C050 - Vivian's Tour

It was with great reluctance later that day that Jasmine and Sophie were teleported back home to Violet City by Herbert's Exeggutor. Their eldest sister had just given birth, and their mother made it clear that their attendance was non-negotiable.

They were happy of course for their two new nephews and their sister, but all their careful scheming with Vivian the day before was for naught.

"Don't worry, there'll still be more sunsets by the time you get back," Pete had said with a warm smile and a wink when the twins said their goodbyes and that was the only reason Jasmine didn't feel any hint animosity toward her older sister giving birth a week too early.

"Okay, Pete! Tell us what to do around here!" Vivian had ordered when two were gone after lunch.

And so began the day of Vivian and Benny riding along the river on top of Rapidash and discovering everything Pete had done over the past week here at his new farm. Pete himself had, for the first time, tried riding on Blitzle that day.

The young electric pokemon was giddy to prove herself since she had grown up a lot under Pete's and Rapidash's care and proper food in recent weeks. Pete felt that her evolution might not have been too far off. He had underestimated her age because of her malnourished upbringing.

"Ah, this brings back memories. During summertime, my dad used to bring me to this ranch near Fuchsia City growing up and let me ride them when I was a small girl, you know," Vivian spoke from atop Rapidash's back with a wistful smile at the end. "I should contact my friend I made there, Lara. It's been a while," she mumbled quietly.

"I wanted to ask if you've done this before. Guess that explains it. A smart girl like Rapidash always makes it look easy, but you look like a natural up there," Pete complimented as he trotted alongside them on Blitzle's back.

"I'd race you to that waterfall I'm hearing, but maybe when Benny's not with us," Vivian challenged with a haughty upturned nose at the compliment.

"Well, we have the time. All we have to do is convince the pokemon who would want to race who," Pete countered with a warm smile.

"Yeah, let's do that!"

On the tour, there was the waterfall with a new mushroom cave ring and a now permanent staircase leading up the cliff. Vivian was absolutely enchanted by the sights from on top of the cliff. Even from the top of the cliff, the huge lake almost stretched to the horizon if it weren't for the hill and forest between them and Goldenrod City.

Pete was also glad that the Vileplume tribe had by now fixed most of the battle damage from the last week, so that Benny didn't have to see any blood or corpses.

After getting down from the cliff once more, Pete's group made their way through both the berry orchard and the tree farm.

With hundreds of grass pokemon hanging around there, using grass type energy to hasten along their growth, Pete had many trees that were on their way to fully grown already which resulted in a very inviting sight of rows upon rows of multi-colored, beautiful trees.

When they reached the part of the river that had a small island in the middle with the original toppled over trees working as bridges that Pete had crossed on the first day he was here in the meadow, Pete could show off the work he had finished with Jasmine's Steelix' and Nidoking's help.

Instead of having to balance on top of an old dead tree, hoping you won't fall off or the tree finally gives in, you could now walk on top of two rocky bridges on each side of the island made of two single slabs of rock.

At the place of the two rocks acting as bridges, the island was barely as wide as Steelix was long. The rocks itself were a little longer than Golurk was tall.

Since neither of the pokemon and certainly not Pete were professional stonemasons, the bridge looked very rough and had no flashy decordations, but it looked more natural that way and it didn't obstruct the waterflow of the split river. Pete liked looking at the bridges.

On the 'river island' itself that Pete had named Spice Island, Pete had planted a large variety of plants that could be ground, dried, or simply plucked to be spices.

There was even a giant basil bush that looking nothing like the small stalks from his old world with barely 10 leaves you'd have to carefully water by pouring water in a bowl, lest the plant dies from too little or too much water - or Arceus forbid, rain.

The other side of the river was mostly grassland. As promised to the Vileplume tribe, Pete left this as their natural habitat, but along the coast on the north, Pete had planted a few rows of crops, like corn and wheat.

Surpringly, Pete had also found an eggplant that was nothing like the eggplant of his old world. There, the plant was called as such because its fruit would look like a white egg in the early stages of forming and then elongate into a deep purple eggplant.

But here, eggplants were more or less what you would expect the plant to be if you had never seen an eggplant before.

The plant itself was a deep 'glass-green' stalk that ended in a cob that looked like a mix between a corn cob and a white pea pod. Fully grown, with ripe fruit pods ready plucking the plant was a little taller than Pete. Inside the pods, once ripe, you could find what Pete thought resembled white chicken eggs in both color and size. Just slightly more round instead of oval

The 'egg' was almost completely 'egg yolk' with no 'egg white' inside. The 'egg white' itself was a sticky fluid that was used to create starch in this world once dried. Instead of a hard shell, the outer layer of the egg more or less resembled a smooth, white orange skin in texture and 'peel-ability'.

