Chapter 053

Alex was holding onto the incubator containing the Pokemon egg, with its eyes glued onto it. The incubator indicated that it would hatch in less than 30 minutes.

It had been 2 weeks since Joseph had set off on his journey. He had gotten used to his role in Oak Corall now. He would wake up early in the morning, go to the food preparation area, and look at how the Pokemon food was configured. After it was done, he would go and feed the hundreds of Pokemon living on the ranch. Two other people were feeding the Pokemon with him. Afterwards, he would go to the computer room and study whatever information he could. With his photographic memory, he was rapidly absorbing knowledge. He would continue reading or watching something or the other all morning. The Professor also handed the responsibility of recalling and transferring the Pokemon of trainers who requested one of their Pokemon kept in the ranch. He was on duty from 10 to 12 in the morning, and from 4 to 6 in the evening for this job.

A trainer who had previously stored a Pokemon on the ranch, would send a message requesting his Pokemon on the Corralation application. Afterwards, the server at Oak Corall would register the request, and alert the person on duty. This person would travel to the location of the Pokemon. A tracker is attached to each Pokemon on the ranch. The person in charge could find the trainers Pokemon by using its tracker. He would then proceed to remove the tracker and recall the Pokemon, and transfer it to the location of its trainer.

Alex ran 20 kilometres in his first shift to retrieve 3 Pokemon on the ranch requested by their trainers. Only after that was he told by a sympathetic employee of the Oak Corall that the Pidgeot on the tree close to the entrance of the ranch would carry you to recall the Pokemon and back.

The Shiny Beldum kept following him around most of the time. It appeared to completely abandon its previous home, and now slept by hanging upside down on the roof of Alex's house, which was right next to the lab and gifted to him by Professor Oak. Every once in a while, it would levitate something around him, circle around his head, or try to telepathically ask him, "Why?"

Other than that, Beldum did nothing. He wanted to ask Alakazam, but it never appeared before him after the incident on Route 1.

In the afternoon, he would be mostly in the computer room, but sometimes would be called over by Professor Oak to type out some audio notes that he had taken, or respond to the unimportant emails written to the Oak Corall.

He had met some neighbours and made a few acquaintances in Pallet Town. Including Delia Ketchum and Ash Ketchum. Delia Ketchum was a gentle lady who kept inviting him for dinner, and Ash was an annoying brat who kept asking him about the Pokemon on the ranch.

Alex had been excited to meet the protagonist of the anime from his previous life, the lively, cheerful, and enthusiastic young man who seemed to treat people kindly. But he had ignored the negative characteristics, like the arrogance, inclusiveness and general annoyance he gave to people around him. At first Alex has a spirited discussion about beings Pokemon Master with him, but he expected to have the same conversation yesterday. And he contributed no real weight into the conversation, only kept yelling the same sentence every day.

Alex decided he would maintain a distance from Ash. He was amazingly lucky and would meet many legendaries but Alex wanted no part of it. While it would be awesome to actually witness a legendary, there was always huge trouble with each of Ash's encounters. He decided to maintain a state of being an acquaintance of Ash.

Alex was also asked to babysit Gary. A lot. While he wasn't a dumbo, the kid was hella annoying. He always talked condescendingly, and looked at him from his nostrils. The kid wanted to avenge his first loss and challenged him to back and forth trivia contests. While he lost the first few, he was laughing his ass off. But after Alex started leveraging what he had learnt in the abundant knowledge reserves from the laboratory, the kid stood no chance.

He then started sulking, calling the contests, 'waste of time' and 'proves nothing.'

Thankfully, he had accompanied his grandfather to watch the ongoing Indigo League. He along with Professor Oak would be gone for 2 weeks at least. Other than the assigned duties, he had no extra work to take care of till then.

Alex decided to take this time to accompany Charmander and bond with it. He had committed all kinds of articles about raising Charmander, and had the diet, training, exercise, and other resources he would give to Charmander planned out.

A cracking sound came from the egg, and Alex hurriedly removed it from the incubator.

He set the egg in front of him and watched it slowly crack, as the Pokemon inside was struggling to get out. He knew he couldn't interfere, as every Pokemon needed to break and eat their eggshells themselves for the best development.

Finally a small golden head poked out of the egg.

"Chaaaar" it cried out.