บท 94: C094 - Wedding Festivities & Gifts
"I thank all of you for coming on this fine day. To my lovely wife: you look absolutely radiant, and I'm a very happy man to have someone like you in my life. To my family and friends: I hope you will have a day worth to remember in fondness, like I will remember each of the friendly faces sitting here today," Pete toasted as every guest of the 'small-ish' wedding ceremony sat seated at an extra long table outside of his home that he and Jasmine sat at the very end off. With muted applause and clinking glasses, the people started eating the amazing food Pete's in-laws prepared.
Chloe, Jasmine's oldest sister-in-law and restaurant owner, came in the early hours of the morning together with Isabelle and coordinated with Pete's pokemon to have a feast for all the guests Pete and Jasmine had invited. They received a delivery of drinks from Paolo's 'Alolan Touch' bar in Olivine City, too.
Eventually, Isabelle left the preparations in the kitchen in favor of decorating the venue with flower arches after getting help from most fairy and grass pokemon living near the Comfey fields.
For the guests, there were, of course, the Elm and Feelgood families as well as all the gym leaders they knew personally: Whitney, Clair and Preston, who recently retired in favor of Jasmine taking over the gym in Olivine City. There was also a young gym leader they only knew as passing acquaintances so far, but he came as Sophie's date.
Jasmine already knew, Sophie was her twin after all, but that Sophie and Falkner, the young gym leader of their hometown Violet City, were dating was new to Pete. Not that he minded either way. Hopefully, Sophie would be happy. That was all Pete wished for since he cared for Sophie like she was his actual sister.
Then, for the other guests, there were Pete's acquaintances like Steven Stone, Champion of Hoenn and Leona, future Mt Pyre guardian, and psychic type gym leader in Mossdeep City. They became a couple shortly after they were on a mission that started with Pete's intel.
Then, there were all the assistants of the professor: Fred and Becca, as well as Valentino and his date Luna, who was the niece of Kanto's Elite Four Bruno and the interior designer and architect of Pete's home. Carl, Luna's father and brother of Bruno, was present, too. He built his house, after all, and he was fun to be around if you didn't get second-hand embarrassment from the way he talks.
Next to Professor Elm, a man Pete technically met for the first time in real life sat with Kanto's Elite Four Agatha: Professor Oak. Pete and he had regular contact over group calls with Elm, but this was the first time he saw the wizened man in real life.
Last but not least, there was Vivian's friend Clara, the blacksmith living in New Bark, who was responsible for the first kitchenware the food enthusiast Pete bought in this world. Pete and her were in regular contact because he simply kept ordering every metalware he needed for his kitchen or the farm from her. She was plenty good at her job, pleasant to be around, and had a good grasp on what Pete wanted when he ordered something.
The festivities with slightly less than thirty people but hundreds of pokemon were a pleasant affair that swept away the pressure Pete, Jasmine, Courtney, and by extension Valerie put themselves under after the close call as they battled Giovanni during the eruption.
After the wedding feast, Pete could finally start his pokemon training in earnest. During this week, he had his pokemon duke it out by limiting their moves to a singular move, and they could only use non-stab moves that were not very effective against their opponents.
To reliably strengthen the power of moves, however, he devised a sort of contest with leaderboards where pokemon would measure how strong their attacks were. There were prizes for highest attack power by typing, reoccuring prizes for growth in a given timeframe, and a prize for highest attack power combined over five different typings.
Steven had brought the devices Pete ordered for this endeavor from Devon Corp today because they already had the needed technology researched, but Pete was not allowed to unpack them until after the guests left. These devices cost him almost his entire savings, and Steven's father would still deduct a hefty sum from his future earnings from the 3% shares he owned in the company, but it was worth it.
The devices had several unique use cases like being underground when measuring strength, measuring bite or clamp strength for pokemon from the size of a Rattatta all the way to Mega Milotic, even documenting water or air pressure was possible with some of them.
There were several of these devices in different forms and sizes, and the biggest of them was made with surviving a Hyper Beam without a scratch in mind. That was also why everything cost so much: highly durable meteorite ore was used in constructing the casing for the last device.
Agatha, Oak, and Elm eventually cornered Pete close to the Heart Tree of his home, where Golurk stood with flowers decorating his form to discuss the threat of Giovanni with the assistant professor. Agatha looked uncomfortable doing so on the day of his wedding but still stood with the two professors with a solemn expression.
"You're saying Ho-oh directly targetted his Mega Beedrill when your pokemon were on the losing side?"
Elm chimed in on Oak's question and added, "Which begs the question: Why did it allow for their pokemon to get so thoroughly defeated first? Was Ho-oh sure they would survive, or was it strong enough to intervene in the first place no matter the circumstances?"
Agatha only shook her head and said, "Something as ancient as Ho-oh doesn't think in our values of life. We can't presume to know what its plan was."
"I agree," Oak offered. "But we can't dismiss all the implications. We know that a hundred and two years ago Zapdos struck a settlement from the map after the researchers there used the blood of pokemon in an inhumane experiment where they wanted to increase the power of affinities with pokemon blood of the appropriate typing."