The 'egg yolk' was mostly what Pete would expect it to be from his world, though. It behaved the same when cooked and could be used for baked good. It wasn't ideal for most recipes since you'd have to wash away the sticky 'egg white', but Pete could make it work with a little experimenting.

Since the starch water as Pete would call it in his mind from now on tasted very bland, a little bitter and kind of salty, the plant was not very popular in this world. It was not sold in any of the grocery stores or markets he had been to. He only found it in Herbert's catalogue because the man sold almost anything from anywhere as long as it was a plant.

The plant wasn't only unpopular because of the taste, though. It was also unpopular with farmers because without proper protection from strong pokemon, Beedrills would use these eggplant pods to hatch their Weedles. They'd cleverly open them and place one Weedle egg inside, and the newly hatched Weedle would eat the the other eggs inside them once hatched.

A normal farmer would then naturally start getting rid of the Weedle, but suddenly, your farm had a lethal Beedrill problem. There were no winners if you couldn't stop them from placing their eggs inside your eggplants during the night in the first place.

"Oh wow! I mean, we've probably seen hundreds of pokemon already, but this is... quite the sight," Vivian commented as they reached Pete's crops field.

"Uh, yeah. After I started planting all these trees and crops and the Vileplume started growing them... it took one drifter to arrive, and suddenly they all came the next day, haha," Pete explained with an awkward smile.

They had seen these pokemon drift along the berry orchard and tree farm, but the crops field was teeming with hundreds of Hoppip, Skiploom, and Jumpluff. Funnily enough, the last of the evolution line was the most common pokemon in the swarm of pokemon that were hanging around here. Not by a lot, mind you, but still noticeable.

'Maybe their 'young' wouldn't leave their usual mating grounds so early, and these Jumpluff were freer to go where they want,' Pete thought as he looked around with a warm smile. These pokemon were all very peaceful and helped out tremendously by just being here.

'Well, in the game, they evolved well before level 30 into their last evolution stage, so I shouldn't be too surprised. Especially since we're living in a forest right next to Celebi. With hundreds of Leaf Stones, they should get enough energy to evolve quickly,' Pete mused as he watched the Jumpluff dance between the already almost fully grown crops.

All they really needed now was pollination for the fruits to grow, and that was exactly what the Jumpluff were doing at this moment. That was why Pete had a bright, warm smile watching it all.

"Oooh, look! There's even a color variant Jumpluff and a color variant Hoppip among them!" Pete was roused from his musing by an excited Vivian.

The all-green Hoppip was very hard to see among the equally green Skiploom, but the all pink Jumpluff immediately stood out. It looked like a few puffy pieces of bubblegum among the sea of green and stood out quite a lot.

"Quick, don't you want to catch it!? It's so cuuuute," Vivian questioned as she took hundreds of pictures from horse, uh unicorn-back.

Did he really need to catch a Jumpluff? Pete wondered. As it went so far, Pete's 'need' to grow grass pokemon for the farm was more or less non-existant. If anything, he'd need to ask the Vileplume to stop using Grassy Terrain constantly because he didn't need to harvest the full yield of his farm on a weekly basis.

Yet, Pete was also only a human. A human that in his last life spent quite a few hours 'shiny hunting' in almost any pokemon game he had picked up.

"Can't hurt to give it a good old try, no?"

Pete jumped from Blitzle's back and made his way to the shiny Hoppip first. Since most pokemon around here knew him, the elusive Hoppip line pokemon didn't dodge Pete on purpose but simply drifted along in the wind.

That was Pete's first thought when he couldn't reach the shiny Hoppip, but eventually, he noticed the little bugger was actively avoiding him. They were all still smiling and making content noises, so Pete hoped it was simply a fun game.

"Okay then, I'll just speak to it another time. Not like it'll never come back here, right?" Pete mumbled under his breath.

The young assistant professor then looked around for the pink Jumpluff, and it wasn't very hard to find it. The pokemon stood out quite a lot, after all.

"Hey there! I'm glad you like it here! You know, all of you are free to stay, but I was wondering if you specifically wanted to come along with me? I'd uh... like a sort of spokes-pokemon with me for all the other Hoppips, you know?"

As a trainer for over twenty pokemon, Pete was still not too sure how to ask a pokemon to join him. Usually, it was quite easy as they hatched and were immediately 'indoctrinated' by Solosis, but asking one specific pokemon among hundreds was a little embarrassing.

He couldn't simply tell him that he wanted him around because he was a shiny. Wait, could he?