C068 - A day out in Slateport City

"I'll miss your food," Valentino offered as he gave Pete his goodbye hug at the port. Pete's colleague would continue the next stretch of the travel with the two Lapras on the searoute.

"Really? I wish you good luck on your journey, remind you to stay safe and all that, and you come up with the heartwarming line 'I'll miss your food'?"

"What can I say. My honesty is one of my most endearing qualities," Valentino argued with a warm smile as he released Pete from the hug and patted him on both sides of his shoulders.

"You're not wrong. There isn't much else to like if you don't count your pokemon," Pete countered with a sagely nod.

"Ah, it hurts," Valentino cried as he clutched his heart in mock sadness.

"Acid reflux from all those muffins you devoured for brunch?"

"Hahaha! You really are clever! Who knew!?"

"Hehe, come on. Hop on Lapras already before one of us cries," Pete suggested with a grin.

"Okay, my friend! Smell ya later!" A universal farewell in the pokemon world apparently was the last thing Valentino shouted as Pete waved him off.

Pete had woken up much, much later than usual. Mostly because he went to bed two hours before he usually woke up, so he sported quite deep eye circles, same as most of the staff in the poke center today.

A vast majority of pokemon had survived the night, and Nurse Joy did share the credit gladly, making a tired Pete an unsuspecting celebrity among trainers in Slateport City. Naturally, she kept quiet about the moves his pokemon used, mostly because Nurse Joy herself was too tired to remember come morning.

At the bistro, where they ate a very late breakfast, or brunch, Pete and Valentino didn't have to pay for their food. A grateful trainer did it for them. And now that Pete ran over the market, quite a few of these grateful trainers pointed at him and gave him bright smiles.

He was currently browsing the 'egg section' of the market for any surprising pokemon, but except for Sewaddle, he didn't find anything he wanted. And Sewaddle he could catch himself OR receive from the woman he tasked to catch some a few weeks ago.

Why would he pay for an Oddish egg, for example? Or what could he do with a Minun or Plusle? He might add another electric pokemon to his roster so that Zebstrika wouldn't feel alone, but it wouldn't be a Minun or Plusle. Manectric was out even more. Pete remembered that their manes emit constant electricity, causing forest fires and constant lightning strikes according to the pokedex.

A cool Alolan Raichu, now that he could get behind. Or a Rotom - super useful if Golurk could control the eletric/ghost pokemon's mischievous tendencies. Some Mareep lived on the other side of the lake. Maybe he could get a few of them to live near his farm?

'Hmm, it should be possible to find Emolga or Dedenne in Hoenn if you look hard enough. Cuteness factor overload for the electric/flying and electric/fairy pokemon, and they don't come with the 'The forest may burn down because of sparks or lightning storms' problem. For some reason, all Pikachu evolved into the electric/psychic variant Raichu in Alola only, so I can't experiment with that before I see it. Don't have any Thunder Stones to waste either,' Pete mused as he continued looking through the stands.

Eventually, he saw a man selling, among other things, two Eevee eggs.

'Huh. Jolteon is always an option if the Eevee is okay with it,' Pete considered as he took a closer look at the Eevee eggs that looked exactly like the one the Aipom had gifted him near Goldenrod City.

'They seem to be rare enough, this was the only stall with Eevee eggs. Let's get them for my future Eeveelution project, regardless of whether or not one of them wants to become a Jolteon.'

There was a one pokemon policy at the market, so Pete only had his Arcanine out currently. The rest was either inside his pokeball or recuperating at the poke center under the watchful eye of Nurse Joy.

The cunning looking man who was the owner of this stall wanted to do his regular price hiking, telling the trainer how the parents of these particular eggs were both either color variants or extremely powerful pokemon of an elite trainer, but seeing the Arcanine the man decided differently.

It didn't help much that half the trainers at the market were looking at this particular guy like the second coming of Mew. He'd eat a loss and only profit the regular amount today, he decided.

P$24.000 was the price for both eggs. Pete could only pay it without heartache because the professor wired him a giant bonus for his various discoveries so far. For providing proof about evolutions like Milotic, Ambipom, and especially Farigiraf, the league had paid Professor Elm's lab well in advance before Pete had even finished the papers.

Pete would sell Twin Beam TMs and gain a commision, decided by the league, for over a decade. It played into his hands that Steven had already offered him to have it recorded if it took too long to do it on his own, but technically Pete would have to wait until the league finished the bidding war for it. The rights to record it could go to Devon Corp, Silph Co, and any other league affiliated poke gear company.

Instead of continuing to browse through the market, Pete decided to rest a little earlier today and went to the poke center to get all his pokemon and hang out on Slateport City's beach with them. The stares of so many trainers made him a little uncomfortable to begin with.

A few hours before dinner, Duosion once more helped out in the poke center out of her own volition while Pete was allowed to use its kitchen to cook with the small mountain of fresh ingredients he bought on the way back from the beach.

