บท 58: C058 - The in-laws move in (for the duration of his Hoenn trip)
"Hehe, look at it and weep! Tell your daddy later on that I won! Tehehe," Isabelle, the twin's mom, proclaimed like a villain once she held up a brown egg with purple tribal engravings.
"Ugh, mom. Did you really have to make it a competition of who dotes more on our baby sister?" Lily with her newborn daughter Emily on her arm standing next to Pete said with a deep sigh.
"What do you mean? Obviously, I'm the better parent! All he found were Johto pokemon while I not only found a royal Sinnoh starter but even a dragon's egg for my baby daughter!" Isabelle shouted with an upturned nose while Herbert, the other parent in question, looked on in obviously fake sadness. It seemed they were just messing with their kids.
"Hey Herbert, I was just wondering... if her decision to become a gym leader didn't immediately make you scour the world for rock pokemon, what changed when she said she'll change her typing to ground?" Pete asked in a whisper since Herbert stood on his other side.
"Hmm? Ah, she certainly had the drive, but we didn't want to overwhelm her at the start with too many pokemon, and before you came, we more or less missed the timing on changing our approach. Your proposal, combined with the fact that she and her sister would likely move out soon and leave us with an empty house, gave us the perfect opportunity for this... parting gift? Don't tell Sophie, but we're in the process of acquiring a model agency for her," Herbert whispered back with a wide grin.
"Wow, when I married Tom, you gifted us a Thunder Stone for his Pikachu and a house... I kind of feel like you went cheap on us," Lily interjected in even more mock-sadness. This family was certainly very dramatic.
"Heh, the woes of the middle-child. Don't ask your brother Lucifern what he got when he moved out as the first child," Herbert mockingly spat back with a challenging expression.
"Oh yeah, poor guy has to live with one of the fastest shiny Corviknights in this part of the world and gets paid a premium for all the eggs of a Galarian pokemon he can sell," Lily argued back with no real heat.
"To be fair, we only gave him the egg and the Togepi he wanted to woo that girl. It was his luck that the pokemon came out shiny."
"That girl has a name. She's your daughter-in-law, Chloe!"
"Hey, no need to raise your voice. I know her name. Also, we're much richer now compared to when you still lived with us, so if you want something else, just ask," Herbert answered weakly.
"What are the two of you bickering about? I want to bathe in your applause," Isabelle rebuked the two of them when she noticed they didn't listen to her boasting.
"Sorry honey, you were saying?"
"Hmph! I was just saying how my sources found a hiker who had found an abandoned Aggron nest with his pokemon and that it had three eggs. Two of them were regular Aron eggs and the hiker couldn't identify the other egg so he sold it to a broker, which was me, and that's how we got here," Isabelle explained once more with a proud grin.
"I hope he didn't steal a poor Aggron's offspring," Pete mumbled with furrowed brows.
"Well, it would have stolen this egg at the very least, so... karma?"
"Oh, actually Aggron and Garchomp are both in the monster egg group, so they can have offspring together. With Aggron as a parent, Gible might even be born with steel and ground type moves like Metal Claw, Iron Head, or Sand Tomb. Technically it could even know a rock move if it lucks out, the Aggron line is after all steel/rock type," Pete explained as he drifted into his 'professor mode' as Sophie and Jasmine liked to call it.
The present Feelgood family members looked at him like he grew a second head. Only Jasmine remained smiling.
"Sooo~ you're saying the hiker might have poached the eggs?" Sophie asked with a tilted head.
"That's terrible," Lily interjected, thinking about how she would feel if someone would steal Emily from her.
"Ugh, the hiker didn't tell me where exactly he got the eggs from. He was very vague, so we can't bring it back," Isabelle mumbled with a sad expression.
"What I would like to know is how a local Aggron would even find a Gabite or Garchomp to mate with. I read somewhere that there is a small tribe in the Safari Zone, but as dragons, they don't really mingle well with other pokemon. Where did the hiker say he found the egg?"
"Uh, by the mountains north of route 38," Isabelle answered gingerly.
"Hmm, not too far away from the Safari Zone then... still weird," Pete mumbled with a thoughtful expression.
"He'll be like that for a while, come I'll show you around," Sophie said as she gathered everyone's attention with a clap.
"Come, you'll want to write this down, right? I'll take you to your study," Jasmine offered with the Gible egg in her hand.
In the study, Pete wrote down some info on a card and pinned it on one of two giant maps he had printed out in a shop in Goldenrod City. One was a map of the world as tall as he was and twice as wide. The slightly smaller map he pinned the info card to was a map of Johto with parts of Kanto and Hoenn on it.
Elm and Valentino especially had filled in several gaps Pete had when he filled out the cards with the data he had copied from the atlas he found in the cabin at the start of his journey. It showed noteworthy tribes and breeding grounds all over the region, as well as last sightings of legendary pokemon.
