Chương 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.
Chương 59: C059 - News on Lance and Clair's raid
"Oh hey, if you like pink, then you're going to love my Jumpluff! Let me check if she's close," Pete offered as he concentrated his psychic energy to reach out to Jumpluff.
As luck would have it, she was currently dancing around with both Grotles near the berry farm, just barely in Pete's range. Pete couldn't really talk yet over this distance, but he could send a short command, which admittedly gave him a bit of a headache.
"How is he going to check if she's close," Lily whispered to her sister Jasmine next to her in the hotspring.
"Oh, he awakened his psychic potential and has been training it really hard. It helps out a lot on his farm," Jasmine whispered back barely loud enough that their mother Isabelle heard it, too.
Isabelle, who had liked Pete from the very start, got more and more excited about having him as a son-in-law. Not only did he not ogle her or her daughters as they put down their robes as a normal teenager would, he was also a gentle soul with enough resolve to end an age-old war between pokemon to live his life like he wants.
Not to forget, the life he wants is to raise powerful pokemon and become an influential pokemon professor while doing the side business of opening up a new avenue of products for their company with this grafting technique he pulled out of nowhere. And just looking at her shy daughter's smile, Isabelle judged that they had 'roped in' the perfect son-in-law.
The sisters talked amongst one another as Isabelle closed her eyes to relax in this pleasant bath Pete had created. Pete himself concentrated on his water training once more until he was awoken from his focused state.
"KYAAA!" Pete looked up and saw Lily hurrying over to him. He looked up and saw his pink, shiny Jumpluff float just a short bit over his head.
In the next moment, the young mother pressed her assets into the bewildered assistant professor's face as she reached out in an attempt to hug the pink pokemon flying above his head.
"*Cough* Please calm down, Lily," Pete offered as he pried the woman away from him.
"Hey, Jumpluff. Thanks for coming over so fast. These are Lily, Jasmine's and Sophie's sister, Isabelle, their mother, and in the little crib over there, that's Lily's daughter Emily. Lily, as you may have noticed, loves the color pink, and I wanted to show off my pretty Jumpluff to her," Pete introduced.
While Jumpluff stuck to Pete because he wanted her to feel and be special outside of being 'shiny', the pokemon didn't mind getting praised for her pretty appearance. It just had to come in appropriate doses.
'Maybe I should hide Espeon for a bit,' Pete thought in worry at the excessive reaction of Lily.
Nobody saw the glare Jasmine was throwing her elder sister. She hadn't done anything so bold to Pete, and yet her sister went ahead and did it without meaning to. However, she was glad to see Pete largely unaffected. His brows were only slightly furrowed, and if Jasmine had to guess, he was likely thinking that he should hide Espeon from her sister instead of generous chest sticking in his face.
At breakfast the next day, Pete was the first to wake up like usual. Valentino arrived next, grabbed a quick bite, and hurried back into the forest with his pokemon. The next person to wake up wasn't Isabelle like he suspected, but Lily with a crying Emily in her arms.
"Diaper checked? Hungry? Any of her clothing too tight, too hot or wet?" Pete asked off-handedly as he continued to read the news.
Pete didn't have kids of his own even in his last life, but the two kids of his brother gave him enough ideas about what the little girl could be crying about. It was way too early for any teeth to grow, and if it was growing pains, which it was a little too early for, too, then they simply had tough luck.
"Hmm, she does feel a little sweaty on her back," Lily said in wonder as she fussed over her daughter on the couch.
Pete looked up and regarded Emily with a warm smile.
"You don't want her to get a wind-chill, but maybe lose the shirt under the onesie. If she's just lying around, you could throw a light blanket over her to shield her from the breeze. Just don't pack it tight if you don't need to," Pete offered as advice and turned back down to his tablet.
Through league channels, he could finally read a redacted telling of events from Lance's and Clair's raid on the Team Rocket lab near Olivine City here in Johto.
"Does my sister need to worry about becoming a stepmom, or are you a natural with this stuff?" Lily asked as her baby stopped crying after losing a layer of clothing and having the sweat wiped away.
