C093 - Aftermath of the eruption

"Hey, are you okay?"

Mega Milotic regarded her trainer with kind eyes and responded over their bond, 'Yes, more than okay. Suicune has healed my fatigue before leaving.'

"So, uh, I don't want to pry, but what did you talk about?" Pete fidgeted a little as he asked the question. Honestly, he really wanted to accompany Suicune a little more and ask all kinds of questions, foremost what it meant when it said it had lived lives before this one.

'It has taught me the moves Mist Ball and Origin Pulse, and unlocked another ability for me,' Mega Milotic answered with a reverent gaze back to the basin.

"Wait, it taught you the signature moves of Latias and Kyogre and then gave you an ability? How is that even possible?"

Mega Milotic shook her head, 'I don't know. It dropped a crystalline tear in my maw and told me that I now have the ability Reuniclus also has: Regenerator. And for the two moves, it only told me that Mist Ball helps to reduce an opponents threat, while Origin Pulse was to be used only in dire circumstances unless I have sufficiently trained to control the move.'

"Yeah, as far as I know, Latias' Mist Ball has a chance to lower an opponent's special attack while Latios' Luster Purge has a chance to do the same for special defense. And Origin Pulse is pretty much just several less powerful Hydro Pumps to my knowledge - sounds hard to control," Pete mumbled with a thoughtful expression. Mega Milotic just shook her head at her always-analizing, always-knowledgeable trainer and guided Pete back to the group slowly.

"Pete! It's getting late, we should head home. I want to sleep in the hot spring tonight! Hopefully, that would make my hair smell less horrible," Jasmine argued as she smelled her hair with a scrunched up nose.

"Your hands and feet will be all wrinkly like an old lady if you do," Pete shot back with an amused smile.

"I don't care, just chuck in one of the Fire Stones we found earlier so that the water doesn't turn cold around us overnight!"

Pete's smile deepened in fondness, and they started gathering their pokemon in their poke balls - until Pete reached his Arcanine. She sat on her behind like a dog would and had a Growlithe sit before her, both stared at Pete as he reached them.

"You want to adopt him?" Pete asked when he regarded the two fire pokemon who were shooting him expectant eyes.

Arcanine nodded and gave Pete a super effective critical hit of Puppy Eyes, the powerful signature move of his Arcanine if there ever was one. Pete wouldn't mind in any case and quickly agreed after making sure they wouldn't steal him from his family, making the Growlithe happily yip as it rubbed his head against Pete's leg.

"Your training is about to get harder, though. I hope you still have the energy to look after him after all of that," Pete explained as he looked to Arcanine while rubbing Growlithe behind the ears. Arcanine lost the smile in her eyes and gave him a solemn nod.

With no more hiccups, Courtney, Jasmine, and Pete were brought back to the farm by Reuniclus, who quickly excused herself to fall asleep in her little dwelling in Pete's pokemon habitat cave. The trainers released all of their pokemon, and pretty much all of them followed Reuniclus' lead to go sleep immediately.

As the girls hurried to take a quick shower and change into fresh clothes, Pete started making a quick meal for the three in the kitchen with Klinklang's and Miltank's help. The shiny Miltank and his first steel pokemon were two of the few pokemon he left behind to guard the farm, so he told them about everything that happened as they made a light dinner. It was only two hours to midnight, which is much later than they usually eat - yet they were all starving after the eventful day.

Once Miltank assured him that she got the rest covered, Pete excused himself to go upstairs to his lab, where he typed a situation report for the league.

It contained everything from him finding Team Rocket activity as well as Giovanni - even detailing the pokemon the elusive villain brought to fight. He mentioned the legendary pokemon fighting in great detail. But then he obviously left out the part where Suicune made Courtney its avatar.

That was something he would tell Elm in person at best, not something he would tell the league outright. Even then, it was Courtney's secret to share, so she should probably be the one to disclose it to their friends if she chose to do so.

When he came downstairs, food was finished, and the girls lazily sat on the couch with wet hair still wrapped up in a towel and drank a milkshake that Miltank had made them through a straw. He walked over with a smile, but before he could come close, Jasmine held up a hand.

"Now that we showered, it is much more apparent that you smell really bad. Go take a shower before you come near us. I have had enough volcanic ash in my nose for one lifetime," Jasmine argued while bringing her nose closer to her drink so she would smell something sweet instead.

