C008 - The first proper meal in the pokemon world

"A young man like you really knows how to cook?" Vivian asked while playing with her son in her arms as she watched over Pete getting the needed groceries ready to make something that would come close to curry with potatoes instead of rice.

He had found a few spices that would give the curry a close enough taste and certainly the correct color.

"Yeah, you could watch to make sure what I create should at the very least be edible," Pete offered with a wink.

Pete was hungry for a decent meal after the tasteless potato stew and poke treats from the last days. So he offered to cook as thanks for having him over, and Professor Elm immediately agreed. Because, if Pete was even half as talented in cooking as he was in explaining his 'egg group' theory, this food will be absolutely delicious.

"Sure, I'm no pokenerd like my husband, so I'll get recipes from you instead of research," Vivian agreed with a wink.

His three pokemon were playing with Aipom and Granbull, who had reluctantly allowed Professor Elm to pull her inflamed tooth, on the deck just outside the giant kitchen. Surely, this oversized kitchen would also allow to cook hundreds of meals for pokemon if necessary.

"Wow, you've already convinced me. That's some nice knife work. Make sure you don't cut yourself, though," Vivian praised as she watched Pete cut up some vegetables.

Growing up, Pete had learned a lot about cooking from his grandfather's second wife. Through sheer coincidence, he then started working as a line cook for a relatively high-scale restaurant to pay for his studies in college. He soaked up a lot of knowledge from there and became very proficient in preparing ingredients in a fast and consistent manner.

"Cooking is one of my biggest hobbies. Also, when you're working with great ingredients, your hands will automatically smell amazing all day. I love that," Pete explained without lifting his eyes from the cutting board.

A Quilava that apparently helped cooking Vivian often was also watching from the side with shining stars for eyes. It was funny that the second evolution stage of the famous Johto fire 'starter' pokemon Cyndaquil was lounging around the kitchen to help people cook. Especially since Typhlosion was a behemoth of a pokemon that wouldn't even fit in this house.

As the onions in the giant pan were slowly glazing over, Pete had asked Quilava to heat up a pot of water for him, where he started cooking the potatoes in. Fire pokemon were really busted helpers in the kitchen.

A good half an hour into the cooking process, everything was done, and all they had to do was wait another half an hour until the flavor had settled properly.

"Steel pokemon eggs are really too hard to find. This Klink egg would be worth an entire research paper on its own," Elm mumbled as Pete got back to the table where he had placed his eggs before. The Klink egg really looked entirely different from the others. If it didn't come in the form of an egg, one might expect it was just a pile of stainless steel gears and plates.

Vivian went upstairs to check up on her toddlers diaper and freshen up for dinner, so the two were alone once again.

"Yeah, this egg is really the odd one out. Do you know if steel type eggs still need heat to hatch? I'm a little worried if the little Klink can get out of this one," Pete asked with a worried frown on his face.

"Ah, Pete. Didn't hear you coming. Hmm, I've seen a Skarmory hatch once and despite the egg looking similar, it got out just fine. It didn't break out like you would expect, but it instinctively used steel type energy to bend the metal apart. It even ate the 'egg shell' by ripping it in little pieces. A truly fascinating process," Elm narrated excitedly. "Though, I do admit, I actually don't know what temperature would be favorable for its growth."

"We'll just wing it then. I wanted to hear your opinion on using evolution stones to speed up the process of hatching. I put a firestone next to the Minccino eggs to keep them warm, but I was thinking about putting a leafstone and a sunstone next to the Snivy and Sunkern eggs. What do you think?"

"Intriguing. Certainly a very extravagant method of hatching compared to an incubator," Elm mused.

"Oh? Incubators?"

"You know about them? They are a rather new invention that I thought only us professors probably know about. My colleague, Professor Bellis, residing in Pasio Island, recently conceived a portable machine that can hatch any kind of pokemon egg. She sent each of us regional professors a few of these machines in the hopes of getting back a diverse amount of research data. She has a very complimentary research direction to mine, so we talk often," Elm explained quickly.

"No-no, it's just that I have often seen pokemon warming eggs with their own body heat, so I thought of a concept where the egg is kept at a constant temperature that their parent's body would emit to help them grow."

"One surprise after another. Even without a diploma from a pokemon institute, I can say that you are probably one of the most quick-witted youths I've had the pleasure of meeting," Elm praised Pete. Though Pete was getting flustered inwardly - that wasn't really his quick wit, but his meta knowledge that he almost exposed just now.

"Hey boys, move the eggs a little to the side, dinner is almost ready," Vivian interrupted their talk by arriving from the kitchen with wet hair. Apparently, she took a quick shower just now. Or her son got the shower and fought back, who knew.

"Are the potatoes already easy to chew?" Pete asked, thinking it should be roughly the correct time for the potatoes to be done.

