“And why, pray tell, should I give a damn about that man and what he’s up to? I thought this entire arrangement you thrust upon me was because he and she shouldn’t see each other. I’m already playing the role of jailer. That’s enough for me.” Gardenia scowled, her mood plummeting by the second as she talked with the stuffy Interpol Agent who she wished she never had the displeasure of meeting.

  “Think of this as a favor. You need a fresh batch of young pokemon since your first through third badge pokemon have grown—a tall tale sign of a great pokemon trainer, by the way.” Looker's voice oozed with condescension, and it made her skin prickle.

  While it was true that her newer gym pokemon had outgrown their usefulness in the lower tiered badge matches, she’d been a Gym Leader for long enough to procure her own pokemon. Ethan Reed was a registered breeder, yes, and she could reach out to him for a business contract… She just didn’t want to be around that man.

  “It’s just a bunch of Oddish. Nobody wants the little weeds anyway, myself included. Are you going to shell out grass or sun stones for me to evolve them later on? Or will that also be my problem? I may be blunt and sometimes crass, but I’m not going to not evolve them when the time comes for my benefit.” She replied truthfully. Nobody wanted the little weeds, sad as that may be—One inopportune sneeze and you were done for.

  As a Grass type Gym Leader, she was more than aware of the close border between poison types and grass types. Hell, half of her roster were both grass and poison. She even had a Vileplume and Bellosom already, as well as many Gloom and Oddish.

  She didn’t need more.

  “And if they all knew Rain Dance and Sunny Day?”

  Gardenia scoffed as she threw up her legs onto her desk, eyes roaming the monitors showcasing ongoing Gym Trainer challenges. “Oh? You think I would want stronger first to thirds? Seems counterintuitive to me. As special as they are, I don’t want them.”

  “... You know, I thought I had you for a moment.” She heard Looker’s following sigh through the phone. “... Can you at least go and take a look? Maybe one or two will catch your eye.”

  For a second, an actual mere second, Gardenia thought hard about it.

  Looker didn’t seem to want to wait for her response. Busy body as he was. “You don’t have to like the man, but look at it from his perspective. All of this world is new to him. All of it, Gardenia. He needs a little bit of help to get his ball rolling, and I don’t want to be putting my nose into his business more than I should, and I’ve already done enough meddling… The Joys and Jennys have done more harm than good as well.”

  After Looker’s spiel, Gardenia decided that Ethan deserved another second of thinking. “Nobody helped him with this part of his life. These Oddish, breeding, tutoring, his massive berry farm… That was him. Just… help Ethan out. Buy some berries from him, give him some pointers on how to take care of a massive amount of pokemon, get to know him—Something.”

  “Why me? I hardly even know the guy. Met that one time when he was found. Tragic, sure. My problem? No.” Gardenia looked away from a youngster’s pokemon getting smacked around by an Oddish used in her gym on her monitors.

  “The man with the Darkrai is there at his ranch.”

  Gardenia stilled, dropped her legs off her desk, sat up straight, and swiveled her chair around to get rid of the distractions. Her signature green poncho, which rested lightly on her shoulders, billowed, briefly exposing her set of eight ultra balls from her movements. “Where, exactly, is his ranch again?”

  —--------------------------------------------

  A bead of sweat dripped slowly down Ethan’s forehead, cresting over his brow and dropping onto the kitchen table. In his hands, a hefty weight was held with as much care as possible. The muscles in his arms strained from his very careful, delicate, and precise movements.

  “Shuuu?” The weight crooned softly as precious juice flowed in a fickle stream out of one of the many holes in his form.

  As soon as the Enigma berry juice reached the line drawn on the simple glass wine bottle, which rested on the table, Ethan tilted Shuckle back to a flattened position mid air, and moved over to bottle number two. At the end of filling the second bottle, Ethan hurriedly flopped Shuckle down onto the table and roughly sat down in one of the many seats that circled his dining table. “Phew! Shuckle, you’re a hefty lad. Remind me to buy a funnel.”

