C033 - Planting the first tree

Pete and his pokemon were currently eating a very late lunch at the river on top of the cliff feeding the water fall. Pete had used up one entire bag full of Scarlet Moss to decorate ten trees a good ten minutes into the forest with the Vileplumes' help.

Moss won't just stick to a tree because you place it against a trunk, but with grass type energy from a hundred Vileplume, it does. All Pete had to do was make sure it was placed in the correct cardinal direction, because moss only truly grows on the side of a tree where the sun won't shine.

As they were eating, Pete had a call open with Professor Elm and his co-worker Valentino to tell them about his first impressions of the meadow and discuss his discovery of Vileplume actively training the affinity of the Geodudes.

Vivian at some point burst into the lab because she heard Pete's voice and asked him all sorts of questions. His almost daily updates via message weren't enough and Pete got interrogated for all kinds of things, including girls. She even threatened to come over to play as a matchmaker if he didn't ask a girl out soon.

Pete didn't know what the hurry was, so he only smirked and told her she could try to come over soon. He would welcome her company and she would surely bring the professor and their son with.

As he hung up and was about to ask if his pokemon needed more food, Pete, with his psychic affinity, could feel Exeggutor arriving somewhere below the cliff, even if only faintly. Pete had only learned recently that he could feel the arrival of a teleport because he didn't know about people and pokemon with psychic affinity could do that beforehand. He had hinted to it in his novel, but Pete's MC didn't have the affinity so he was always left to wonder.

It made sense that people with a psychic affinity could notice someone arriving via teleport. Otherwise, criminal organizations would simply teleport into league quarters with impunity and kill anyone important opposing them with just a single enslaved Abra.

He walked toward the cliff and saw Exeggutor in the distance roughly where the pokemon had left him earlier. On a grassland with barely any trees, the big coconut palm tree pokemon stood out. Pete clapped loudly to get his attention, and moments later, the pokemon arrived next to him with the twins.

"Wow, your picture didn't do it justice, Pete. How many Vileplume are there?" Sophie asked with a stunned expression.

Exeggutor felt right at home with all these laid back grass pokemon hanging out, but Jasmine and Sophie didn't know what to make of it. Back in school they had learned that a third evolution stage of a pokemon was most of the time hard to reach and made a pokemon very powerful.

Seeing almost a hundred of these pokemon that as trained pokemon would need a trainer to have an evolution stone was definitely a first for the twins.

"Uh, little over a hundred right now, hundreds in this entire meadow. But why are you dressed like that?" Pete looked at Sophie with furrowed brows.

Jasmine was dressed in tight pants, sporty sneakers, a cap to get the hair out of her face, and a tanktop with a thin vest over it. Appropriate for their upcoming battle and the terrain.

But Sophie was in sandals, a bikini hidden behind a towel on her shoulders, and an almost see-through skirt bound loosely at the side. She looked like a beach tourist, ready to sunbathe for the next few hours.

"I wanted to sunbathe," Sophie said with a shrug, confirming Pete's thoughts.

"I see. Well, nobody's stopping you... I think. My team and I were about to move back to the place where I want to build the house and maybe do a little bit of ground work," Pete got over it fast and advised.

"Cheers, I'll wait a bit then. Jasmine has my beach chair anyway, I didn't bring anything," Sophie responded with a lazy grin and a victory sign as she took some pictures with her phone to brag online.

"Hey Jasmine, sorry we kinda talked over you. Could you wait a moment to show me your pokemon until we move back?" Pete looked toward Jasmine, who nodded dumbly when Pete apologized for not greeting her.

Pete collected his pokemon, and instead of walking back, they swiftly made their way to Pete future house grounds with a swift teleport. He did however leave behind his Sunkern. Once more his little laid-back grass pokemon was abducted by the grass pokemon in the latest stage of their evolution.

Once all the pokemon were released, Pete got acquainted with Jasmine's Gligar and Phanpy. The Gligar wasn't a huge fan of him, but Golett and Nidoking got her attention. The Phanpy barely paid any attention to him but instead played catch the Growlithe.

Pete had already told Luna and Carl that he wanted a house that looked like it was a part of nature and he really like the idea of those warehouses Herbert had built into a hill with only the massive doors showing. Since Pete also wanted a glass dome as a potential lookout, only a good half was planned to be inside the hill on the rough first sketch Luna did.

