C013 - Spending all his money

"Did you forget anything? ID card, enough bag space? All the pokemon you want coming along?" Vivian's loud voice rang out as Pete walked toward the entrance.

"Yep, just finished getting the veggie broth off the stove!" Pete shouted back.

He had just finished his, by then, very late breakfast after spending a good hour with Zorua, Blitzle, and Golett.

He had unlocked his Ground-type affinity, which he was really giddy about, but it could wait. Thanks to his instant bond with Golett, the affinity was jumpstarted, but before it grew and he spent some time getting a feeling for it, he couldn't do much with the affinity. It will take some time. Getting the ground affinity was still a really great thing for Pete as an aspiring farmer.

After he calmed down, Pete talked a little more with Zorua and inspected the grey-furred fox together with Professor Elm, who was positively beaming to get the chance. The illusive Zorua line was rarely studied because its Illusionist ability allowed it to almost always get away from unwanted company.

Rapidash had more or less adopted Blitzle, who was given another serving of breakfast after Ponyta stole a bit. If she wasn't still very hungry at the time, it didn't look like she minded, though. It looked like the start of a great friendship between the two young foals.

For Golett, Pete symbolically broke apart the automaton's old pokeball and placed him in a luxury ball. Pete would wait a little to ask Zorua and Blitzle if they wanted to join him first.

After a while, the two Minccino finally joined them outside. They were a little sad to have missed the action but were bonding with Zorua after their short pout. They tried teaching the fox Rock-Paper-Scissors, but it looked like his paws lacked the needed dexterity. If his determined glint was any indication, that wouldn't be the case for long.

However, now it was time for Pete's shopping trip. Solosis had asked to stay behind with Zorua, but Pete guessed she wanted some time alone to train a little. She did just learn a new move before sleeping last night with the help of the TM.

With the rest of his pokemon outside at the pasture bonding, Pete only had Golett with him in his pokeball. Protection wasn't needed from his side because Vivian brought her Quilava, the assistant chef of the house, with them.

"Okay, I think you'd want to start at the Silph Co department store. They are the only shop in town that sells clothes for young people like you. There'd be more variety in a big city, don't worry," Vivian explained as they started walking into town.

Coincidentally, the Silph Co store was the first destination they walked by. The store was catered towards pokemon trainers, especially league trainers, as they got discounts on most of the stuff sold here. Which meant they had pokemon utilities like pokeballs and potions, survival gear like tents and climbing gear, and clothes clearly meant for active outdoors people.

It didn't matter much to Pete, as what needed most was underwear and a few shirts and maybe some back-up pants and shoes. If they were durable and meant for outside, all the better.

Thrifty as he was, Pete didn't overdo it with buying the clothes. Maybe he'd find a cheaper store with better clothes in a bigger city. It was his first store in the pokemon world, after all. So he only bought two of each of the listed items, except for the underpants that he bought a few more of. Can't ever pack one too many pairs of boxers.

For sizes, Pete really had to rely on Vivian's critical eye because the sizes were a lettering system he wasn't familiar with at all. It was a good thing that most of the clothes were made with a stretchy material and the shoes he had obviously tried on before. They were a kind of sturdy sneaker with a deep profile at the soles that would give you traction even on wet rocks.

When he was done with choosing the clothes, Pete went over to the food section to get some cooking utensils. Pete didn't have much of a prizing sense, so he listened to Vivian she said he could get proper pots, knives, and pans somewhere else.

However Pete did get a portable electric stove that he could hook up to the generator he had gotten and a large 'berry box' that allowed you to store berries inside a bag of holding more comfortably and extend the time plucked berries remained fresh. It worked as a kind of module you could place into the prepared slot in the bag, a real nifty piece of engineering that went completely over Pete's head despite his education.

He got an extra large variety berry box that cost a whopping P$35.000. As a small town store, Pete bought the actual show piece because they didn't even have this expensive variant on stock here. The prize of the box was almost half the pokedollar he had received as a 'signing bonus' from Professor Elm, but Pete thought of it as an investment. He would, after all, plant a lot of berry trees at his farm later.

Done picking up what Vivian suggested he get at this store and then some, Pete went and rang up the items. The only employee of the store wore a bright smile because apparently he would get a comission for every purchase over P$40.000 and Pete's total came to P$45.400, most of which was the berry box, the stove at P$3.350 and a cooling box that sadly wasn't a bag module that cost P$3.100 because of its durability and the fact that it worked inside a bag of holding or as this store employee called it 'pokebag', but he was wrong.

That left P$3.950 for all the clothes, two different sizes of fur brushes, and a small mountain of different flavor poketreats he wanted to try out with his various pokemon. Maybe Pete would find one of his pokemon's favorite flavors among these.

