Better Gardening 17 (Patreon)

Commissioned by Kejmur

Better Gardening

Chapter 17

-VB-

The Indigo War continued on, but despite the fact that the war should be the focus, Giovanni found himself thinking back to the strange foreigner with a complete disregard for the relationship between pokemon and their trainers. 

It didn’t help that his superiors were displaying similar levels of caution as he was.

He had hoped that he didn’t encounter the foreigner again, but he found himself standing in as the “guide” for that very foreigner within a week of their last encounter. 

Because, he could not believe this, the foreigner got permission from the government to catch …

“Why pidgeys, rattatas, and psyducks?” Giovanni asked.

Thankfully, the foreigner had decided to be “cooperative,” and the reason why he was even allowed to roam freely in Kanto was because he had donated humanitarian aid for the displaced Kantonians. 

And when someone donated fifty tons of food and asked he could catch birds, pests, and some more birds, no one went out of their way to say no, but because they didn’t trust him to not cause trouble, they assigned Giovanni.

To Giovanni’s horror. 

“We don’t have them where I’m from.”

Giovanni thought about that statement as they walked alongside a lake looking for those very pokemon to catch. He was surprised to hear that there was a region out there that did not have rattatas. Did that mean his region did not have pokemon rooting through their garbage and attacking children? That sounded like a safer place than his home.

But if it was safe, then why did he have a powerful and near indiscriminate pokemon with him? 

The clues the man casually dropped didn’t quite match with each other. 

Like the fact that despite having pokemon, the man did not carry around pokeballs and used a different storage system.

(It made him wonder if that meant his phampy like pokemon can be caught with a regular pokeball, but considering that he might have another pokemon of equal strength, he didn’t want to test this.)

“I see,” Giovanni hummed. “Do you want mind talking about what your region? What kind of pokemons are common?”

“Hmm? Oh, a lot of the land is rocky and covered in moss. There are barely any animals around on land, air, and sea. It’s actually a quite barren place.”

Barren? His pokemon suggested otherwise. He had to be lying or at least exaggerating. 

… Perhaps it was some kind of desert inland with not a lot of fertile coast. Did that mean his pokemon ate moss? No, that was making assumptions without firm evidence. Perhaps his people made do with animals instead of pokemon.

He wondered what such a life was like.

“So how many do you intend to catch? The three pokemons you want to catch are all plentiful in the area.”

“Well… I want to catch as many as I can,” he said and showed him the camping pack that he had been hauling around. He brought it around to his front and opened -.

“What the hell? Why do you need that many pokeballs?” he asked incredulously as he saw at least a hundred minituarized pokeballs. 

“I just said it. I want to catch as many as I can,” he replied. “I’m actually in charge of a lot of ecological problems back home, so I have to think in bigger terms. Since your rattatas are known for their strange genetic diversity, I probably won’t catch more than half a dozen. Caterpies and pidgeys, I want to catch at least a hundred of each.”

Giovanni stared at the foreigner.

A hundred caterpies and pidgeys?

“Can you even feed them all?”

“I definitely can! But I won’t need to until I go back home, right? Your pokeballs are stasis chambers.”

That’s not exactly how pokeballs have been describe in his hometown. “Do you mean that they slow down their metabolism?” he asked, using nerd words because, hey, the man was responsible for “ecological problems,” so he had to know those words, right?

“Oh~, it only slows metabolism? I should have asked your people for some books on how pokeballs work.”

“And what is this stasis chamber?” he asked the man in return.

“It’s something that stops the metabolism and keeps any object, inanimate or alive, in as pristine condition as long as the power to the chamber continues. I don’t have one on me right now, so I can’t show it to you. Sorry about that.”

“No, no. It’s not a problem.” But the fact that such technology existed was tantalizing to Giovanni. It could be used to save comrades … or transport prisoners of war. 

After a while of observing the man amateurishly trying to look for pokemon among the roadside, he sighed. “Would you like me to show you how to find the pokemon?” he asked. 

The man turned around and grinned. “I would. I’m trying to do this as vanilla as possible. I didn’t realize just how dependent I am on my scanners.”

Scanners? 

“What do you mean as ‘vanilla’ as possible?”

“Oh! That’s kind of like our term for doing things as true to classic or normally as it is intended. Like how vanilla is the default flavor for ice creams.”

Vanilla.

Hmm.

Yes, he could see how such a term might come about … if vanilla was cheap enough to become the default flavor. Vanilla was expensive in Kanto. Raw vanilla actually had the same price as silver in weight, never mind the processed products. 

“Alright then, let me show you how to find pidgeys. First of all, they prefer the treetops when there are no food on the ground, and they prefer high branches compared to caterpies which like the tree trunks and low branches. Do you mind loaning me a pokeball?”

“Sure!”

The man had the enthusiasm of a child. Did he never catch a pokemon of his own or something? 

… Ugh, he was going to following the foreigner for a long time, wasn’t he? A hundred caterpies and pidgeys? Even a veteran trainer would tkae a long time to collect them all.