With that in mind, Pete chose a hill a few hundred meters away from where the river fed the lake and asked Golett to flatten a portion of the ground and make it level. Pete had asked if Luna and Carl needed to do anything for the foundation, but their building materials mostly relied on pokemon using their ground type energy to flatten and condense the ground as a base.

Pete was a little impatient finally moving into his home, so he asked his Golett and Jasmine's Onix to codense the ground as a training exercise, and when they were done, they hollowed out the hill for a few meters.

Pete didn't know how they could make sure the hill wouldn't collapse on the cave without a building inside or potentially blocking the construction team's advance with earthen pillars, so he left the rest to the professionals.

He did, however, open up a campsite on the flattened ground and asked Sophie and Jasmine to relax as Pete prepared a barbecue for dinner. Sophie was finally able to sunbathe as planned.

"You know, I could contact Betty, the Nurse Joy of Violet City, if she could arrange you to meet Numel earlier," Pete suggested as he prepared the ingredients on a make-shift kitchen countertop.

Jasmine had asked if she could be the photographer for the construction company and was currently running around the future construction site for the correct angles. Somehow, though, she always moved close to Pete.

"Huh, you sure you want to do that?"

"Well, asking doesn't cost anything, right? And she did offer me a favor," Pete responded with a small shake of his head.

"Yeah, alright. It's worth a shot! Thank you, Pete," Jasmine thanked with a bright smile. She wanted to refuse at first since it was Pete's favor, but then she was reminded of the weird call she had gotten from her mother. 'You won't get anything by saying no all the time,' she had said.

"How far along have you gotten in that book I lend you? 'Root of all growth'?"

"Ah, I browsed through it all, but I'll still need a few days before I'm done committing it all to memory. Sorry about that," Jasmine hurriedly apologized.

"Oh, no worries. I lend it to you, knowing full well it might take some time to get it back. I got what I wanted from the book, and all I'll really need it for in the future is as a reference."

"You know, I looked online and didn't find anything on the book. The author of the book Erina was the gym leader in Celadon City in Kanto two generations ago, since then she was replaced by her daughter Elina, who in turn gave the position to her daughter Erin who is about to give the position to her own daugher Erika," Jasmine explained.

"Huh, their naming is very creative and the same time the opposite of creative," Pete interjected with a contemplative expression.

"True, but I still find it weird that nobody knows about this book. It's so well written and has so many great training suggestions for pokemon. The book should be used as classroom material in schools," Jasmine responded with furrowed brows.

"Maybe it was never publicized for a reason. I myself found it at an abandoned cabin two days out from any civilization," Pete mused out loud with a shrug.

"Well, in any case I'm very thankful for the opportunity," Jasmine once more thanked with a bright smile.

The barbecue was short and delicious. Rapidash helped out with a warm smile throughout the entire thing with her fire type energy because Pete was very bashful when he asked for help in cooking once more. It hadn't happened ever since they had reached Professor Elm's lab.

When they were done, Pete sent back Sophie to the hotel and suggested they all rest and maybe even take a nap so that they are ready for the battle at night.

Exeggutor, however, put a small dent in that plan when he came back a while later and loaded off a small mountain of saplings and the Oran tree with all the grafted buds and branches.

This tree was a bit special to Pete, so he decided to let it grow outside the orchard right next to his home. A few Vileplume had followed them to their resting place and looked on curiously as Golett opened up a bathtub sized hole for the roots, and Pete placed the tree inside with his own hands. It would stand right next to his house as a sort of symbol for health, home, and happiness.

Once Pete was done filling up the hole and covering the roots, he took a few steps back and looked at the tree with a wide smile. Just then, around twenty Vileplumes and a handful of Bellossoms and Glooms walked up to the tree, and they all used their grass typing energy to sort of bless the tree.

All the involved pokemon and the tree in question were glowing in a soft green hue and under the astonished gazes of Pete and Jasmine, the tree grew from being about a head shorter than Pete to three heads taller than him before stopping its growth. The branches thickened and grew longer, leaves became bigger and healthier.

Back then, the tree was chosen for the experiment because it wasn't currently growing any berries, but that changed, too. The berries only formed and were still ways away from ripening, but it still made Pete happy beyond anything else. Because he saw that not only Oran berries were forming on the tree.

"We'll have to call dad," Jasmine whispered next to Pete as she looked at the tree with bulging eyes.