Chương 38: C038 - The construction begins
A Machamp, four Machoke, and six Machop were organizing timber, metal beams, sacks of what looked like unmixed cement, and other building materials. Carl and the two young Timburr were helping out, too, but were kind of just messing up the rhythm of the Machops and others.
Luna was going over the plan with Pete next to the flattened ground. She looked right in her element with a Lairon and a Magneton floating around her in her safety gear that did nothing to hide her muscular physique.
Two Magnemite were working together floating around the site and dropping markers for distance all over the place, apparently making accurate judgment based on their magnetic powers from their ability Magnet Pull.
"Alright, so a small basement room here below the hill, that's doable. What's that the second room for?"
"I was thinking I'd put the water tank in there. It can't be too high because then I won't be able to comfortably hook it up to the stream without a powerful pump and I want it away from the sun so it won't be too hot if I don't want it to be," Pete suggested with an unsure smile.
"Yeah, sure. I mean, that's usually what people without water pokemon will do when building a home outside the city, so I guess I thought you had the water source covered," Luna responded with a shrug.
That got Pete thinking, but he would do this just in case anyway. No need to overly rely on pokemon when he could get it done with clever engineering in a pinch.
"What will we do about waste water?"
"We could lay down a pipe and introduce it back to the river or maybe even into the lake. If you want it filtered, there's two options. A filtration system, or you look for a few Grimer to do it for you. Both have pros and cons, but I'd prefer the filtration system for a single building. You'll know why if you ever smelled a Grimer," Luna explained with a scrunched nose.
"I mean, technically, it's just me and a few guests at times, so it shouldn't be enough waste to 'feed' the Grimer anyway, right? Is the filtration system able to get the soap out of the water before it's sent back into the river or lake? I don't want to mess up the ecosystem around here," Pete asked in concern.
"Yeah, most cities filter waste water in a filtration system after the Grimer, too, because of that reason. Not many people know about that, though. No wonder you're an assistant professor, you little egg-head," Luna jokingly said as she nudged Pete's shoulder.
"Alright, with that decided, we cleared up everything, right? How long do you think it's gonna take?"
"Hmm, basic structure in four or five days. Wiring and piping another two days minimum. Finishing touches like flooring and windows and stuff will take the longest unless your cutie Rapidash helps out drying the material a little faster. Though she needs perfect control. Drying it too fast would mean it doesn't settle properly, and it's gonna leave cracks und imperfections behind," Luna counted with both hands.
"That's much faster than I would have thought," Pete responded in wonder.
"Well, it would take much much longer if you wanted more floors or had some weird restrictions for the materials, but this is all pretty standard stuff and my good buddy Lairon here has perfect control over steel typing energy. Combine that with a few Machamp and Machoke that can lift a ton casually, and you're golden," Luna answered with shrug.
"Could you start with the part that's built into the hill? I'll lend you Golurk and Nidoking for the ground-work, too. The tent is nice and all, but if one room was ready to live in, that would be amazing," Pete suggested with a shy smile. He really felt like an ignorant young master with excessive demands.
"Yeah, sure. Why would you not just come back with us to Goldenrod when Exeggutor sends us back for the night?"
"Oh, yeah. I guess I could. Hmm, I guess there's two reasons. Probably a few more if I was honest with myself. One, I want to be here in case the Ariados retaliate this night, and two, I... this is going to be my home. I want to connect with everything around here," Pete explained with a bright smile at the end that Luna found way too blinding for someone who wanted to do his business out in the open for a few days.
As Pete watched Carl argue with the Machamp in his karate gi, he suddenly felt this man looked a little like a certain famous trainer.
"Hey Luna, last question. Is your dad related to Bruno, the elite four member?"
"Huh? I mean, my uncle's name is Bruno, but he's a gym leader in Kanto's Saffron City, not an Elite Four," Luna said with furrowed brows.
"Ah, I misspoke, yeah, that's probably who I mean. How come you're live so far from him?"
"Well, Goldenrod and Saffron are connected by the cross-region Magnet Train, so we're just a day away if we truly wanted to meet... but my dad and uncle don't really talk," Luna explained with a shake of her head.
'So this is before Bruno becomes an Elite Four, thereby avoiding the struggle that the corrupt League officials wanted to close one of Saffron City's gyms. I never really understood why they would do that, since every region has more than 8 badge-certified gyms anyway,' Pete thought as he watched Machamp wildly argue with all four arms.
'Makes sense that he's into fighting pokemon then. Maybe they are not on speaking terms because Bruno takes practice really serious, and Carl is a bit of a loon,' Pete mused when Carl tried to win the argument against Machamp with an arm wrestling contest.
Pete ordered Golurk and Nidoking to help out with the construction and started to busy himself by creating a vegetable garden with the help of his own ground affinity. Since Golurk's evolution and his own training, Pete had increased his ground typing reserves tremendously.
With Sunkern on his shoulder, a bag with seeds with him, and a few of his pokemon following him, Pete walked in the direction of the lake before starting with his project.
