39 C039 - Construction ongoing

Jasmine had contacted Pete to let him know she would stay with Numel until tomorrow, and the night passed without an attack from the Ariados. It threw a light wrench in his plans to negotiate a cease fire with them, but the chance wouldn't simply go away.

The Vileplume had spent some time to grow and spread the Scarlet Moss to a few more trees during the day. When the morning of the next day came, Pete went up to the forest line with Rapidash giving him a ride as his other pokemon were still sleeping and helped spread the rest of the Scarlett Moss in his bags.

There was already no point in keeping the rest, the Vileplume's capacity to grow the moss was way more than he had anticipated. Now all they needed was for the bugs living in them to properly grow their numbers. Something Pete couldn't really help with other than introducing the collected moss with the bugs already inside.

After making sure breakfast was ready back at their camp, Pete got up to a new project to graft regular tree branches to berry tries and the other way around. He wanted to see if the berries were truly special in some kind like their effects suggested and if they could spread their miraculous effects to trees like the Yoseban trees.

Herbert had delivered some waist-high Yoseban fruit trees the last day that Pete had grown on the border of what he would later call his tree farm right next to the true berry orchard. It was obvious that these trees were less special than a berry tree because with the same treatment of the Vileplume tribe, these trees had grown much, much more.

With that over and his pokemon instructed to train a little on their own with games and exercising their typing energies, Pete took Nidoking with him to the cliff right next to the waterfall near the lake's shore.

"Okay, buddy. We got some vegetable beds and our saplings ready, now I need a cave to grow some mushrooms. Fungus grow in dark and damp environments best, so what better place than right next to the waterfall was my thought. Could you create a cave ring with two exits? One here, one a little more to the right?"

Nidoking looked to Pete and rolled its eyes a little. Naturally, he could do it. This much was nothing to a powerful pokemon like him.

"Oh, yeah. Since you want to train so much, I challenge you to use fighting and rock type energy instead of ground type energy to make the cave. If you need any help, ask the Geodudes to show you how. I've seen one of them use the fighting move Rock Smash yesterday," Pete instructed with a smirk before leaving Nidoking with a pat to its shoulder.

While walking back, Pete weighed his options on how to best grow the Bocan mushrooms without needlessly introducing harmful mycotoxins and mold into the mix but not even his brother ever farmed mushrooms, so he was a little out of his element even with the tips from the plant guide book he got at the cabin.

He didn't want anything to do with natural fertilizer, aka poop, so he was thinking of feeding the mushrooms mulch from the dead leaves and weeds of the farm. He would need to experiment a little. Too bad Paras and Parasect were out of the question. Maybe he needed to hasten the schedule of his future Unova visit to catch pokemon of the Foongus line. Well, maybe he also simply underestimated the power of grass type pokemon and he didn't even need a special grass pokemon related to mushrooms for this.

Pete was tending to his garden after arriving back until around an hour and a half before noon, Luna and Carl arrived to get on with the construction. They released all their pokemon and once more asked Golurk for help because they would lay the waste water pipe today.

Pete's ground typing energy grew by leaps and bounds once more since yesterday and he had created almost a hundred raised beds for vegetables on the slope of the hill between his house and the river flowing into the lake. He had run out of the granite-wood panels a long time ago and would likely have to buy more or get Luna and Carl to deliver it to him the next day.

"You want some yoseban patties with fries?" Pete asked he walked over to Carl and Luna, who oversaw the work of Golurk, Rapidash, Lairon, and a few Machops and Machokes.

The group was currently a quarter done with the reinforced cement pipe they wanted to construct for the waste water. The rest of the pokemon were currently working on the ground floor for the building by spreading and tying together long metal ropes to reinforce the floor.

"If it tastes anything like those 'calzones' you made yesterday, I'll eat everything you make right out of your hand," Luna answered instantly without thinking.

"Ya man, I'd prefer a plate, but I would also eat anything you want to cook from almost anything," Carl agreed but had to make it weird. The young assistant professor had already learned to tune it out when Carl was like that.

Pete walked back and started cooking with the help of the older of the two Miltank, the non-shiny one. When Pete asked for a bit of milk for the dough yesterday, the pokemon had asked to watch him cook and eventually started joining him in the outdoor kitchen. She seemed to love kneeding dough. Sadly though, her hooves weren't dexterous enough to hold the knives Pete owned, so he would need to tinker a little for that.

The food was done, and Pete called everyone to eat. Only Golurk stayed behind to work ahead a little and reinforce the earth around the pipe a little more. It wasn't like Golurk could eat anyway.

"The twins mentioned you wanted to get a false sky interior lighting system from that Markus guy in Cianwood City. Have you already placed your order?"

"Hmm? Markus? Oh yeah, the twins' father, Herbert, apparently is good friends with him and his father, the chief ranger of the safari zone, so he accepted a sort of rush order for me. The dimensions for the rooms below the hill I gave you were with those dimensions in mind," Pete answered as he swallowed the food in his mouth.

"You should have mentioned it earlier," Luna grumbled.

"Oh, sorry, sorry. I kinda forgot about it if I'm going to be honest. Does that throw a wrench in your planning for the construction?"

"Hmm? Nah, not really. The system doesn't need any crazy special wiring or anything, so we can build it like planned. But it does throw a wrench in my plans for your interior design later. Had I known you wanted something so fancy, I wouldn't have planned your furniture and stuff with such a rustic feel," Luna said with a cute pout and furrowed brows. It was a weird but oddly powerful combination for someone with an Amazon's physique like her.

"Uh, you were planning my furniture and stuff?"

"What do you mean? Of course I do? Didn't Whitney tell you that's my original specialty?"

Pete got to thinking, and it was true. Whitney did say Luna did the interior design for her.

"Oh... well, it's just I never thought about it, and you didn't mention it before, haha," Pete admitted with an awkward chuckle.

"Hmph, I'll show you some designs tomorrow. Furniture and the kitchen was in part already included in the contract for the house anyway."

The atmosphere would have stayed a little awkward for the rest of the meal, but Carl quickly got into an arm-wrestling match with Machamp once more for the honor of doing the dishes. Carl quickly lost but disappeared, leaving the dishes to Pete and his water pokemon. Not that Pete minded, because he'd much rather that Carl finished building the house as quickly as possible.

Azurill wasn't a water pokemon just yet, but had learned Water Sport and Bubble from his parents already. Pete made cleaning the dishes into a fun little game where the little polka dot pokemon would have to aim his move Bubble at the dishes before Pete scrubbed them clean once hit. Even the Minccino who loved cleanliness joined in, so they were done in no time despite the large number and sizes of kitchenware they had to clean.

When he was done with cleaning up and on his way back to busy himself in the garden once more, one of Luna's Magnemite flew over and indicated that Pete should follow him.

They arrived at the greatly extended cave with a hallway and two rooms already taking shape where Pete still had his eggs placed. The cave room was well lit by a few construction torches hooked up to Pete's generator.

The two freshly hatched Timburr were surrounding the incubators curiously, and Pete heard one of them beep, announcing yet another pokemon of his would hatch.

Once he saw which on it was, Pete quickly grabbed his tablet out of his bag and called Professor Elm urgently.

"Professor! The Klink egg, it's about to hatch!" Pete shouted once the call connected and he aimed the camera at the opened incubator with the odd metallic egg shaking inside.