C095 - Mega Reuniclus and Mega Steelix join the farm

Despite wanting to, Pete didn't find much time to talk with everyone at the rather casual wedding feast before people started heading home - well, casual compared to the huge receptions Pete knew from his original world.

Falkner, Violet City's flying type gym leader, didn't get to have a single conversation with the soon-to-be-professor, which really bummed the blue-haired flying type trainer out a lot. Well, if he kept up his relationship with Sophie, he would probably find some time with Pete soon.

He had prepared a whole little speech where he wanted to thank Pete for telling the world all it took for Murkrow to evolve was a duskstone. His cunning Honchkrow was swiftly making his original ace Pidgeot, and runner-ups Swellow and Staraptor look bad in training, resulting in his training to become more efficient.

Pete woke up the next morning with Jasmine sleeping on top of him. Half her weight was lying on his shoulder, so one of his arms didn't wake up with him, and her hair was all up in Pete's face. Some mornings that might have been annoying. But after becoming husband and wife, there was no better feeling in the world for him.

With a big smile, he gently repositioned his sleeping wife to the side to allow for a slightly higher blood circulation in his arm which prompted Jasmine to sleep talk in a barely audible whimper, "Noooo~, five more minutes pwease."

In the end, it was almost an hour later before Pete finally had enough of Jasmine's cute sleeping face and gently woke her up so they could start their day. Like last time during the engagement, Sophie's room became home to the remaining Feelgood sisters while the guest houses were filled with Elm's and the rest of Jasmine's family.

Chloe didn't allow anyone to help during breakfast except for Pete's pokemon and Pete himself, who really wanted to give the big kitchen knife he got from Clara a whirl.

Later that day, three mega evolved pokemon: Milotic, Torterra, and Camerupt from Pete, Jasmine, and Courtney respectively observed the process of Pete and Jasmine deciding who the recipients of their new mega stones would be.

Ice/ground was the first stone Jasmine tested, but none of her pokemon were able to use it for mega evolution, which bummed her out a lot. Well, if even Steven Stone took a while to find a compatible stone, it made sense that the stone didn't work.

The steel/fairy mega stone was like a lock that opened by shaking. Every key you used would work. The stone could allow Klinklang to mega evolve and most of his fairy pokemon from Togekiss to even Whimsicott, too. Even his Serperior showed a reaction to it, suggesting that it may have a grass/steel or grass/fairy mega evolution. Before he decided on any pokemon, however, he gave the mega stone to Jasmine to test it out since the few pokemon she had didn't react to it.

"Are you sure? Steven handed you that stone, and so many of your pokemon reacted to it," Jasmine said with a worried look as she bit her bottom lip.

"Yep, you getting stronger should be our priority anyway! And I have so many more pokemon to choose from - it doesn't really make sense for me to hoard something that you could benefit from," Pete answered with a shrug.

Jasmine gave him a chaste peck on his lips because Elm was watching the entire process and even had several cameras pointed their way - for the imminent mega evolution, of course. She wouldn't have minded the other assistants of Elm, who spent the night on Pete's couch on Elm's invitation because Fred and Becca hardly ever left the house and Elm wanted them to breathe in the nice air in the paradise Pete had created here.

Valentino came back to the farm with his muscle-mommy girlfriend in tow in the morning after Reuniclus gave the couple a lift to and from Goldenrod City. Powerful psychic pokemon who knew Teleport were really, really convenient.

Pete watched in amazement as the steel/fairy stone reacted to three of Jasmine's pokemon - it was like that stone was like a universal mega evolution stone since it reacted to so many of them. It reacted to Excadrill first, which made sense because of its ground/steel typing. Then, it reacted to Donphan, which suggested it would have a ground/steel typing or ground/fairy typing mega evolution.

Reluctantly, both pokemon didn't vie for the stone though, because of the third choice: Steelix. Since the pokemon was her first and always considered by even her other pokemon to be her ace, the choice was simple.

Jasmine once more asked if it was really okay and then went ahead to mega evolve her Steelix. The form it took was the one Pete was familiar with from the games, and it didn't become a steel/fairy snake out of nowhere.

Elm, who had only seen a single mega evolution in person before, when his long-time friend Blaine, Kanto gym leader on Cinnabar Island, mega evolved his Charizard into Mega Charizard Y - the non-dragon variant - a while before Pete joined as his assistant professor. To this day, Elm still cursed the day that he refused to visit Agatha because of an egg hatching that made him miss Agatha's Gengar mega evolving a good while before Benny was born.