Flexing his ground typing affinity, Pete shoved dirt to the side and piled it on to create raised bed vegetable fields roughly the size of a long but narrow dinner table. He raised it roughly to a height somewhere between his knees and his waist before placing some granite-wood boards upright into the ground on all four sides to make sure they kept their form.
Granite-wood is a specialty of Granturio Town on Route 45 south of Blackthorn City and comes from a forest where trees nourished by rock type energy over centuries mutated their species to grow wood that once dried was impervious to water damage and super hard, making it the ideal wood for raised bed vegetable banks.
The town and the trees didn't exist in the game or anime to his knowledge, but Pete knew about this city and the trees because that was where his MC had fought a group of Sudowoodo that had nearly cost him his newly hatched Swablu.
The granite-wood wasn't used in construction much because these panels were cut into form before the moisture was drawn out of the wood. Once dried, the wood behaved pretty much like rocks and would rather break and chip before being pliable like wood.
Once Pete was done with one row of five raised beds, he left a path between them for him to comfortably walk on and made another five raised beds. His reserves by now were pretty much completely empty, so he gave a pack of seeds to his two Minccino and showed them where to place the seeds and how to place them.
The two didn't appreciate getting the dirt in their fur, but they still helped regardless.
The Marill and their Azurill were much more eager to help and also directly helped water these seeds. Pete really enjoyed this tranquil time.
"Good job, everyone! Now, if you would do the honors Sunkern and help them sprout? Can you do that?"
Sunkern heard the question and narrowed its eyes. Pete placed the pokemon down on a raised bed and watched it work as the faint green grass energy enveloped the seeds.
Pete was very surprised when he noticed the green hue on two other raised beds as well. He had recently used the Solar Beam TM on Solosis and Zorua. He more or less figured out they wouldn't learn the move anytime soon, but apparently, they managed to learn using grass type energy.
"You really got the hang of it? Amazing! Good job, you two! You're going to have so many opportunities to train grass type energy in the future, too!"
Both pokemon happily accepted the praise and tried even harder to do what Sunkern was doing. The seeds in his raised bed had by now already sprouted and showed small green stalks and leaves that were coming out of the ground.
"Hey, Growlithe. Rapidash mentioned to me that she taught you the move Sunny Day. Care to help out Sunkern and the veggies to grow a little?"
Growlithe gave Pete a happy yap and scrunched its face together as Pete, Rapidash, and the other pokemon looked to Growlithe with encouraging gazes.
Suddenly, the already sunny day got a little brighter. Like the clock turned back a little, and it was noon once more when the sun was highest and therefore shone brightest.
"Nice job! You're such a good girl! Come here, you earned some good scratches," Pete suggested as he sat down on the ground and opened his arms wide for Growlithe to come over and lay on his lap.
SUY NGHĨ CỦA NGƯỜI SÁNG TẠO 
Nuclide
Nuclide Sorry, spent the day with my grandpa and only came home a little while ago. Tomorrow might be another 3-chap day though :) I promise 2 at the very least
Chương 39: C039 - Construction ongoing
Jasmine had contacted Pete to let him know she would stay with Numel until tomorrow, and the night passed without an attack from the Ariados. It threw a light wrench in his plans to negotiate a cease fire with them, but the chance wouldn't simply go away.
The Vileplume had spent some time to grow and spread the Scarlet Moss to a few more trees during the day. When the morning of the next day came, Pete went up to the forest line with Rapidash giving him a ride as his other pokemon were still sleeping and helped spread the rest of the Scarlett Moss in his bags.
There was already no point in keeping the rest, the Vileplume's capacity to grow the moss was way more than he had anticipated. Now all they needed was for the bugs living in them to properly grow their numbers. Something Pete couldn't really help with other than introducing the collected moss with the bugs already inside.
After making sure breakfast was ready back at their camp, Pete got up to a new project to graft regular tree branches to berry tries and the other way around. He wanted to see if the berries were truly special in some kind like their effects suggested and if they could spread their miraculous effects to trees like the Yoseban trees.
Herbert had delivered some waist-high Yoseban fruit trees the last day that Pete had grown on the border of what he would later call his tree farm right next to the true berry orchard. It was obvious that these trees were less special than a berry tree because with the same treatment of the Vileplume tribe, these trees had grown much, much more.
With that over and his pokemon instructed to train a little on their own with games and exercising their typing energies, Pete took Nidoking with him to the cliff right next to the waterfall near the lake's shore.
"Okay, buddy. We got some vegetable beds and our saplings ready, now I need a cave to grow some mushrooms. Fungus grow in dark and damp environments best, so what better place than right next to the waterfall was my thought. Could you create a cave ring with two exits? One here, one a little more to the right?"
Nidoking looked to Pete and rolled its eyes a little. Naturally, he could do it. This much was nothing to a powerful pokemon like him.
"Oh, yeah. Since you want to train so much, I challenge you to use fighting and rock type energy instead of ground type energy to make the cave. If you need any help, ask the Geodudes to show you how. I've seen one of them use the fighting move Rock Smash yesterday," Pete instructed with a smirk before leaving Nidoking with a pat to its shoulder.
While walking back, Pete weighed his options on how to best grow the Bocan mushrooms without needlessly introducing harmful mycotoxins and mold into the mix but not even his brother ever farmed mushrooms, so he was a little out of his element even with the tips from the plant guide book he got at the cabin.
