656 CH37 (651), Choices

I felt some stirring beside me that caused me to wake up and a look at the time told me that it was only 7:45 a.m., meaning that I had barely gotten in another 4 hours of sleep after laying down with Munchlax. Still, I saw no reason to continue sleeping, especially not when the reason I woke up in the first place was poking my shoulder and giving me pitiful looks while holding his belly with the other hand.

I had to chuckle a bit at his show but still sat up before pulling out a large milk bottle, which had Munchlax perk up. This time around I handed him the bottle instead of feeding him myself, and watched with amusement as he happily suckled the milk while sitting in my lap. Seeing him enthusiastically drink his special milk, I felt a bit thirsty as well, so I took out a bottle of my OO juice, which attracted Munchlax's attention.

He curiously watched me drink my juice while suckling his milk, and only stopped looking up when I put away the empty juice bottle. A minute or so later, I gave Munchlax a second bottle since he finished the first, and interestingly enough, Munchlax did not immediately latch onto the bottle teat. Instead, he looked at the bottle for a moment, then at me, and then back to the bottle, before he tried to take off the bottle teat.

Thankfully, these bottles were quite sturdy, so neither the bottle nor the teat got damaged during Munchlax's attempt to take off the teat. Nonetheless, this also meant that Munchlax failed in his attempt since he tried to pull off the teat even though it had to be screwed/twisted off. After futilely trying to do so for a minute or two, Munchlax finally stopped trying to brute force it and looked up to me to give me the full pity program.

His head was upturned since he was sitting on my lap and had to look up, his eyes were glistening, and his lips were slightly pursed forming a sad pout. Munchlax let out a sad complaint before holding out the milk bottle and asking me to take off the teat for him. Naturally, I followed his request, and I made sure that he saw how I did it, before giving him back the bottle.

Munchlax released a happy laugh before placing the bottle on his lips and taking his first sip. He seemed happy with the result and gave me a bright smile before chugging the whole thing in less than 20 seconds, which was much less than the three to four minutes it used to take him to finish a bottle using the teat. I had to admit that I had been a bit worried that he would choke due to his uninterrupted chugging, but he managed to drink the whole thing in one take without choking.

He gave me a proud look once he had finished the bottle, and I patted him on his head to show him he did well. Munchlax beamed at me when I did that before handing me the empty bottle and asking for another one. I gave him the third bottle after putting the empty one away, and this time Munchlax took off the teat by himself with a triumphant expression. I patted his head and praised him since he managed to do it without spilling any milk.

All milk bottles I prepared in advance had bottle tests screwed on, so it was nice to see that Munchlax could take it off by himself. All I would have to do in the future is to provide him with the bottle and he would do the rest on his own. Munchlax had proven to be quite smart, at least as far as food was concerned. We would have to wait and see if that was also true for everything else.

Anyway, Munchlax handed me the empty bottle and asked for snacks, or rather the stuff I gave him the last time he finished his milk. His eyes were sparkling while he made the request and his hands were making the gimme gimme gesture. I had been planning to feed him supplements/snacks anyway, so I happily fulfilled his request, though this time I gave him a bag of day-time snacks instead of the night snacks.

While I made the night snacks I had to make sure that they would not interfere with Munchlax's sleep (cycle), but the daytime snacks had no such limitation, which was why they were full of nutrition and energy boosters. This particular morning batch was made using Hyplan Berries, Chilan Berries, Chesto Berries, and Sitrus Berries as its main ingredients.

While Munchlax was stuffing himself, I took a look through Utopia using my admin view to see who was up already and who was still sleeping. It was only 8 a.m. after all, and I had told everyone after the party yesterday that breakfast would be pushed to 9:30 a.m. just so that everyone could sleep in if they wanted to. Nonetheless, there were quite a few early risers among my Pokemon, and I saw that a bunch of them were already up and about, including Horus/Xatu and Mothra/Butterfree.

Once I was one, I took up Munchlax and made my way over to my own place. Meanwhile, Munchlax was curiously observing the surroundings, head swiveling from side to side, while munching on the snacks I gave him. He briefly stopped snacking when he saw my home/villa, but he quickly recovered and resumed eating.

I just pat him on the head in amusement before I contacted the 13 Pokemon that were already up and told them to come over so that I could introduce them to the newest member of our family. Horus, Mothra, and the others swiftly came over, with nearly half of them teleporting over, including Hypno, who was the only reserve member that was up right now.

