she rarely gets big customers like Pete. She didn't really need the money, which is why she could live here to begin with, but it was nice to see someone appreciate the work of her and her pokemon.
Starting from the time they customized the tomato knife, Pete also discussed some interesting points with her when he asked if her pokemon helped in all the smithing steps, and they even exchanged numbers to talk about metalwork if they ever felt like it.
Usually, with the wares he picked, Pete's total would have come to P$9.200, but Clara decided an enthusiastic fellow like Pete was deserving of her wares and chipped 200 pokedollars off of the total. All he had to do was invite her over for a meal he had cooked with the help of her items while he was still staying with the professor, to which both Vivian and Pete readily agreed.
"Okay, that was much more intense than I would have thought. You're really into kitchen knives, huh?"
Pete could only chuckle awkwardly.
"Pfft, never mind. What else is on your list?"
"Hmm, just some necessities like spare toothbrushes and soap. This town doesn't have a seed store, right?"
"A seed store, hmm... Ah! Not a store, but two days from now, we have market day, and Herbert from Cherrygrove City on the other side of route 29 sells flowers and sometimes seedlings and offshoots. I'll shoot him a message that a big spender is going to attend the market," Vivian joked as she laughed at Pete's expense, but Pete just laughed along. He really already blew through over a third of the huge pile of money Professor Elm had graciously paid him as monthly salary plus the bonus.
He didn't quite yet know what his salary was and how much the bonus was. Pete was too embarrassed to ask, but his league ID had a balance of P$150.000 when he received it. With everything else he got from the professor, like the gracious invitation to his house, the ID, and then even incubators, Pete felt more than fairly compensated.
And no matter. If Pete truly wanted money, he'd try selling a TM on the black market and probably make a good half a million pokedollars or possibly even more if they didn't take advantage of him.
After their fun little back and forth, Vivian and Pete finished buying the rest he needed in a sort of grocery store run by an older couple who looked at Pete a little weird when he bought twenty toothbrushes. This time, however, the total barely came to around P$800, so no more new material to tease Pete for Vivian. Though she did try to tease him about the toothbrushes, which failed because Pete was very unapologetic about the fact that he wanted to be able to brush his teeth before bed without fail.
"Let's see what makes it tick, then," Professor Elm said as he picked up a multitool to break open the banged-up TM that Pete was sure wouldn't work anymore as it was.
"Huh, guess I forgot to buy some tools. Did the pokemart have any? Did Clara?" Pete muttered under his breath as he watched the professor.
"Did you say anything, Pete?"
"No professor, just some thinking out loud. Don't mind me," Pete hurriedly waved his hand.
"I see. Ugh, even bent and broken as it is, this cover isn't coming off without some serious force." The professor kept trying from every angle
"They probably glued the whole thing up so nobody could do what we're trying here," the professor softly cursed, well, more like he voiced his dissatisfaction roughly ten minutes later.
"Yeah, if only we had like a Scyther, who could do like a really precise cut to shave off only that lid and not damage any of the parts," Pete voiced his opinion.
Professor Elm stiffened. He turned to Pete with an awkward smile.
"Now that you mention it, we could ask a Scyther to help us out. Fred should still be on the premise feeding the pokemon on the pasture, and he owns a magnificent specimen."
"Oh, nice. But that would mean we tell your assistant about the TM, no? Are you okay with that? I'd be fine if we don't say we got it from me," Pete told the professor with a shrug.
"They'll find your working TM eventually. I trust them, so I won't keep it for long. And no worries, I'll honor your wishes and not tell a soul that you got us these machines. Honestly, the subterfuge and criminality of it all is so invigorating. I don't think I've treaded outside the law in the past two years," Professor Elm said with a nostalgic smile. He had already texted his assistant Fred and asked for Scyther's help in the room they were in, so the pokemon would likely arrive shortly.
"Ah, there you are. Quick as ever, Scyther," the professor praised as he opened the window for Scyther, who had knocked with one of his scythes. Praising a pokemon every second sentence was like... second nature to the professor, but somehow it always sounded genuine.
"This machine here is where we need your expertise, Scyther. You see, the lid is somehow stuck on this cube, but we need it off. Could you shave off somewhere between half a finger and finger's worth off of this side of the cube? Ah, I mean a finger's width, not length. Nobody I would trust with such delicate and precise cutting except for you," the professor explained with a warm smile.
The pokemon in question gave a serious nod and got ready by lining up the scythe above the needed cut. With a quick slash downwards, the lid on the side fell off and revealed the insides of the machine. Well, a good part of it. Even the insides were compartmentalized and would need further cutting to pull apart.
That wasn't out of their expectation, so the two stayed calm as they thanked Scyther for his fine work. The professor asked him to stay around, with Pete offering him a treat as a service fee.
A few minutes later, they asked Scyther to cut off two more sides of the dice which includes the one opposite of the first cut and the side connecting these to cut surfaces at the bottom of the machine.
Pete found a whole bunch of parts he recognized from his old life, like resistors, capacitors, chipsets, and circuit boards, but he actually didn't understand most of the underlying technology and logic behind the wiring from just a glance.
