40 Shower

"So uhhh meowth what's this?"

He looks at me and gives me the giant cat equivalent of a shrug as he uses his now free tail after Ferroseed released her gravity to sit back on the ground to jab the mid sized ball of fur only for what looked like a gold chain necklace with a heart pendant out of it..

The brown lump moaned again as it shuffled a bit more before finally unraveling its self into its far from majestic form of a scraggly and very injured Zigzigoon who eyes around slowly and with an obvious amount of exhaustion.

"Gooooo"

It bleats out wearily as it zeroes in on me and just watches me. it's weariness seemed to fade into acceptance of its fate, what it thought it's fate was is pretty obvious with it bleeding so heavily on the floor in front of me…Becky is gonna hate cleaning that up…luckily though it's not one of of the rugs we have scattered around the place in to keep our feet off the concrete….maybe I should try and get some carpet squares or something..

I turn back to meowth

"So why did you injure this thing just to bring it back home bleeding?"

Meowth shakes his head

"You didn't injure it? So it was Ferroseed who did?"

Meowth shakes his head again before making a squeaky noise and biting twice with its fangs showing.

"A ratatta pack?"

Meowth nods

"Ok…sooo….why is it here? I know you usually eat things like this?"

Again meowth jabs the still very injured magic trash panda before what looked like a small pouch fell from the front of its fur around the belly.

A pink shimmer filled the air around the pouch as it was levitated to me, I grabbed it and noticed it kinda stunk but I ignored that to take a look inside and found…..money???

Maybe 200 bucks in random crumpled notes stuffed into the little fake leather pouch he seemed to have hidden in his bushy and tangled fur…

"Ok so he has some bling and a little money? What did you bring him up here to shake him down or what?"

Meowth rolls his eyes before giving a quick tilt of his head and gestures for an empty pokeball that was sitting on the coffee table.

"…..You wanna add him to the team?…why?"

Meowth pads at the gold watch and necklace before flopping down onto his belly and making himself comfortable… basically saying we needed money to continue to live comfortably

"Yeah, alright I get it but let's patch this guy up and see how it goes aye?….slowpoke buddy give him some juice but make sure he doesn't freak out when he gets some energy back"

I talk a lot with my Pokémon like people would vent to their dogs or cats back in my old world, but the difference is they actually understand here and can give somewhat of a response.

Over my time with the crew I've come to understand what they say kinda through a mixture of charades and toned growls mixed in with some facial expressions…

While training ,every now and then I would talk to meowth about money and how it worked and why we did what we did to acquire more of it, not in an excuse kinda way trying to justify why i killed and robbed those guys, but more in a way that explained how fucking hard it would be to live a half decent life without being doing shit society considered wrong with the start in life we both had.

And in a bit of a rant every now and then I may have mentioned an ability called "pick up" and how it worked, or how I thought it worked and how useful it could be to have a Pokémon who had it..

I mentioned in those conversations about what Pokémon could have the ability and what those Pokémon looked like, despite what the anime would have you believe, Pokémon don't instantly know every Pokémon that exists, they only know what they learn growing up and are taught..

And I'm guessing meowth was doing a walk through the first floor looking for ratatta and raticate who came looking for shelter in the storm to….evict….yeah let's say evict….

Meowth and Ferroseeds "eviction" runs have been really helping out on reducing food costs too so it's a win-win for me really.

But back to the point, Meowth probably saw this guy being mauled by a ratatta pack and it seemed like the description of what I gave him on one of the "pick up" Pokémon and noticed he was carrying some shiny bling and decided save it before running it up to me to me to check out.

Slowpoke had just finished pumping the little racoon pokemon full of heal pulses and settled back down to my side, the Zigzagoon in question while still cautious looked around with a little more pep, again landing on me seemingly waiting for me to start talking.

Becky is back in the kitchen area to give us enough space to sort this out with marill and butterfree by her sides, enough space to not be in the way but not enough space to make sure she can listen in on what's happening..

"Alright mate, seems your back on your feet….kinda….."

I pick up the watch that fell out of his fur and notice him kinda hesitate when I did, almost like he wanted to protest…

"See this?"

He stares at me for a second and turns his head to the watch before nodding..

"Are you good at finding stuff like this? Valuable stuff?…..kinda like you just know how to find it?"

Again he hesitates for a second before nodding with a "zig"

Pokémon don't all say their name like in the anime, some do and some don't but the ones that do don't sound remotely human…it's more of a growl that coincidentally sounds out their names…or their breed was named on the sounds they make? I'm not sure but it doesn't really matter now does it…

"And do you have more of this kind of stuff?"

I point around to the watch and necklace, finishing on the little pouch of cash..again he hesitated before reaching into his matted and bloodied fur….well the blood has kinda dried.

He started taking out rings, earrings, bracelets, a few more watches and even an….ultraball? Those things are like a couple grand….

Half the stuff was junk but I noticed a few diamonds on a couple of the rings, and not to mention real gold….with some training this dude could be invaluable when it comes to burglary jobs..

