Unlike his aides, Professor Elm came on his journey with all six of his carrying slots filled. Ethan was fairly sure in his reading that the professor could have brought up to eight, but maybe being in a different region changed that around. After all, Professor Elm was the main pokemon professor of Johto.

Anyways, Ethan stood back to give the enthusiastic gentleman some room, just in case he had some larger friends.

Furret was already out and about, having been spotted chasing Pachirisu in a game of tag. The ferret pokemon was nimble and swift, easily able to keep up with Pachirisu’s dip, dives, and dodges, but always seeming to miss. If he was being honest, he was pretty sure that Ferret was just missing on purpose to continue being the ‘tagger’.

He blinked his eyes at the flick of the professor's wrist, leaning forward and focusing in on whatever creature would appear from the pokeballs in his grasp. With a casual toss, Professor Elm tossed three pokeballs out at once, revealing some pokemon that Ethan was very much familiar with. Also, these three were a given, at least in Ethan’s mind.

Fire, water, and grass were the staples of all the starter pokemon from what he could remember, and Johto’s starters were ones he’d played with quite a bit. Although he’d normally replace them in his playthrough before they reached their final evolutions, like those before him.

“Megannnnium!”

“Tyyyyyyyyy-Phlo!”

“Feral! Feraligatooooor!”

All the pokemon let out cries upon their appearance, then noticing their counterparts greeted one another.

All three of the pokemon looked exactly like he remembered from their little sprites on Earth, but it was slightly jarring to see that Typhlosion wasn’t constantly emitting jets of flame out the ring of what looked to be organic crevices around its neck. It looked more like a lizard than he thought it would.

As he finished his very quick inspection, the professor tossed out two more balls. Out of the first came a surprise—A pokemon Ethan didn’t expect to see the professor owning. It might have been a little short sided of him to guess what a professor should have, as he himself had quite an eclectic group, but a Loudred was a surprise.

“LOOOOOOUUUUDDDD!”

Ethan winced and quickly covered his ears as an earth-shattering battle cry came from the frankly unbelievable anatomical mouth of the purple loudspeaker before him. The professor chopped the pokemon right on top of its head, causing its gaping maw to close with a slight jolt of surprise. “Stop that! Sometimes, I wonder who taught you to be so loud…” The professor chided, silencing the now grumpy pokemon.

When Ethan turned to look for the other pokemon who should have been released, he didn’t spot it immediately. The only reason he did spot it, was because it was rather obvious that he wasn’t growing any new berry trees near the front of his home.

Standing motionless like a thick and newly sprouting tree, a Sudowoodo tried to hide. Sensing that it had failed in its attempt at subterfuge, it lowered its arms and spun around to look at Ethan with a small playful smile. Ethan mockingly pointed to his eyes and then at the pokemon, causing it to giggle.

“Run free my pokemon! For you have been granted access to this ranch’s fine grounds! Berries galore! No fighting other pokemon, unless consensual and on the training field over yonder, and listen to anything this man says during our stay.” Elm gestured over toward Ethan, who waved at the assembled squadron. “NOW! I SHALL RETURN TO RESEARCH!”

The professor quickly sprinted off towards the meadow, back to where the Oddish Sprouts were, leaving Ethan alone in front of his pokemon. He shrugged as they all looked at him. “What he said. Enjoy yourselves, play, have some fun, eat some berries—whatever you wanna do. If you need help with anything or have questions, find me and I’ll do my best.”

All of the pokemon murmured to one another as they inspected their surroundings. The Meganium quickly made their choice, turning and wandering into the nearby berry fields to grab a snack straight from the canopies with its long neck, reminding Ethan of some sort of long-neck dinosaur. Sudowoodo followed along after it, more than happy to be among the trees.

The Typlosion walked off up the cobbled path, aiming on exploring its options. Feraligator stuck its nose up into the air, sniffed a few times, then turned and looked off past his trees, in the exact direction of the pond.

Ethan raised a brow as the croc sauntered forward, pushing its way through his fields of berries at a diagonal directly toward the closest water source. That wasn’t what he expected, but neat to see.

The last pokemon around was Loudred who looked unsure about what to do. It hemmed and hawed—which was a horrifying sight, if he was being honest—before looking towards Ethan with its arms crossed. It nodded once, seemingly making up its mind, before walking forward and speaking its name a few times.

“Loud-Loudred-Red.”

“You wanna follow me? Sure, you can tag along. I’m just going to check on my little garden of food and make sure my pokemon are doing alright. If you find something you wanna do along the way, go for it.” Ethan wasn’t sure if that was what Loudred wanted, but it felt like a solid guess.

Luckily for him, he seemed to be spot on. Loudred nodded and then stood next to him, waiting for him to lead the way.

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The first order of business on Ethan’s list was to check on his garden of fruits and vegetables. Eating berries was fine, but he was really looking forward to expanding his selections of meals past ‘Rice with X’. Back on Earth, he hardly ever ate rice, and cooking it was frankly a pain. So, when he came across the small sprouts of wheat poking their heads up through the soft soil, a blanket of gold taking root, he couldn’t help but make sure that everything was well and good.

