The guys headed outside through the back of the house, it was a bit chilly but not really cold. The bright sun was a warm and welcome help. Elyan's dad's huge greenhouse was very close to the house. They could see the vast green inside the see-through plastic walls covering the whole place. Elyan opened the door for them and a light breeze caressed their faces gently, and made them instantly attracted to the place. They went in, and didn't stop walking until they were right in the middle, completely surrounded by all kinds of plants of all sizes, trees and roots, healthy and nurtured green all around them.

Serena closed her eyes and breathed in the atmosphere. She identified many multifaceted aromas—all of them pleasant—which reached her nose and then filled her lungs.

"Check this out," Elyan said. Then he led them all the way to the far back of the greenhouse, where there was plenty of empty space, and the ground seemed ready and eager to be planted upon.

"This is my space, I can plant whatever I want here. Do you want to transplant some seeds?"

"Of course!" Ash cried.

"Yeah, me too," Serena said. "This place is awesome Elyan."

"Yeah, I know, it's probably my favorite place. I spend way too much time in here."

Elyan grabbed a seed tray from a table next to the see through wall at the back, then placed it down right next to a nice zone on the ground and waved at the guys to kneel down with him.

"These are ready to be planted," he said. Then he grabbed one of the seeds from the tray and looked at it closely. "Oran berries, all of them. You can plant a few of them if you want, and I'll save all of the berries that come out of it for when you come back. If you want to come back, of course."

Both Ash and Serena eagerly accepted his invitation and moved the ground around very softly before placing some seeds on it.

"I have to ask you again Elyan. Are you sure you don't want to come with us?" Serena asked.

"I'm afraid I am," Elyan replied. "It's not that I don't want to go, it's just that I know I'm not good, regardless of how attractive your offer seems, and how awesome it would be to travel with you. But I have a good thing going here. Well, maybe it's not that good, but it's definitely a thing."

"Hey Elyan!" Ash shouted while next to a tree, a bit far from them. "What's this?"

"How did he get there so quickly?" Elyan asked Serena as they went over to him.

"Oh, you won't be surprised once you get to know him a bit better."

Ash was pointing at a berry tree which barely surpassed him in stature. A pink berry of giant proportions hung from one of its branches with difficulty.

"That's a pecha berry," Elyan casually replied.

"But why is it so big?"

"I don't know, it's probably an aberration, maybe it's two of them, I don't know. You can take it if you want, in fact grab as many as you want. They might come in handy for your trip."

Ash didn't quite listen to Elyan, he mainly kept staring at the over-sized berry, almost not wanting to disturb its exceptional existence, but without being able to leave it alone at the same time. He touched it with the tip of his finger, and upon contact the giant berry fell from the tree and hit him in the head. Serena was right next to him, she managed to catch the berry before it fell in the ground.

"Oh snap!" Elyan exclaimed.

"Are you okay Ash?" Serena asked.

Ash had no time to answer. As soon as the berry fell from his head and into Serena's hands, it broke in half, and then it started coming apart. It was quite a bizarre situation as it was, with the giant berry tearing itself apart, but the weirdness escalated when two eggs were revealed to have been inside the pecha berry. The three of them noticed the eggs, but none of them knew how to react. Ash barely managed to react in time. He held one egg on his hand, but sensed that the second one would slip past his reach.

"Serena! Please catch that one!" He screamed. And the tone of his voice helped Serena react just in time to drop the remnants of the berry and hold the egg safely on her hands. The pair sighed, meanwhile Elyan was speechless and dumbfounded. Ash and Serena stood right next to each other, analyzing the situation. They faced each other while holding the eggs, which touched, and then started hatching upon contact. It was quite an eerie scene. Ash had instantly accepted the event and was enthusiastically awaiting its resolution, and he had passed his eagerness onto Serena, who was likewise expectant and with a smile on her face.

The shells broke at the same time. Firstly, from Serena's egg, the top was separated from the bottom with a horizontal cut, and the top suddenly raised, as if it were am impromptu hat for the newborn pokemon inside. A soft and tender white little beast showed its small head and its blue nose, with a frozen drop hanging from its tip. It opened its eyes and blinked them adorably at Serena, who gasped from the barely bearable cuteness. The baby cubchoo moved its head and hit the egg on Ash's hand, revealing yet another furry baby with a blue nose on Ash's arms. Both Ash and Serena were ecstatic and full of joy. They exchanged looks at each other and at the newborn babies as they marveled at the miracle of life.

Meanwhile Elyan whispered some curse words to himself, and then started tearing apart every single berry he could grab from the trees. He then softly, gently, carved into every single one of them, hoping to find more eggs, being unsuccessful every single time.

"What's going on!" He cried out.

"Mine's a girl," Ash said, without minding Elyan's mad fit at all.

"Oh dear, really? Mine's a boy. How cute!" Serena added, likewise casually.

"Guys! Why aren't you freaking out? Haven't you realized what just happened? A pokemon hatched from a berry. Seriously, why aren't you surprised?"

"We are."

"No you're not, You've just accepted it like it happens every day, I mean look at you, you're already cuddling with them like they didn't come out of a berry! We have to kill them, it's a wicked enchantment man! I just know it."

"What!" Ash cried out.

"We are not killing them Elyan, are you crazy?" Serena said as she petted the jolly baby's belly with her index finger, quite incensed at Elyan.