They began to crowd us as soon as they appeared and I had to say that Munchlax took all of it in strides. He kept eating his snacks and happily waved back with a snack in hand whenever one of the others greeted him. He made no fuss because so many Pokemon crowded us, and he also did not seem intimated at all, which, while a tad bit unusual for a not-even day-old newborn, was certainly a welcome thing in my humble opinion.

Anyway, I introduced Munchlax as the latest addition to the reserve team and made sure to introduce everyone as members of Munchlax's family to Munchlax. Mothra and co made sure to entertain Munchlax while we waited for the others to wake up and we also talked about random things that came to mind. One of the things that came up was the Gym Challenge on Giratiday, which was only two days away.

I was planning to give as many of my dark gold stage Pokemon the chance to take part in the Gym challenge, but only 6 of them would be able to take part in the actual Gym Battle against Stephanie Stone, and I had already decided that one of those spots would go to Mothra, leaving only 5 for the others.

I had given some thought on who to use, though I had yet to make a decision. Yet, Horus actually ended up proactively stating that he did not want one of the 5 spots since there were better candidates for the battle and he did not want to risk our victory just for the chance to fight in the first Gym Battle.

Seeing Horus going out of his way to say that, I naturally agreed with his request, and not only that, but I also removed some of the candidates I had in mind for the battle since they had been somewhat risky choices that ignored any possible type-advantage others in our family would have had against Stephanie's steel types.

Honestly, Horus' request solidified Enji/Arcanine, Ignis/Gyarados, and Mars/Ursasol's spots among the Gym Fighters. Together with Mothra, they took up 4 of the six spots, leaving only two for everyone else. Well, aside from Horus who had chosen to abstain from the battle.

I guess I would have to ask everyone in a public setting who was interested and then determine who was going to get the spots. If too many of them showed an interest, I'd simply have them battle amongst themselves for the chance. When I shared my thoughts with Horus and the others, they agreed that it was for the best, so I set aside the topic for now.

Naturally, I kept introducing Munchlax to everyone who ended up joining us, and by the time we agreed to have breakfast, I had gone through all the main and reserve team members. The young ones were quite happy to have an even younger addition and they all acted all big, telling Munchlax to come to them if he needed help with anything. The whole thing was as adorable as it was amusing since I knew that the most likely thing Munchlax would ask of them would be food, and I could just imagine them fumbling, trying to fill Munchlax's considerable appetite using the few snacks they had available.

Anyway, while we were having our breakfast, I brought up the topic of the Gym Battle against Stephanie, and surprisingly quite a few chose to abstain after hearing me out. In the end, only Seb/Nidoking, Gaia/Nidoqueen, Parvati/Beedrill, Ryujin/Gyarados, Stan/Gyarados, and Osiris/Skellibra showed an interest in filling the last two spots. Honestly, out of all of them, Parvati had the worst match-up against steel types, but I knew that she had probably felt obliged to give it a try since Mothra would be fighting.

Nonetheless, I would not deprive her of the chance to fight for the slot, and once all six candidates had been confirmed, I told them that we would have to hold a mini-tournament to determine who would get to fill in the final two spots. They were all fine with that and the others were excited to watch them fight. The question was what format we should use. We could use the standard elimination format, but then luck would play a not inconsiderable role and some of them, *cough* Parvati *cough*, might feel unconvinced by that.

The other option was to let everyone battle against one another once and then choose the two with the most wins. This format would leave no doubt about who earned the spots, though it would take longer to determine the "victors".

Nonetheless, I decided that we could spend the whole day inside Utopia if that was what it took to go through the 15 battles it would take for everyone to fight against the others once. Not that I really thought that it would take that long. I was guessing that it would take 6 hours tops to go through every battle, which would only take half of the day, leaving us enough time to do other stuff if we wanted.

Everyone agreed that the second format was the better one, so we moved towards an unused area to avoid destroying my place. I naturally shared the news over UtopiaFM, though I did add that I was going to livestream the battles, so they did not necessarily have to come over to watch the battles.

That was also why we did not bother waiting for any possible spectators to arrive before starting the first match, which was Seb versus Gaia. Yeah, I chose to pit the siblings against one another first to avoid any situation where they chose to lose against the other to allow one of them to "win". I was not saying that they would do that if given the chance, I just wanted to avoid a situation that could tempt them to do so.

Still, before their battle began I sent Horus to pick up the duo's family since they had chosen to come over instead of watching the live stream from their place, and I did not want them to miss out on THE fight, at least from their perspective.

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