"Hey, how about you place Gible in the third incubator? Right now I only have the two Smeargle eggs, it would be a waste to leave the third one empty while you have an egg," Pete offered when he was done making sure that the flag was placed correctly.
"You sure?"
"I mean, what else am I gonna do? Hatch a few more wild Oddish instead of helping you out?"
"Thanks, Pete," Jasmine replied sweetly, placing the egg in the open incubator and going over to him for a kiss.
"And that, everyone, is Pete's study," Sophie announced with a snicker as she led her family into the study where Jasmine and Pete currently shared the kiss.
Jasmine shoved Pete away hurriedly with a cute squeal, blushed a bright red and glared at her sister.
Two hours later, just around sunset, Pete and Arcanine were enjoying a bath in his outdoor hotspring. Most of the time, the male Milotic would fill it up with fresh water, and either Arcanine or Rapidash would heat it up. So far, this setup was working just fine.
Water was Pete's weakest affinity, so after he was done brushing Arcanine's head gently and laying down with her in the water, Pete started his 'whirlpool' exercise.
He couldn't figure out how to create water out of nothing yet, so Pete first tried flexing his water type energy by shoving it away in waves, which was a really inefficient training method.
What he came up with next was spinning water around in his palm, which allowed him to continuously use up energy and vary the output. Pete was very happy with this training method. The little Marill really liked swimming into this admittedly small whirlpool and spin in it while giggling or 'fight' Pete on the direction of the spin.
"You can place the sleeping little Emily over there while we soak, and then we'll all just be a little quiet. Look over there. That's Pete's Golurk. Nothing will happen to her as long as he's around. Isn't that right, Golurk?" Pete heard Jasmine ask from the direction of his house.
Pete looked over past Arcanine's fluffy, wet mane and saw Golurk give his signature nod by moving his arm up and down. It was something he had taught Golett on the first day since the pokemon didn't have a neck for a proper nod. It warmed his heart that these little things stuck with his pokemon.
"That's just his way of nodding. Pete taught him that," Sophie said next, likely because Isabelle and Lily didn't understand what that gesture meant.
"Hey Pete~" Isabelle was heard next as she greeted him from the entry point of the pool.
The hotspring was only a short sheltered walk on rock slabs from the house while the roof of the walkway extended to roughly half of the hotspring Nidoking, Golurk and Steelix had created almost exclusively through rock type energy.
Since it was all half-built into the hill with the rocks for the roof protruding out of it, it looked like a natural formation instead of something he had built with his pokemon a week before.
"Hey, may I release my Starmie near the hotspring, Pete?" Lily asked as she took out a great ball from her bathrobe.
"Huh? Of course! I'm sure Starmie would enjoy a nice soak. If you're not against it, let it stay with my other pokemon near the lake at night. The two Milotic will make sure it will be safe," Pete instantly agreed.
"Ey! My two Milotic will make sure my sister's Starmie is safe!" Sophie interjected with a shout.
"Oh? That's... is that a color variant Starmie?" Pete mumbled out loud in wonder when he saw Lily's Starmie for the first time. The body of the pokemon was bright pink while the jewel in the middle was still its regular deep ruby red. The 'jewelery setting' remained its regular shining yellow. It wasn't dark blue with a copper setting and a sapphire blue gem in the middle like a normal shiny.
"Hehe, everyone reacts like that! It's not a regular shiny color variant but a pokemon caught on Pinkan Island in the Orange Islands! There's this berry that only grows on this island no matter if you try to plant it somewhere else, and when a pokemon grows up eating these, they'll turn pink! My husband Tom gifted me a pink Staryu on our first anniversary because that's my favorite color," Lily explained with a blissful grin.
And once they all put down their robes, Pete could see that Lily wasn't lying about her favorite color. Her bathrobe had been pink, and her one-piece swimsuit was as well. Very mono-chromatic.
"Where'd you leave Tom, by the way? He's welcome to stay over, too," Pete offered with a good-natured smile.
"Ah, he stayed at my parent's house for Emily's birth, but he had to get back to our home in Mikan Island. His sister Cissy is a gym leader there, and their younger brother Senta is a bit of a prankster, a brat, really. He... irked the wrong crowd and to better be safe than sorry, Tom hurried back to smooth the waters. Yeah, he and his sister only speak in water parables and metaphors... you get used to it... eventually," Lily said as she offered a weak smile. It suddenly became a little quiet. Apparently, they all held an opinion on how Tom talks, but nobody wanted to speak ill of him in this setting.
"Aaahh, I love your warm fur," Sophie said to break the silent streak as she clung to Arcanine on her free side.
"She really is pretty. All your pokemon I've seen so far look very healthy and strong," Lily praised with a warm smile as she watched her sister bury her head in wet dog fur.
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