Elm gravely nodded and added, "Or Lugia drowning an entire island at the coast between Olivine and Goldenrod centuries ago when the then emperor of Johto tried to force his weakened Hitmonchan to bear his child."
Pete's mind disconnected from the rest of the conversation immediately. The emperor of Johto did WHAT? Mind-purge! Mind-purge! Emergency mind-purge!!
"Pete? Hey, you alright?"
Elm's question got Pete out of his emergency braincell meeting, where they voted the cells holding that piece of information out of his head and focussed back on the matter at hand.
"Yeah, sorry. I never heard about that last one before and wish I hadn't," Agatha shot him a taunting look that Pete chose to ignore before he heard more details about this topic. "Legendary pokemon do have a code of conduct, so to speak, Suicune admitted to it when it thanked the three of us for our efforts concerning the eruption."
"Oh? Do share," Oak said with a lifted eyebrow.
"Well, it said that long ago the pokemon that was much stronger than it - I personally think it meant Arceus - decided on some ground rules on how to handle humanity. They wouldn't intervene and show themselves as little as possible to not arouse humanity's greed as best as they could. Furthermore, they would interact with humans only in dire or special circumstances."
"Hmm, that matches the records I have, as well as my short meetings with Mew, Articuno, and Moltres," Oak mumbled with a thoughtful nod. "Though, except the two meetings with Mew, none of my encounters involved actuals words or explanations so far. How peculiar..."
Pete merely lifted an eyebrow at that because he knew from first-hand experience that Oak at the very least met Mew. He also knew the professor met with the mythical pokemon Shaymin and the lake guardian trio in Sinnoh at the very least during his travels as a young man because that's what he wrote in Oak's backstory, but the professor chose to ignore to mention that part for now.
Agatha thought Pete was impressed at Oak's recounting of the legendary pokemon he met - briefly ignoring that Pete had at the very least seen Heatran, Ho-oh and Suicune himself, and added with a smug grin, "You should leave your farm a little more often. Even I met the three legendary birds in my youth. And, it was when I met Spectrier in the Galarian Crown Tundra that I decided to become a ghost pokemon trainer."
"Oooh, even I didn't know that," Elm chimed in with a pondering expression.
"You chose to become a ghost pokemon trainer because of your scary face that no normal pokemon would like. I accept no other explanation," Oak sagely offered with a nod and a pleased grin.
After Agatha punched him in the guts with a swing of her walking stick and turned to Pete while idly watching Pete's shiny Golurk from time to time, "And since I practically invited myself to this joyous occasion, I brought you and your wife a special gift. The TMs for Phantom Force, a rare high power physical damage ghost move that hits through even barriers like Protect which would probably be in great hands with your Golurk, as well as the ghost type move Ominous Winds for your wife's Claydol. Properly trained and with sufficient training in ghost type energies, the move can buff all aspects of a pokemon."
Taking the two TM-CDs from the old lady, Pete thanked her for the thoughtful gift and discussed how to properly train ghost type pokemon with the woman for a while where Elm and Oak, who pretended to be in great pain the whole time, chimed in whenever they could.
After all, how could Pete miss such an occasion where one of the biggest experts on a typing he knew so little about was at his farm and in the mood to talk?
When Jasmine 'rescued' her husband from this group of big poke nerds on Vivian's order, it was time for the other guests to hand over presents. Every single one of them was thoughtful, though most were household items - like Clara who gifted Pete a specially made kitchen knife with the name of the couple engraved on it.
According to her, the knife was made from a shed Aggron steel plate and tempered with steel type energies by her Aggron, the very same who shed it, for the longest time and would not dull even years later. Even engraving the names took her over a week. Naturally, something so precious earned her the right to stay as Pete's exclusive blacksmith for life.
The items the two were gifted and could use in their chosen professions, were a Corviknight egg from Lucifern for Pete, which earned the man a slap to the back of the head from his wife Chloe for 'cheaping out', a batch of rare ground move TMs like the 'four mud moves' Mud Bomb, Mud Shot, Mud Sport and Mud-Slap from her sister Rose or Shore Up, a self-healing move that benefits from Sandstorm from Preston.
Then, there were Steven and Leona who went way overboard and gifted the couple two mega stones. Steven himself had a second mega pokemon at this point after he no longer needed to search for a stone for his ace and had evolved an Aggron to its mega evolved form.
Leona, the champion's partner, had a mega evolved pokemon, too: Mega Alakazam. She was still looking for a stone to mega evolve her Gardevoir or shiny Claydol if possible.
The two mega stones Steven handed over held the typing ice/ground, likely prepared for Jasmine and steel/fairy, likely prepared for Pete. Pete couldn't wait to test it out and strengthen the pokemon on his farm, who all so ambitiously tried to get stronger this past week some more.
Yet, the highlight of all announcements came from Oak and Agatha at the very end of the gift giving - even though it technically wasn't a gift: Pete was officially nominated to become a fully fledged pokemon professor. And, at the very end of his Alola travels in a few weeks, a special meeting would be held in Alola where all regional professors who were able to make the time would take a vote to make the promotion official.
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