  Out of all the things Ethan had researched in his time here in the world of pokemon, Winemaking wasn’t something that he had ever imagined himself doing. Winemaking was a very interesting topic of research, and fairly simple, all things considered. The issue with researching Shuckle juice wine was that hardly anyone was in the business, and if they were, they kept those details to themselves.

  To start, Ethan was going for two bottles. One of them would be un-diluted, full of juice and diced Enigma berries for the sugar needed to turn into wine. The second would be diluted with water in a 60:40 ratio, in case the natural overwhelming strength of Shuckle’s juice was too strong to create a proper drink.

  He’d had some sips of Shuckle’s juices here and there throughout their time together, and boy oh boy, did his berry bud’s juice pack a mean punch.

  If he had to make an educated guess, Shuckle’s undiluted wine would be for pokemon. If a human were to drink it, alcohol included, then it’d be like taking a shot of moonshine boosted magic mushrooms.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Or it could end up perfectly okay and delicious. Ethan really had no idea, but it was fun to imagine the possibilities! There was a reason they were doing these tests!

  The sudden knock on his door interrupted his small break. Ethan pushed himself up, ran a hand over Shuckle’s shell, and made his way over to answer. The person on the other side caused him to blink rapidly in surprise.

  “Yo.” Gardenia said lazily and without enthusiasm. She wasn’t even looking at him. Her gaze was roaming around his ranch, eyes narrowed in anticipation. She was wearing the same clothes she had from the games, as well as from their first and only meeting with each other.

  “Gardenia?” Ethan asked, as Shuckle crooned from behind him, still on the table, in question.

  “I’m going to cut to the chase here. Looker asked me to help you out. Buy some berries, adopt some Oddish… stuff like that.” Her gaze finally snapped to him, and he could immediately tell that she didn’t really like him. “I don’t want anything to do with you. You're trouble, and my therapy sessions have been going well.”

  Ethan opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off. “But… There is a man here on your ranch I would like to see again.”

  It didn’t take a genius to connect the dots, as the only other men on his ranch were Tobias and James. While Ethan wasn’t sure about how or what Tobias did in the anime, he had to have beaten every gym. He had a hazy recollection of him sweeping every gym with Darkrai alone, but he could have been wrong in that assumption. If she was here for James… Then he’d have to enlist Darkrai’s help again.

  Ethan stepped outside and turned back to Shuckle as he began to close the door. “I’ll be right back, buddy. Do you need help getting down?”

  Shuckle shook his head, then wrapped his limbs and neck around the closest table leg. A few seconds later, and after using Wrap, Shuckle shimmied his way down to the floor, finishing with a cheer of accomplishment.

  After closing the door, Ethan hopped down his steps and began striding off toward the pokemon center and campgrounds. “Follow me.”

  They walked down the cobblestone strip which wound its way through Berry Falls in relative silence. Gardenia seemed content to not speak to him, but did look around his ranch and at all the pokemon who stared their way. “A nice home.” Was all she said during their several minute walk.

  Jessie and James’ cottage was quiet and the lights within were off. He knew that they were home, they probably found out about Gardenia’s arrival and decided to make themselves scarce.

  When they reached the training field, Ethan spared it barely a glance, finding it empty, before making his way toward the camp grounds to find Tobias’ tent. Lo and behold, Tobias was sitting on one of the logs set up for seating around the bonfire, his hand gently resting on Pyroar’s head as he watched them approach with an eerie calm.

  It was at this point that Gardenia increased her speed, brushing past Ethan to storm off towards Tobias direction. From the look Ethan could see on their faces, there was trouble brewing.

  So, done with drama and seeing as this wasn’t his problem, Ethan stayed where he was and watched from the sidelines. Gardenia was a short, yet blunt woman. And, when she was upset or angry—like she was now, judging by her gesticulating arms and furious stomps—she was a different person altogether. Tobias simply sat on the log, running a hand down Pyroar’s head as he calmly spoke and responded to whatever Gardenia was telling him.