Kelly Joy, that was the name of the Nurse Joy of this poke center, was half a mind to recruit him before, even if she knew it was impossible. But now she felt like writing a letter to her clan to recruit the young assistant professor into it anyway. His quick thinking with the Misty Terrain was, after all, unprecedented and half his pokemon knew some crazy moves.

If recruitment was impossible, maybe they could work out some kind of cooperation plan. The Nurse Joy clan was very thinly spread. Help was always appreciated. They could use help in critical situations like the day before. He did mention that Duosion knew Teleport and that he had a farm with Berry trees growing on it. He could act in dire emergencies, for example.

The next day, Pete was on the giant market once more. This time, he chose Mincchino as the only pokemon he was allowed to bring. The little chinchilla pokemon rode on his shoulders and excitedly watched the busy market, prompting Pete to buy snacks here and there for her to munch on.

This time around, Pete decided to browse the plants and TM section. He found a few more leaves of herbs similar to Mental Herb. Like the White Herb that, according to the description, helps a pokemon regain lost strength after a battle. Or the Power Herb, which was sort of a natural doping a pokemon could take before a battle and helps it power up certain moves faster. Pete wasn't quite sure how he felt about that.

There was, of course, the Revival Herb. The most expensive of them all by a lot, save for a single leaf sold at another stall, despite the fact that it couldn't actually revive the dead. It did, however, preserve the last embers of vitality in a pokemon that was close to dying if handled properly.

Then there was something called a Mirror Herb that was only sold in a single stall by a merchant who claimed to be from Paldea. Pete knew a lot about the various games in general, but he did not know where and when this Mirror Herb actually was introduced.

The Mirror Herb had a promising premise of allowing a pokemon to copy the state of his enemies if advantageous, but Pete thought that it might be a giant boon during training. If it can 'mirror' the buff stages of an opponent, why can it not help in 'mirroring' how a move is executed?

When he bought the leaf for P$40.000, the stall owner almost couldn't believe her eyes. The woman thought she'd sell the leaf for P$5.000 at most on the last day, but this young man in front of her bought it at full price!

"Uh, sir! Excuse me! I... I have been tasked by a friend to sell a pokemon he caught that wouldn't listen to him. He, uh... he said it would fetch a better price in a different region because of its rarity. Maybe you'd be interested? I let it out daily to feed it fruit, but it doesn't do anything else. Ugh, I'm really selling it, aren't I?"

The woman let out a nervous chuckle, but Pete was interested anyway.

"Sure, show me?"

Pete stepped behind the curtain of the stall, and the woman took out a worn down Timer Ball. And what she released came as a big surprise to Pete. Who knew that he would find a dragon pokemon here?

"How much do you want for it?"

"Well, I didn't offer it to anyone here because my friend asked for P$140.000 - you seem to have the means, which is why I asked. I'm about to head back home, and this giant Leppa Berry looking pokemon didn't interest anyone in Alola, Kanto, or Johto~ It's too passive after all."

"Huh, my budget would be spent in P$100.000, so I'm sorry to say that I do not have the means," Pete apologized. He did want the pokemon, but not for roughly half the price of his home. He could always catch one or two in Galar or Paldea in the future, after all.

"Deal! I'll spring for the rest, just let this little guy get a trainer that cares for it," the lady immediately sprung for deal. She would just pay her friend from the extra Pete had used to by the single leaf of Mirror Herb if he asked for it.

Pete used a Luxury Ball from his own bag, and the pokemon barely reacted to him as he did so. The young farmer would bond with him at a later time.

After paying the money, Pete walked over to the stalls with TMs. The merchants there were either wholesale resellers or trainers who wanted to quickly liquidate some TMs for money. Which meant most of the smaller stalls had sometimes only one TM and people behind the provided table that looked defeated in some way.

Most of the TMs at these stalls were very generic. The few outliers were fire moves like Fire Punch or electric moves like Thunderbolt.

Pete resolved himself to look at the stalls of all these trainers first and eventually found what he was looking for. It started with the aforementioned Thunderbolt that he paid P$1.400 for. Then, he bought Icy Wind, a rather mediocre ice move to cover that typing, but the selection wasn't too big. Another P$3.300 was gone thanks to that purchase.

The only fighting move he found among the trainer stalls was Brick Break, so he skipped them and looked for bug move TMs or other rare finds. It was a little wasteful because he wasn't a trainer, but he excused it by having a trainer girlfriend that could likely benefit immensely from the selection.

He found the flying move Acrobatics, the rock move Stone Edge, the ground move Mud Shot, and the steel move Gyro Ball. His personal favorite among the TMs he bought was the water move with the chane to leave a burn Scald - now the two Milotic may be able to fill the hot spring all on their own. The bug move Bug Buzz was only sold once and was by far his most expensive buy at P$14.000 for its rarity, bringing his total for TMs that day to P$37.500 - he didn't find a single fighting move he liked.