"So hey, looks like life has done you wrong….you wouldn't happen to want to join my crew would you"

I saw while gesturing to my Pokémon around the room..

"You'll never go hungry again, a safe home out of the cold….you'd have to train just as hard as the rest but I can guarantee evolution and strength you would never be able to each on your own….you won't be one of my main battle Pokémon mind you, you'll mostly be helping me with…..other things…. I'll be keeping all your shiny stuff though, but once we get you trained up I'll let you keep some once we get some more? What do ya say?"

He practically leapt at me with what I thought was aggression at first but when I noticed none of my Pokémon respond mid jump I calmed down a little, only for him to land into my still child sized chest like a missile which hurt and clung onto me like his life depended on it..

And as touching as it was to add a new crew member in such an emotionally charged moment, I seemed to be the only one who forgot about the blood covering Zigzagoon…

"Alright alright mate welcome to the team….but you fucking stink and are covered in blood so how about we do something about that first yeah?"

I managed to pull him….her?….I'll have to ask a little later….off me to look down at my entirely to big floofy jacket to see it down covered in dirt and patchy bits of dry and wet blood….

"Hey beck have you had a shower today?"

"Uhhh no? Why?"

" because I wanna take one now and miltank and skiddo aren't back so you'll have to take em in with you and wash em tonight…"

"….*sigh* fine…."

I stand up with zigzagoon still in my arms and start moving toward the shower room with my entourage in tow consisting of meowth who's dragging along his spikey metallic balloon, machop and Slowpoke….

As I'm leaving I give a quick over the shoulder comment

"And clean that blood up would ya? Cheers"

"Wha- why do I have to? It was your Pokémon!?"

"Cuz I said so?"

She didn't say anything and just grabbed a cloth to clean it up…heh heh…it's good to be boss

Machop doesn't forget to grab some wood that we stack in the hallway for the wood heater in the bathroom on the way.

We entered into the bathroom and I spin on the hot water lever with a smidge of the cold while machop stokes the fire…

It's way easier to wash my Pokémon while in the shower rather than try and wash them individually outside….I used to bring my dog to shower with me all the time back in my old world….the only problem was back then was….I had to wrestle him in….in that was never fun, luckily I don't have to wrestle this bunch, I doubt I'd come out on the winning side…

I put down the reluctant zigzagoon, undress and walk under the wide spray shower before grabbing the plastic chair with holes in it on the side of the room I usually use to sit down while I work in shampoo..

I USED to have to rub it into their fur by hand…their furs…well obviously except machop and Ferroseed who don't have fur, are deceptively sturdy and hard as well as being soft so I could never really work in the soaps…

But I found a workaround with a waterproof drill and mid strength bristle attachments for it to work in the soaps and shampoos…each mon has their own attachments I keep in plastic containers on a wooden shelf near the taps…

I pull out the fully charged drill and decide meowth was first in line, to which meowth happily clomps over under the hot water while I squeeze his shampoo bottle over his fur and work him over with the drill brush much to his delight as the blood and dirt flows away into the drain under the pleased purs of meowth who was finished in a few minutes..

The rest went easily enough…even Slowpoke who usually makes it difficult in petty ways just to be a dick…machop luckily is happy to scrub him self down with his coarse luffa….it would be creepy if I had to do it in my opinion…

And we finally come to zigzagoon who's been watching from the side this whole time…now the others are all toweled off with the help on of machop and standing near the heater on the other side of the room away from the shower…

I grab the Pokémon "conditioner" and re-read the label

"Works on any sort of Pokémon, blah blah blah, unkinks the worst fur days, blah blah blah, just scrub it in and wait 5 minutes…ok…alrighty, come here mate…"

The raccoon steps cautiously into the hot water hesitation plastered in his every movement before he reaches me… as much as I'd like to trust him even with my pokemons silent endorsement im still making slow and deliberate movements so I don't spook him into doing something we both regret….especially with my weeny out in the open like this….god I hate being 10 again….please grow bigger…

I reattach meowth attachment much to his displeasure but he's going to have to deal with it until I get more attachments, and pour a shit load of this miracle condition all over the matted and tangled fur that's still rife with blood both dry and fresh…

I used the drill to work it through while he lays there seeming content with how it feels and then wait a few minutes before pulling him out of the the water and doing it again to let it sit because I'm stupid and did it under running water….

5 minutes later I brushed him out and his fur untangled and looked like a million bucks…well compared to before anyways, he still had shabby zigzagoon fur and being wet didn't do him any favours….but he was clean and didn't stink like a dumpster and that's all that mattered…

I towelled him off as we all made our way back to the lounge room to take a minute to enjoy our after shower bliss…well most of us did, it was getting latish and machop went to start cooking…it was looking like spaghetti tonight….

Everyone relaxed, while zigzagoon still looked a little out of place but that would fade with time, he literally just joined

He was about to take a seat on the "lounge" before a hiss told him how unwise that would be before he laid down on one of miltank blankets and looked ready to catch some Z's

Before the door to the stairwell opened again, miltank and skiddo walked through the door looking a little beat up…ehhhh…a lot beat up…

"Uhhh, you guys ok?"

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