C019 - Herbert's warehouse

"You're really clingy. Are you sure you're good?"

Pete was sitting at the opening of his tent sitting with all his pokemon close by. Zorua, the only one who got hurt, was cradled in his lap with clean of blood and with his wounds properly tended to.

"Zoruuuu~" the pokemon whined without looking up from his curles up position.

Pete had already told everyone what they did good and what they could improve from his point of view, and Zorua had come out with the most things to improve upon. The fox was being a little pouty.

"It was your first real battle, no? Getting told what you can improve upon is an opportunity. Next time, you'll make less mistakes. You'll likely get hurt again and again, but if you survive a fight, you'll get a chance to be better next time," Pete softly spoke as he brushed Zorua's fur lightly.

Zorua stayed on his lap but stopped pouting at that. Pete was really enjoying all these interactions with his pokemon. It was crazy how much they understood and how much they could communicate with just gestures and facial expressions.

Before he was ready to sleep, Pete once more placed his hand on the ground to expend this ground affinity in order to get a better grasp on it as well as increase his limit. His range had effectively doubled already compared to the last time. Pete was no expert, but it felt like his talent for ground energy was rather high.

"Okay, it's getting a little late. Are we good to sleep? And Golett, are you sure you're fine with staying up to watch? I mean, you did tell me in your way that you don't require sleep... but if it's too boring?"

Golett shook his head left and right and moved between the forest's edge and Pete's pokemon.

Pete could only shrug his shoulders as he slipped into his sleeping bag inside the open tent. He was plenty tired after training his ground affinity. Blitzle and Ponyta stayed really close to the tent, Rapidash looked on in amusement and settled nearby as well, and all his other pokemon were spread all over Pete's sleeping bag.

Nothing happened this night, and even the hooting Hoothoots and Noctowls didn't bother Pete this night.

Well rested, Pete slipped out of his tent under the watchful gaze of Rapidash and Golett, the only pokemon of his team already up.

"Good morning, you two. I'll go to the house to wash up and start with the breakfast," Pete whispered as he stepped close to the large flaming unicorn to scratch the spots between her horn and her ears.

With a last thumbs up to Golett, Pete grabbed a bag and went into Herbert's house for his morning business.

Breakfast was just a salad with very small fried yoseban cubes mixed in, and Isabelle and Herbert were immediate fans - from smell all the way to taste.

Pete had still not met the two children still living in the house, but Isabelle told him their two daughters were lazy cats in the morning and didn't have school today, so they might most likely sleep in.

After his own breakfast, Pete left out a handful of bowls for the still sleeping juniors and followed Herbert to his warehouses with an empty bag of holding and his tablet in his hands.

Pete had written a list that was likely a little too ambitious for a start, but he'd see how far he could go with the money he had.

"Okay, we'll start with berries. You said one of each isn't enough for you. What specifically were you looking for?" Herbert said as he led Pete into the first warehouse.

Pete didn't answer immediately because he was too astonished by what he saw. He knew for sure there was a hill on top of the warehouse, but the sky looked like the outside. There was no sun, but the ceiling still looked like it was a sunny day outside.

"Ah, special lamps and a special kind of glass I paid a pretty penny for," Herbert explained with a proud smile when he saw Pete looking up in astonishment.

"I'll have to copy that for my living room, haha. Don't want to live in an actual glass house, but this is really tough to beat," Pete praised.

"It really is, isn't it? I'll send you the details for the glass guy. He made the lightbulbs and the ceiling finish. Lives in Cianwood City across the Goldenrod bay. He's the second son of the chief ranger of the Johto safari zone," Herbert said as he led Pete toward giant shelves that somehow still made it so the bottom row still had plenty of light from the top.

"Oh right, your question from before. I was lucky enough to find a few saplings for Oran and Leppa trees. I also got a good haul of Rawst berry shrugs, but I'm dearly lacking Cheri , Persim, Aspear, Sitrus, and Lum tree saplings," Pete spoke with an awkward smile. Saplings for five clearly sought-after berry trees were going to cost him everything he had.

"What's your budget for these?" Herbert calmly asked.

"5- no P$60.000," Pete answered.

"Hmm, if you're going for quantity, you'll only get very small sprouts for that. Are you okay with that?"

"Yeah, it was very ambitious to begin with. And would it be possible to get one sapling of each that's possibly going to give berries in the next ten to twenty weeks? What berry is going to cost me the most out of these? "

"The Lum berry saplings by a lot. The berries aren't the most expensive, but the tree grows beautiful white flowers, and they have a unique, calming smell to them. It's the most requested sapling or tree in our catalogue," Herbert instantly answered like he knew the question was coming.