Jasmine talked to her Mega Steelix excitedly for a while as Elm did all sorts of poses to record every angle of Steelix and even Fred and Becca were watching, recording and measuring every change in Steelix' body with shining eyes. Like the seemingly random change in eye color from red to blue while the form of the head and its length stayed largely the same if one discounted the three protrusions growing on each side of Steelix' jaw.

Jasmine's Steelix wasn't the first recorded Mega Steelix, not even the first recorded mega evolution, but Elm was still as meticulous as possible in his work. After a good hour of everyone fussing over Steelix, Pete included, he tried matching the ice/ground mega stone to his pokemon and found a match in the very first pokemon he checked: Reuniclus.

The trainer in him wanted to immediately evolve his very first pokemon, but the nerd in him wanted to see potential pairings to the stone... and the inner nerd won out. He checked and found that once more, Serperior matched the stone, hinting at a grass/ice or grass/ground mega evolution. What baffled him was that only two other of his many pokemon matched the stone: his two Smeargle.

Had someone told him a pokemon like Smeargle didn't have a mega evolution, Pete would have accepted it. In another life, he might have chosen that mega evolution. But choosing anyone other than his Reuniclus made no sense to the trainer.

'You up for this, girl? I'm really excited to find out what your typing will be,' Pete thought with a wide smile as he regarded his shiny starter pokemon.

Reuniclus gave him an excited nod. She had worked hard to become and stay his ace after all, so she was a little bummed out when Mega Milotic took her spot from her.

When the mega evolution was going underway, once again, Pete's psychic affinity was broken open to allow a minor evolution in Reuniclus' intelligence. At the same time, the feedback loop once more worked backwards like it did when Milotic mega evolved and Pete unlocked yet another affinity.

No overwhelming feeling shot forth from him or within him at this moment. Because, unlike his other new affinity, Pete wasn't bonded to a single ice pokemon other than his new Mega Reuniclus.

His shiny blue pokemon actually retained its color palette for the 'sack' and the fluid inside, while her overall form was largely unchanged in dimensions and number of limbs. Instead, the stubby tail grew out a little bit and looked like an aquatic pokemon's tail fin while the solid body of the pokemon gained fin-like protrusions on each side of its face as well as a deep water-blue color.

Additionally, small quail egg-sized white balls formed around its neck akin to a pearl necklace and around the elbow joint on both arms. Cold air was given off from those balls, making the arms look a little hazy in the mist - they looked like mini snowballs, all things considered.

If his pokemon wasn't a shiny variant, Pete mused it might be the other way around with the 'egg-fluid' being a deeper blue and the solid body being ice blue. But until someone else repeated the feat of mega evolving a Reuniclus with this typing, he wouldn't find out. And, his Reuniclus was the first pokemon to be documented for mega evolution.

"How do you feel?"

Pete's first question after an evolution would always be for his pokemon's well-being, and this time, it was no different. He had already noticed his psychic affinity being broken open, and it felt exactly the same as it did with Milotic's mega evolution. He was very excited that he would get to talk with his pokemon in words, and Reuniclus didn't disappoint.

Despite being quite young, Reuniclus' voice ended up sounding like a woman in her early thirties. The voice sounded a little familiar to Pete, but he could quite place where he heard it from when Reuniclus spoke in his mind, 'I feel extraordinary! Thank you for this opportunity, Pete.'

"Haha, you can talk, too! Amazing," Pete gushed as he missed Jasmine's wry smile since she apparently missed an opportunity yet again.

The increase in power was much more pressing at this moment for Jasmine, though, after they got their asses handed to them. She chose to ignore her own reluctance and was simply once more happy at Pete doing something amazing. Getting to talk to her pokemon was more of a long-term goal, she convinced herself.

Pete's ice affinity didn't go through any crazy growth like it had the last time with the unlocked fairy typing - though, it made sense. His other affinities dwarfed the powers he wielded over ice by quite a lot, and he had a huge amount of fairy pokemon bonded to him.

As he tried moving his ice type energy as best he could while Elm fussed over his new mega pokemon and to the professor's absolute delight heard actual answers to his question in his mind, Pete reluctantly noted that he could barely cool down a drink a little using up all of his ice type energy.

Still, since it had the most room for improvement in the short term, Pete decided that he would compete with his pokemon on the 'non-stab' leaderboard for growth when he would set up the devices that measured a move's power. Let his pokemon decide if his attempt at Ice Punch would be acceptable enough to compete!