"Okay fine. But, but you simply accepted it like it's nothing? Is stuff like this usual fare for you trainers? Or am I being pranked? Is Blaine behind this? You know he loves whoopie cushions right? And if you don't react surprised and kind of angry every time you sit on one of them, then he gets mad."

"Calm down Elyan, come take a look at the babies."

"Oh my God Ash, this is the best thing in the world."

"I know."

"Isn't he the cutest?"

"Okay, so this is how it is huh," Elyan said mischievously. "If you don't want to speak of this, then I'll find somebody who'll answer me!"

Elyan then ran out of the greenhouse like a madman, while Ash and Serena stayed right where they were, petting the babies. Ash raised the little baby cubchoo over his head.

"Pikachu, where are you?" He shouted. A moment later Pikachu popped his head over the greenery and went to meet his trainer. He climbed on top of Ash and looked at the cubchoo with a visible smile on his red-dotted face. Meanwhile Serena raised her baby cubchoo over her head too, and then reached his little blue nose to her own and cuddled with him.

"You know this is actually quite unusual, I have to say," she said.

"I agree, I've never heard of anything like this happening before, but who cares, they are the cutest pokemon ever, aren't they Pikachu?"

Pikachu wasn't able to answer. Elyan hurried to them holding his dad's arm.

"Explain this to me, please," he said.

His dad said nothing, but he did start inspecting the zone. He looked at the tree, knelt down right next to the residues of the peculiar berry, while holding his hairy chin with his hand, and then he got up.

"Well… I have no idea," he said. "Cubchoos and Beartic are pretty common in Gudrut."

"That's not good enough for me dad. Can you at least explain why these guys have taken it so lightly? You yourself seem rather unmoved by it."

"I'm not sure what happened Elyan. If I had to forward a guess, I'd say, that a particularly smart beartic somehow sneaked in here inconspicuously, perhaps while in danger, and placed its eggs somewhere around here, I guess inside a berry somehow? Perhaps on the still barely germinated root? Nah, I don't think so, I guess inside the berry is my best guess."

"I don't know what I believe the least, that they came from a berry or that these guys seem unmoved by that."

"What should we do with them?" Ash asked.

"I'm also not sure about that," Elyan's dad said. "They seemed to have latched on to the two of you almost immediately." As he said this, Ash's cubchoo literally sank her tender claws into his chest. Serena herself was not willing to release her cubchoo's belly from the hold of her hands.

"Perhaps, seeing as you are trainers, as well as the first ones the cubchoos saw, if you'd be gracious enough to raise them we'd be very thankful. Don't feel obliged to do so however, I'm sure Juliette and I would be able to acclimate them to us in no time."

"I very much want for her to be part of my team," Ash said.

"Yeah, you won't be able to take him away from me," Serena seconded him.

"Very well then, they are all yours."

"So that just happened," Elyan said. "And it seems like you're used to things like that happening to you, whereas all I have to wait for the rest of this day is for an old guy to get out of my bathroom, and to avoid walking in at the wrong time, so as not to encounter him as he comes out, so as not to hear his 'do not go in there' joke for the thousandth time. Dad, I'm leaving."

"Okay, are you going to the store? Can you get me a lunala bar? Or maybe two, you know what, bring me too please."

"No, I'm leaving, I'm out of here. I'm going traveling with these guys."

"What? Nice one. What? But what about your job?"

"Screw that, no, but seriously."

"Well, I wish you didn't. Maybe wait and think about it for a while?"

"No. To be honest with you, I've thought about quitting my pseudo-job a lot, certainly every time the word 'nipple' appears on my computer screen, written by Chad, or Shane, or Jeff or Nate, always a new and happy trainer ready to triumph in life. Those kids don't know the difference between glands and muscles dad, they really don't, and they are out there being researchers and all, that's worrying! I'm dead set on it."

"Listen, if you're so 'dead set' on it like you say, if that's the case, then I'll present myself to fill the vacant you'll leave for the internship tomorrow first thing in the morning."

"Oh crap. I guess I can't go back on it. Who cares, this feels right, you guys, Ash and Serena, you're doing it. Unlike my dad and his plants, unlike my mom and her baking. Unlike Agnes and her books, unlike me hosting old guys and filtering obscenities, you guys are doing it! Can I still go traveling with you?"

"Yeah sure," Ash said.

"Alright!" Elyan celebrated.

Agnes suddenly walked in. "Hey, Juliette went to the store and I didn't want to be left alone with Blaine," she said. "He's alright, but I just didn't want to listen to him anymore."

"Hey Agnes, guess what, I'm a pokemon… uh… traveler, now," Elyan said.

"What?"

"I'm leaving with Ash and Serena, I'm going places, literally."

"Wow," Agnes said, not highly amused. "I thought you were at least stable, what? You think you'll become the next league champion or something?"

"I have to be honest with you, that's not the reaction I was looking for," Elyan said. "But, doesn't matter, I'll show you."

"What will you show me, do you even have a pokemon?"

"No."

"So, what are you thinking?"

"…I don't know."

"You'll get one in no time, I promise," Ash said nonchalantly. He reassured Elyan, who opened his eyes a little bit more.

"See, man, we're doing it."

"What do you know about training?" Agnes asked again. She seemed annoyed all of the sudden.

"…I know all about it, I must," Elyan said. "My parents are teachers after all, I have it in my blood. You'll see, I'll come back better than I left, when I leave. When are we leaving guys?"

"Tomorrow morning I guess," Ash said. Serena nodded. "For the Maisoram gym."

"Yeah, what they said," Elyan said, very decisively.