With everything paid and safely stored inside the empty bag he brought, Vivian brought Pete to the next store, a metal workshop run by a middle-aged woman called Clara with a Lairon and two Aron lounging around in the shop.

"Hey Clara, I brought the newest addition to my husband's team of pokenerds. Pete, meet Clara, one of my oldest friends. Clara, meet a young man from Unova who's in dying need of some great cookware," Vivian introduced.

Clara, a tall woman with fiery red hair and steely grey eyes, stepped forward and held out her hand with a bright smile.

"Always nice to meet a fella who knows his way around a kitchen," Clara quipped.

"Oh, like you wouldn't believe it! He cooked for us twice and I already loathe the fact that my husband had to hire him before I could get him as a personal chef," Vivian praised and Pete actually started blushing as his hand was held in Clara's vice-grip of a handshake.

"Is that right? Tell me then, little Pete. What do you need?" Clara let go of his hand and patted his shoulder with a wink. Likely telling him to relax because they were just teasing him. At least, that was what Pete thought this whole interaction meant.

"Uh yea, I'd like to see some extra large pans, think serving sizes for ten plus pokemon, and same goes for pots. I'd especially like one pot that's more high than wide and then I'd like to see kitchen knives, if you have any," Pete got his composure back and started listing some kitchen stuff he needed first and foremost.

Clara nodded at the list. She liked when people had an idea of what they wanted, especially if they needed so much. She brought Pete over to the items he requested and he directly chose three pans of varying sizes, five pots, only three matching lids for the pots, a wok that he saw by the side and a few long-gripped ladles and extra large spatulas that were stored close-by. Though he had to double check if they would all even fit inside his bag first and had to choose a number smaller than he would have liked on the pan.

When it came to the knives, Pete was really excited. Kitchen knives and how to sharpen them was something he really bonded over with his grandfather while his brother was outside rummaging in the dirt with their grandma.

Due to his excitement and the amazing quality he found them in, Pete probably bought a few too many knives, not that Clara minded.

He got a full set of knives, from a regular chef's knife that was a little larger than usual to fives different parings knives for all kinds of vegetables, to a boning knife all the way to even a big cleaver to get through actual bone, if needed.

He even custom-ordered a tomato knife with a serrated edge in a wave cut that Clara didn't have in her shop. Lairon had helped make it after he explained what he wanted to Clara and the pokemon, and from an already made knife to using some precise steel-type energy, the knife was done in less than five minutes.

Pete demonstrated what the serrated edge would do to a tomato she had in her kitchen, and Clara immediately agreed that the design helps a ton with softer vegetables.

In a small town like this, she rarely gets big customers like Pete. She didn't really need the money, which is why she could live here to begin with, but it was nice to see someone appreciate the work of her and her pokemon.

Starting from the time they customized the tomato knife, Pete also discussed some interesting points with her when he asked if her pokemon helped in all the smithing steps, and they even exchanged numbers to talk about metalwork if they ever felt like it.

Usually, with the wares he picked, Pete's total would have come to P$9.200, but Clara decided an enthusiastic fellow like Pete was deserving of her wares and chipped 200 pokedollars off of the total. All he had to do was invite her over for a meal he had cooked with the help of her items while he was still staying with the professor, to which both Vivian and Pete readily agreed.

"Okay, that was much more intense than I would have thought. You're really into kitchen knives, huh?"

Pete could only chuckle awkwardly.

"Pfft, never mind. What else is on your list?"

"Hmm, just some necessities like spare toothbrushes and soap. This town doesn't have a seed store, right?"

"A seed store, hmm... Ah! Not a store, but two days from now, we have market day, and Herbert from Cherrygrove City on the other side of route 29 sells flowers and sometimes seedlings and offshoots. I'll shoot him a message that a big spender is going to attend the market," Vivian joked as she laughed at Pete's expense, but Pete just laughed along. He really already blew through over a third of the huge pile of money Professor Elm had graciously paid him as monthly salary plus the bonus.

He didn't quite yet know what his salary was and how much the bonus was. Pete was too embarrassed to ask, but his league ID had a balance of P$150.000 when he received it. With everything else he got from the professor, like the gracious invitation to his house, the ID, and then even incubators, Pete felt more than fairly compensated.

And no matter. If Pete truly wanted money, he'd try selling a TM on the black market and probably make a good half a million pokedollars or possibly even more if they didn't take advantage of him.

After their fun little back and forth, Vivian and Pete finished buying the rest he needed in a sort of grocery store run by an older couple who looked at Pete a little weird when he bought twenty toothbrushes. This time, however, the total barely came to around P$800, so no more new material to tease Pete for Vivian. Though she did try to tease him about the toothbrushes, which failed because Pete was very unapologetic about the fact that he wanted to be able to brush his teeth before bed without fail.