After all, most of this was built with the help or under the inspiration of pokemon, so the technological tree of this world was not only all over the place, but also different to the one in Pete's old world.
Also, he was a mechanical engineer before, and while he attended some courses, he was no electronic engineer genius. He could use a solder iron to fix old circuit boards and the like, but messing around with finicky micro-electronics like what he saw in the TM was a tall order.
Still, Pete made some plans to get a few items for tinkering in case he ever needed to fix some of the equipment or electronics on the farm. For that reason, he was also really excited to meet Klink if it hatches anytime soon. Right now, the steel pokemon's potential expertise and typing energy was wasted, but on the farm, Pete was really hoping he would find a kindred spirit for tinkering in the pokemon.
"Peeeeete! Come quickly, your incubator is making noise!"
Interrupted from his musings by Vivian, Pete looked up.
'Wow, what a coincidence. I think about one of them hatching, and another just pops out,' Pete thought as he wanted to confirm if Elm wanted to come along with a look.
"Go, go! I'll quickly get the TM-CD out and follow right behind you," the professor eagerly exclaimed.
"Look, it's the one on the left. I pressed the button so the noise stops, but you can clearly see the cracks," Vivian said as she pointed to one of the incubators in his room.
"Ohhh, it's the Sunkern!" Elm had just entered the room with a CD in his hand and looked toward the opened up incubator.
"Want me to get your pokemon from outside?" Vivian offered.
"Nah, that's okay. I'll introduce them to Sunkern later. Don't want to overwhelm the little guy," Pete declined with a soft smile.
"Hmm, not saying you won't be able to handle it, but that's a lot of new pokemon in a day," Professor Elm mused with a worried look.
Pete had the same thought, and he wanted to discuss getting the eggs out of the incubators at a later date with his pokemon. In just a few days in this world, his total pokemon count, if Blitzle and Zorua agree, would shoot up to 9 pokemon with the newly hatched Sunkern.
Before he had his farm up and running, this was quite a high number to constantly tend to and feed. Inwardly, Pete was already thinking about how he would want to cut his travel short and maybe move to Goldenrod City or even just Violet City by a different method of travel than just by walking or rather riding on Rapidash.
"Hey, professor, if I wanted to get from here to Goldenrod City at the fastest, what options would I have?"
"Hmm, the Noctowl post office offers carriage rides at a premium to Cherrygrove City, I think you could get a boat from there to Goldenrod City," the professor said with a pondering expression.
"Remember Herbert? I told you about his traveling flower shop earlier, when you wanted to buy seeds," Vivian chimed in when she heard Pete's question.
"Yeah? What about him?"
"Well, he arrives by Teleport thanks to his Exeggutor. I think he mentioned it takes even his old friend three hops, but the destination is the problem, not how many people he carries. Maybe you could get him to take him with you? And from Violet City to Goldenrod City, I think you could go by train or even go to the National Park?"
"Excellent idea, Vivian! Have you experienced travel by Teleport before? It's exciting and unlike anything you'll have ever experienced," Professor Elm added on.
"Nope, it would be a new experience for-"
Pete's answer was cut short by Sunkern breaking from its egg.
The yellow corn with two gray-brown stripes running down its black beady eyes and a third stripe running down from its mouth and a little propeller-hat with two green leaves on top was staring at them curiously.
"Sun-Sunkern?" A melodious high-pitched voice rang out from the little grass pokemon.
"Hey Sunkern, glad you joined us. I'm Pete, and I'm the one who found your egg. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I'm planning on opening a farm, and I could really use someone like you to help with all the plants. Would you mind joining me?"
Pete and Sunkern were engaged in a stare-off. Neither of them moved after Pete sat on the ground in front of the opened incubator with a luxury ball in his hand.
Vivian at the back was squealing in delight at how cute it all looked, but she decided not to run in, in case she messed up Pete's process of convincing the pokemon.
"Kern!"
It felt like almost five minutes had passed until Sunkern blinked, which apparently resulted in his loss at the stare contest, and he agreed to stay with Pete.
"Great! I'm certain we'll achieve great things together! And once you reach your bottleneck, I already have a sunstone ready for you to take the next step," Pete happily professed.
Vivian rushed past him and picked up the fist-sized pokemon to hug it to her face and started fussing all over it. Different from the time the two Minccino hatched, Sunkern came out completely dry - well, he did look properly hydrated.
'Did he drink whatever was inside the egg?' Who knew? Pete could find out later.
"Congratulations on gaining another member to your evergrowing team, Pete! Oh yeah, before I forget. Here's the TM-CD I pried out of the machine," the professor said as he handed Pete a lightly scratched TM17 Protect.
"It's a nice move, but tell me if the CD doesn't work. I think I have a copy or two lying around here somewhere in the lab," Elm mentioned as he went to his wife to take a closer look at Sunkern.
"Let's introduce you to everyone. What do you say?" Pete offered two minutes later when Sunkern started to look a little overwhelmed.
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