He didn't want anything to do with natural fertilizer, aka poop, so he was thinking of feeding the mushrooms mulch from the dead leaves and weeds of the farm. He would need to experiment a little. Too bad Paras and Parasect were out of the question. Maybe he needed to hasten the schedule of his future Unova visit to catch pokemon of the Foongus line. Well, maybe he also simply underestimated the power of grass type pokemon and he didn't even need a special grass pokemon related to mushrooms for this.
Pete was tending to his garden after arriving back until around an hour and a half before noon, Luna and Carl arrived to get on with the construction. They released all their pokemon and once more asked Golurk for help because they would lay the waste water pipe today.
Pete's ground typing energy grew by leaps and bounds once more since yesterday and he had created almost a hundred raised beds for vegetables on the slope of the hill between his house and the river flowing into the lake. He had run out of the granite-wood panels a long time ago and would likely have to buy more or get Luna and Carl to deliver it to him the next day.
"You want some yoseban patties with fries?" Pete asked he walked over to Carl and Luna, who oversaw the work of Golurk, Rapidash, Lairon, and a few Machops and Machokes.
The group was currently a quarter done with the reinforced cement pipe they wanted to construct for the waste water. The rest of the pokemon were currently working on the ground floor for the building by spreading and tying together long metal ropes to reinforce the floor.
"If it tastes anything like those 'calzones' you made yesterday, I'll eat everything you make right out of your hand," Luna answered instantly without thinking.
"Ya man, I'd prefer a plate, but I would also eat anything you want to cook from almost anything," Carl agreed but had to make it weird. The young assistant professor had already learned to tune it out when Carl was like that.
Pete walked back and started cooking with the help of the older of the two Miltank, the non-shiny one. When Pete asked for a bit of milk for the dough yesterday, the pokemon had asked to watch him cook and eventually started joining him in the outdoor kitchen. She seemed to love kneeding dough. Sadly though, her hooves weren't dexterous enough to hold the knives Pete owned, so he would need to tinker a little for that.
The food was done, and Pete called everyone to eat. Only Golurk stayed behind to work ahead a little and reinforce the earth around the pipe a little more. It wasn't like Golurk could eat anyway.
"The twins mentioned you wanted to get a false sky interior lighting system from that Markus guy in Cianwood City. Have you already placed your order?"
"Hmm? Markus? Oh yeah, the twins' father, Herbert, apparently is good friends with him and his father, the chief ranger of the safari zone, so he accepted a sort of rush order for me. The dimensions for the rooms below the hill I gave you were with those dimensions in mind," Pete answered as he swallowed the food in his mouth.
"You should have mentioned it earlier," Luna grumbled.
"Oh, sorry, sorry. I kinda forgot about it if I'm going to be honest. Does that throw a wrench in your planning for the construction?"
"Hmm? Nah, not really. The system doesn't need any crazy special wiring or anything, so we can build it like planned. But it does throw a wrench in my plans for your interior design later. Had I known you wanted something so fancy, I wouldn't have planned your furniture and stuff with such a rustic feel," Luna said with a cute pout and furrowed brows. It was a weird but oddly powerful combination for someone with an Amazon's physique like her.
"Uh, you were planning my furniture and stuff?"
"What do you mean? Of course I do? Didn't Whitney tell you that's my original specialty?"
Pete got to thinking, and it was true. Whitney did say Luna did the interior design for her.
"Oh... well, it's just I never thought about it, and you didn't mention it before, haha," Pete admitted with an awkward chuckle.
"Hmph, I'll show you some designs tomorrow. Furniture and the kitchen was in part already included in the contract for the house anyway."
The atmosphere would have stayed a little awkward for the rest of the meal, but Carl quickly got into an arm-wrestling match with Machamp once more for the honor of doing the dishes. Carl quickly lost but disappeared, leaving the dishes to Pete and his water pokemon. Not that Pete minded, because he'd much rather that Carl finished building the house as quickly as possible.
Azurill wasn't a water pokemon just yet, but had learned Water Sport and Bubble from his parents already. Pete made cleaning the dishes into a fun little game where the little polka dot pokemon would have to aim his move Bubble at the dishes before Pete scrubbed them clean once hit. Even the Minccino who loved cleanliness joined in, so they were done in no time despite the large number and sizes of kitchenware they had to clean.
When he was done with cleaning up and on his way back to busy himself in the garden once more, one of Luna's Magnemite flew over and indicated that Pete should follow him.
They arrived at the greatly extended cave with a hallway and two rooms already taking shape where Pete still had his eggs placed. The cave room was well lit by a few construction torches hooked up to Pete's generator.
The two freshly hatched Timburr were surrounding the incubators curiously, and Pete heard one of them beep, announcing yet another pokemon of his would hatch.
Once he saw which on it was, Pete quickly grabbed his tablet out of his bag and called Professor Elm urgently.
"Professor! The Klink egg, it's about to hatch!" Pete shouted once the call connected and he aimed the camera at the opened incubator with the odd metallic egg shaking inside.
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