  Tensions rose when Gardenia flipped up her poncho, revealing a set of eight gleaming ultra balls for all to see, palming one and pulling it from its place. Tobias narrowed his eyes, straightened his back… but Ethan decided that maybe this was his business. “No battling outside the training field! You break my ranch, you pay for it!”

  They didn’t tear their gazes away from one another, but Tobias eventually responded with a raised voice after a tense and pregnant pause. “There will be no battling today, Ethan. Miss. Natane was just thinking about the past.”

  Ethan took a few steps to get closer to the action, giving a nod to Pyroar who rumbled back a greeting. “Gardenia, I assume you two know each other.”

  She ignored him and spoke her final words to Tobias. “Cynthia is going to destroy you.” Before storming off back the way they came.

  “She will try.” Tobias taunted back, but Gardenia was done. He then frowned and faced Ethan. “Sorry about that. When I faced her personal team at the gym, Darkrai was all I needed. She didn’t take that too well.”

  Ethan shrugged. “I barely know her. As long as she doesn’t make trouble, then I don’t have an issue.”

  They watched her storm off for a few seconds, before they noticed that Gardenia had stopped and turned to face them again, hands on her hips like she was waiting. Ethan and Tobias both looked at one another awkwardly. “I think she’s waiting for you.” Tobias eventually muttered.

  A minute later, Ethan was once again walking by the side of a now much angrier and unhappy gym leader. “How many Pecha berries do you have for sale? Also, let me see some of these Oddish I’ve been told about. I need some weaker pokemon for gym challenges.”

  Ethan slowly turned his head to face her, drawing her eye. “What?” She practically barked.

  “I have a few hundred Pecha berries, but I’m not letting you have any of the Oddish. I don’t particularly like you, don’t know you, and don’t trust you with their wellbeing.” He said, calmly.

  She paused, then actually softened her look and gave him a once over. “Fair enough. Many people cower when a Gym leader asks for something. I can at least respect some spine.”

  “You may be a Gym leader, but you are not the one fighting in your gym—pokemon are. No offence, but you’re just another human, just like me. Not much to be scared of or intimidated by.” Ethan remarked as he led Gardenia down one of the many rows of his berry fields, leading her to the Pecha berry trees.

  “I have a Darkrai playing peek-a-boo at random moments. That’s something that’s scary.” Ethan joked as he gestured to the ripe, plump, pink berries dangling from branches up high. “I have a cellar full of them too. To be frank, I have too many berries to know what to do with them.”

  Gardenia plucked one of the pinkish peach-looking berries and took an unabashed chomp out of it, savoring the taste. “I saw that Shuckle, that’s a good idea to start. It won’t make a dent in your operation here, but it’ll make some money. I would say to sell wholesale to gyms and the like, but you don’t have that big of a farm. Head to Floaroma town sometime, they have a weekly market to sell goods. Many trainers stock up on supplies before wandering into Eterna Forest too. So, you can make some good money there.”

  Ethan was slightly surprised by the helpful info dump, but didn’t have time to reply before Gardenia spoke again. “Wild picked berries go for around a hundred pokedollars each. Yours are farmed and cultivated with the help of pokemon, I assume?” Ethan nodded, so she carried on. “Thought so, they have a much higher sweetness than those in the wild. I can do one-fifty per berry.”

  After a quick mental math, Ethan swapped from pokedollars to what he was more accustomed to—USD. A dollar and fifty cents per berry was, in his mind, absurd. This deal was a no brainer. “Sounds good to me. How many do you need? I also have many other berries if you’re interested.”

  After a slight smirk, she replied. “Not interested, but I’d take as much Pecha as you can give me.”

  Upsale failed, he’d get them next time. “Well, let’s check in with Shuckle and see how many we have. He’s my berry bud, after all.”

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