"Oh, yeah, it's true," Pete said as they stepped closer to the shelves for the Lum Berry trees and saplings. The smell was indeed extremely pleasant.

A few workers were currently cutting up a few branches at the far hand and disposing them in black sacks.

"What are they doing back there?"

"Oh, there's this batch of trees whose roots got infected by some kind of rot fungus. We had to uproot and cut them all up to get the spores out of the warehouse before even more trees get infected."

"Hmm, you sure only the roots are infected?"

"Yep, had our resident biologist look it over," Herbert said with a shrug. "Nothing you can really do. We just got unlucky."

"Have you ever heard of tree grafting? You could graft all those healthy branches on to existing, healthy trees. They'd grow leaves, flowers, and fruits for their original branch but grow on a foreign tree. Like an organ or limb transplant. I've only ever seen it work for regular trees, but it might work for berry trees, too," Pete explained with unusual fervor. His grandfather, brother, and him had learned how to graft branches together in one of their last summers together.

Even though it was his brother who got into agriculture in the end, grafting held a special place in Pete's heart.

"Explain more."

Herbert didn't fully understand yet, but what he heard could be a potential way to permanently reduce loses due to unforeseen issues like this infection.

It took Pete a good half an hour to fully explain what to look out for, how to graft, and even how to identify branches that would work especially well and those that wouldn't.

Pete requested a particularly sharp and thin knife and the help of a grass type pokemon and got to work to show Herbert's workers and the man himself what he was trying to do. One of the Oran berry trees that had a declining number of berries each harvest because of unfortunate twig and bud placement was chosen as the tree to receive the grafts.

The branch to be grafted on to the tree had to be cut in a wedge at the end to be attached, while the branch or trunk to receive the new branch had to get a proportionate cut to receive the wedge. Once done, you would usually seal the area with tape or wax, but since they had a twenty year old Exeggutor with unparalleled control over his typing energies, this graft was healed almost immediately.

The Oran tree looked a little loaded at the end because Pete used his long experience in the craft to probably graft one too many branches on to the tree as an example for different angles and wedge cuts, but if these trees can grow miracle berries, they can handle a few extra branches.

Herbert looked on with a serious expression. Isabelle and a young woman who looked like a senior year high-school girl version of Isabelle had eventually joined them. All three Feelgoods quickly recognized the potential of this technique shown by Pete.

"You're full of surprises, aren't you, Pete?" Isabelle asked with an unreadable expression once Pete was done grafting and answering all the questions from the workers he could.

"Huh? Oh hi, Isabelle. Well, you see, I grafted berry tree branches to a berry tree. I don't know if that works, to be honest. I only ever seen it work on regular trees that don't grow berries," Pete explained.

"Hmm, we'll have to monitor closely. Move that tree outside, I'll get my Sunfloras to study the changes as they hurry along the maturation," Isabelle mumbled as she ordered a bunch of workers around who hurriedly complied.

"Who else knows this technique, Pete?"

"Hmm, why do you ask Isabelle?"

"Please answer."

"Well... uh, in Johto? If you guys didn't know, I don't think anybody did. Before Herbert asked earlier, I thought this was a common practice, sooo I might not be the best to ask, haha," Pete deflected with a wry smirk. He had done it again, spouting wisdom that didn't exist in this world like it was common sense.

Good thing he claimed to be from a region so far away - people would find their own reasoning for his knowledge and believe it.

"Herbert, when was the last time you had your Exeggutor check for corporate spies?"

"I don't know honey, two or three months ago?"

"Do it again, subtly," Isabelle said in a whisper.

"Well, since my mom won't introduce me, guess I will. Hi, I'm Sophie. You must be Pete?"

The young woman that looked just like Isabelle stepped forward with a bright smile and an extended hand. She was just as short and had long, light-brown hair all they way down to her knees with a braided ponytail.

"Hey, Sophie! Yeah, guessed it right in one go. Hmm, being Sophie makes you the older of the two twins, right?"

"Yeah, mom must have told you. Technically the youngest yet still a middle child. Just couldn't catch a break, you know," Sophie said with a cute snort and a wink.

"Your baby sister still asleep then?"

"Pfft, haha. We're twenty minutes apart, nobody ever called her my baby sister," Sophie said with a huge grin on her face. "But no, she's out trying to become a professional pokemon trainer and since we slept in, she needs to do extra well in her training now."

"Oh? Your mom didn't mention that. Does Jasmine have a specific goal?"

"Yeah, in three months the new leader of the Olivine gym will be selected by the league. She's had excellent grades in school and the advanced trainer program. Her Onix and Corsola are pretty strong, I hope she makes it," Sophie answered.

"So... is Olivine a rock type gym?" Pete asked with a weird expression.

"Huh? Yeah, it is. Oh, you're not from here? Where are you from?"