"Yep, I just taste-tested it myself. You get 10 out of 10 points for the meal, Pete," Vivian jovially countered.

"Alright, is it okay if I over some portions to my pokemon? I want to see if they are fine with my cooking," Pete asked with a strained chuckle. Not only had he invited himself in, now he was even feeding all of his 'extended family' through their generosity.

"Of course. I had already prepared a few plates extra after I saw the giant portion you had prepared," Vivian agreed.

"Great, I'll bring those out then while you set up inside, okay?"

Vivian nodded and Pete got to work, he took out his trusty ceramic bowl he stole from the cabin and got a second big bowl from the kitchen to fill up a dish for the pokemon on the patio and the mother and son pair on the pasture.

"Hey girls, Aipom, Granbull, I have some food I'd like you to taste-test for me," Pete said as he stepped out and placed a bowl on a table outside.

"Ciii-ciino!" "Min~"

Both Minccino's were the first to arrive.

"I promise, this time the potatoes will taste better," Pete explained with a strained smile when Minccino saw the potato pieces in the meal and... almost gasped.

Rapidash and Ponyta were already close to the gate and quickly came over when Pete called for them. There was a sort of shelf he could place the bowl in so that it wouldn't fall and land in the dirt and that's where he left the extra big portion for his two horse pokemon. Rapidash had allowed her son to eat first, and he seemed to like it so Pete hurried back his hosts.

"Come, sit next to me," Vivian ordered. The family was already sitting on the table with the eggs carefully arranged on a free side. Elm was currently trying to convince his son to eat the potatoes.

"Tell me a little about yourself, Pete," the woman of the house started a hushed conversation watching her two boys, the father and son, wrestling with the plastic spoon.

"Uh, not much to say. I'm kinda trying create something that's my own, so I left my old life behind. I just want to live a good life, making the best of it I can. So I came here, hoping your husband would hire me for my dream job," Pete answered by using as little lies as possible.

"Your dream job is to be a stinky professor?"

"Pfft, come on, Vivian. Your husband is a very respected public figure. It's a great job. And it would allow me to live on my own farm, living at my own pace. No corporate overlords with constant deadlines. No camping in the wild constantly, having no place to call home like league trainers. No living on the edge in constant fear your life like the frontier trainers that are opening up new lands for humans," Pete defended with a distant gaze.

"Hmpf, he almost made me wait an entire year before he blessed me with little Benny. Always too caught up in his work. What about your family though, my husband mentioned you're from Unova?" Vivian regarded Pete with narrowed eyes, not that he knew.

"Being in Unova would have never allowed me to live like I want. I'd rather stand on my own two feet and be my own person," Pete explained with a wry smile, trying his best to sell his tragic life before his escape without actually saying those words again.

He thought it was better like that because he wrote Professor Elm to be gullible, but maybe his wife was a little more sharp-eyed. Though Vivian still noticed that he was skirting around the question, not that she minded. Pete was a very pleasant person to be around, she judged. So maybe there was something even darker holding him back from talking about it freely.

"Okay, farm life. Do you want to open one here in New Bark Town then? It's a pleasant city to live in," Vivian decided to change the subject and saw Pete immediately turn more excited.

"If possible, I want to travel to Evergreen Meadows and see if its feasible to convince the pokemon there to allow me to live there. Uh, Evergreen Meadows is by Ilex Forest, south of Goldenrod City."

"Hey, I've lived in Johto all my life, I know where that is! But it's going to be a tall order. I heard that meadow is ground zero for a war between an Ariados tribe and a Vileplume tribe. They've been at it for as long as I can remember," Vivian said in a worried tone.

"Ah, yeah, I'll just try my luck. There's something I want to try and maybe convince them to come to a ceasefire."

"And how would you that, Pete?"

"Hmm? Food, of course!"

Oddish and its evolutions should taste terrible to the Ariados family. From his meta knowledge, Pete knew these Ariados are probably trying to eat the Ledyba and Caterpie of the area, but the Vileplumes probably have a sort of treaty for lack for a better word with the Butterfree and Ledian.

So if Pete introduced a different food source, maybe the leaders of the giant spiders would take their clan to a different place.

He still needed to find it, and honestly, it might piss off Celebi, but Pete thought it was worth a try. All he would do is introduce a certain type of moss that grew on trees and housed a certain small non-pokemon bug. One of the very few non-pokemon fauna left of this world.

His MC saw it introduced to great success in Sinnoh, where a Xatu tribe was on the verge of starvation but refused to leave its ancestral grounds. He was sure he could identify it easily. After all the morning dew gathering on it is blood-red.

He still had to find that moss and get a meaningful amount of it, but he knew where to find it - and it was on his way, too.