Courtney quickly agreed, saying, "Yeah. I honestly can't believe Miltank allowed you to stink up her kitchen smelling like that!"

"Wait, her kitchen?"

Jasmine started giggling, "Yeah, have you not seen how she looks at everyone touching 'her' kitchen? Place a hand on the fridge, and she stands behind you, looking if you emptied out 'her' inventory."

"Huh, I guess," Pete mumbled as he dazedly walked to their bedroom to take a quick shower. He was starving and failed to sneak in a snack under the watchful eyes of Miltank. Huh, it really was her kitchen.

After their late dinner, Jasmine fulfilled her wish and dragged Pete to the hot spring for a late night soak. A few pokemon had worked together to fill it up nice and warm, and Pete brought a Fire Stone as promised to keep the water temperature high.

Before the eruption, Pete had liberated over thirty Fire and over ten Sun Stones together with some meteorite ore he couldn't name just yet. He wondered how Team Rocket was the first to ever notice this giant cache of valuable evolution gems and stones, but also just as quickly lost interest in the topic.

Now that the league was aware of the basin, they would claim this land and stop Team Rocket from robbing it blind by doing it themselves. Instead of bringing firefighters, the few league officials he saw before he left the area of the eruption brought geologists, which made sense, and appraisers, which was a direct testament to the greed of these officials.

They didn't even offer him thanks for bringing the nature of the eruption to their attention or saving so many pokemon. They shook his hand and started pocketing everything valuable they saw. His sway in the league was very limited still, but Pete had made sure to have his displeasure for these officials known in his report. How much that would affect him - or them - in the long run, Pete didn't know.

As the two laid down in the shallow part of the pool that allowed them to rest their bodies on warm stones while their heads were above water resting on a towel, Courtney joined them.

"Valerie really chose a bad day to visit her parents, huh?"

Courtney looked at Jasmine, who was hugging Pete close, moving her head on Pete's chest to lazily look at her, only her nose and above over water. She answered, "Eh, who could have known?"

"Yeah, who could have known," Jasmine whispered as tears started to form in her eyes, and she pressed her face into Pete's neck.

"Giovanni was so scary," she mumbled. "His Beedrill was a monster."

"Even his Nidoking could have soloed all of our pokemon if Pete's Reuniclus hadn't used Gravity. We should thank her again tomorrow," Courtney offered with a dazed expression.

Hoping to change the topic from the depressing realisation that Giovanni could come and go as he pleases on his farm, Pete showed Courtney a few tricks and his thought-process behind them regarding water affinity. She had seen him train it before, but the two never talked about how to train this affinity before.

Her water affinity would probably grow stronger than his in no time, perks of being a legendary's avatar, but right now, he had more experience with the affinity. Experience he chose to share.

Jasmine resolved herself to train her pokemon in a different way, as well as with more intensity. As Giovanni's two pokemon toyed with their pokemon, she felt completely overwhelmed. She was supposed to be the strong trainer among her and her husband-to-be, yet it was Pete's pokemon who landed the few hits they landed as well as Pete's Reuniclus who saved the day by lifting the frontline up to dodge Nidoking's fissure.

Her Claydol would get lessons in battle strategy that would go beyond league regulated battles so it would react with split-second decisions like Pete's ace. Her Mega Torterra would get trained in once more, mostly strengthening its attacks and speed, because clearly, a single squishy Beedrill could spell its doom. Her Steelix only joined the fight moments before Ho-oh intervened - while her other pokemon weren't even close. They hadn't even noticed the danger the group was in before it was too late.

All of them would have to ignore working defense for a while and get drilled in the speed and power of their moves. Though clearly, balanced training was needed in the long run. Giovanni had the advantage of time on his side. He was a trainer long before Jasmine was even born. The same was true for a lot of his pokemon.

Meanwhile, Courtney fell asleep in the water near them after making it spin around a little and Pete kept an eye on her to make sure she wouldn't drown. Though, he did wonder if someone could even drown if they were the avatar of a legendary water pokemon - not that he would ever test it.

Same as Jasmine, Pete started devising new games that would do something very similar to his fiancee's plan: strenghten the move of his pokemon. Together with Mega Milotic, who rested in the hot spring with them, the two discussed feasible strenghtening methods which lasted until Jasmine and eventually even Pete fell asleep in the hot spring.

With a warm expression, Mega Milotic, whose exhaustion was taken away by Suicune, kept vigil over the three trainers and kept their heads afloat until the morning.