Pete turned back to look at the article. Two Dragonite, three Dragonair, a Charizard, two Aerodactyl, which Pete found more astonishing than anything else, a Kingdra, an Altaria, and a Gyarados. These were the pokemon the current champion and his cousin, the dragon gym leader of Blackthorn City, had brought to either arrest or deal with the threat of the lab as needed.
"Nah, used to have an older brother and sometimes watched his kids," Pete off-handedly answered as he kept reading.
"Used to have? Oh no, what happened?"
Pete didn't look up and honestly wasn't really paying any attention to the conversation. Sixteen goons and most of their pokemon died as they resisted arrest. Thirty-seven Team Rocket members, including three researchers, and a self-proclaimed professor survived and were being processed by the police as they uncovered 'unethical' research. Sadly, the article did not mention anything about what they found.
"Are you okay, Pete? You don't have to talk about it," Lily sat beside him and gently touched his shoulder in reassurance. She took his silence as being too sad for him to talk about. She didn't mean to pry open old wounds.
'Trainers dying, their pokemon wiped out with them... this is very far from my experience in this world so far, but I should know better. I've seen those dead Team Rocket grunts in the forest and fought a 'war' alre- Wait, Lily was talking!'
"Hmm? Oh, my brother? That's..., well. It's not 'fine' fine... But while we can't see each other anymore, I hope with all my heart that he is happy where he is. Being surrounded by my lovely pokemon helps a lot," Pete replied giving his best reassuring smile to the young mother who was already tearing up a little.
It was a bit of a heavy topic for someone Pete had just met the day before, so the atmosphere turned a little awkward after that. And in the grand scheme of things, it was a little weird since it was technically him who died, not the other way around. He'd have to mind his wording in the future.
"Have you heard about all these attacks on Team Rocket bases yet? I imagine your husband or, at the very least, his sister were informed about it, maybe even roped in, no?" Pete asked to break the silence and change the topic.
'Hmm, does Duosion know I'm not from around here? Celebi could have figured it out even more easily,' Pete idly thought as Lily began reading the article from next to him.
"He mentioned something and would have been sent to investigate since an Officer Jenny would have been 'too obvious', but Emily came in the way," Lily explained as she sent her daughter a fond look. "I know it's selfish, but seeing how many people died, I'm glad. Tom's Raichu, Blastoise, and Seadra are powerful, but not whatever... this is."
Lily and Pete reached a point in the article with a photo of the pokemon lineup the two elite trainers brought. Seeing all these grossly overpowered pokemon was very intimidating.
'I think I remember a tidbit of the games where Silver, the second gen rival, didn't want to partner up with Clair because he insults her outfit? Wow, I get his reluctance. That weird combination of boots with the two thick rings below her knee and the weirdly cut swimsuit are very unflattering.'
'She should have long, toned legs and looks fit enough for a killer butt, but that combo... her haircut is also a weird choice, makes her slim face look round and rectangular at the same time,' Pete thought in deep contemplation, not realizing that Lily had stopped looking at the picture a few moments ago and instead scrutinized him.
Unknown to him, Lily was glad her earlier question didn't seem to have put a damper on his mood. And, she also didn't think that the boyfriend of her youngest sister was currently judging how good Clair's ass would look in jeans instead of that skyblue wetsuit, but rather that he was analyzing the strong pokemon in the picture.
"Morning Pete, Lily. And how are you, my little bundle of sunshine?" Isabelle squealed as she made her presence known when she sat next to Emily on the couch.
"Ah, you finally lost a layer of clothing. Good thing I was worried Emily might be a little too hot in this sunny meadow all dressed up for a mountain hike. Better learn it here than your home, too. Mikan Island is even more tropical," Isabelle in full 'grandma mode' explained.
Instead of answering her mother, Lily only shot Pete a grateful look, but he already continued reading the article.
There seemed to be a hidden lab near Alph mountains North-East of here, that even Pete, with his meta knowledge, didn't know about. Their next raid started... two hours before sunrise today.
'Good thing there's still a full buffer in Ilex Forest between us and the mountain range... I should still accompany the adventure group the next two days and maybe leave a few more pokemon here than planned when Valentino and I leave in three.'
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