While he had his fair share of berry trees, it wasn’t like they had all grown properly on their first go around. The originals, the ones he’d planted in the early days, often wilted or never even sprouted to begin with. Not that all of them had issues growing, but Ethan wasn’t a botanical genius. He planted the seeds, watered the ground, and prayed. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it failed.

Everything started growing smoothly once the Oddish had found their way here. It didn’t take long at all to find the correlation between the plants suddenly growing perfectly and their arrival. It also didn’t take a mastermind to know that fully grown trees didn’t grow to their full height in a month without outside factors—world of pokemon or not.

From what he could tell with his minimal knowledge of botany, everything in his garden was well in order. Grabbing a small sack from within his new vest’s pocket, Ethan went around and collected the ripened fruit and veggies to bring back home. As he worked, he spoke aloud. “Loudred, want to help out? I’m not sure what your species eats, but if you can eat normal fruits and veggies, I’ll let you try some out.”

With a garble of a reply that sounded like the grinding of stones, Loudred started to help gather ripened fruits. The purple brick of a pokemon avoided the vegetables, either unsure of if they were ripe or not or not liking them in general, but any help was fine.

Once Ethan finished, he plucked off a final Strawberry and held it out to Loudred. The pokemon looked at the fruit with a curious gaze, before taking it from his grasp and tossing the miniscule fruit into its gaping maw.

As Loudred chewed the tiny red fruit with big chomps and smacks of its lips, Ethan took a moment to inspect the pokemon’s anatomy.

To put it bluntly, Ethan had no clue how this pokemon could even be alive. Its ‘head’ was its torso, with its mouth taking up a solid 70% of its mass. It had four prominent, blocky white teeth which coincided with its general blocky structure. Its arms were fairly slim when compared to its much thicker, two toed legs and feet, and its ears were forward facing and looked like speakers.

Where was its stomach? The back of its mouth was basically where its spine should be. Where were its heart and intestines? All he could see was… mouth.

As Loudred licked its lips with its massive tongue, a smile tugging at its lips from the treat, Ethan put the thoughts out of his mind. There were bound to be tons of pokemon who were mysteries with how they functioned. Onix, an enormous creature of bound boulders, was probably up there with the best of them. Were they made entirely of rocks? Or was there flesh within? He’d never know, but he was curious.

“Want some more?” Ethan asked the obviously well functioning creature before him, anatomical anomaly or not.

“Loud.” Loudred nodded as he held his hands out, cupping them together. Ethan gave him another strawberry, some blueberries, and blackberries.

As Loudred tossed them into its mouth, Ethan figured he probably should work on an orchard of non-berry fruits as well. Apples, Oranges, Bananas, Peaches, Mangos… With the help of grass type pokemon, environmental factors might not matter.

Ethan walked off to check on Shuckle, just to make sure his berry bud wasn’t having a panic attack by all the new visitors. Loudred plodded along behind him, using its absurd tongue to dig into the corners of its mouth, looking for leftover pieces of the fruit it just ate.

As Ethan arrived at Shuckle’s hole, he gently closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and sighed.

Sticking out of the tiny burrow entrance was the back end of what Ethan assumed to be Typhlosion. Its two back legs kicked in the air uselessly as it tried to ‘unstuck’ itself. It was too big to fit into the hole, but it had made the attempt. A calculated risk, but man was it bad at math.

The only thought running through Ethan’s mind as he and Loudred grabbed a leg and heaved was: ‘Shuckle is probably having a heart attack.’

With a jolt, the pokemon was loose. Ethan fell on his butt while Loudred fell onto its back, rocking back and forth with arms a’flailin, as Typhlosion was ripped from the earth. The lizard pokemon snorted, causing a flare of fire to jettison out from the hole in the back of its neck. It looked from Ethan to Loudred, then nodded it's thanks with a sheepish smile.

Loudred complained on the ground, which eventually had Typhlosion walk over and push the speaker-pokemon upright. Ethan walked to the hole and cupped his mouth. “Shuckle! Come out here!”

Ethan only had to wait a single second before what amounted to a ‘no way’ came back. “Shuuuuu!”

Ethan sighed and stuck his head in the hole. It was much too dark to make out anything. “I’ve told you time and time again, nobody is going to hurt you. I promised you this. Just… come on out and say hello to the professor's pokemon.”

Taking his head out of the hole, he looked back to the two pokemon watching him. “Shuckle is young and very afraid of others. Please be nice to him… bring up berries if you can.”

After a solid minute, Ethan spotted a tiny yellow noodle ever so slowly peeking out from the burrow. Ethan stood there with his arms crossed, an expectant look on his face. The yellow noodle wiggled back inside, then a few seconds later, the red shell of Shuckle was shoved forward. As Shuckle’s shell left its hole, two yellow legs swirled back inside from behind.

“Shu.” A sheen of blue flashed over the red as Shuckle gave a curt squeak, as if saying, ‘I am here. My job is done.’

Loudred walked forward, muttering his name quickly in clips, bits, and pieces, speaking to his berry buddy. The flashing of blue quickened as Loudred approached.

With a thud, Loudred sat down next to Shuckle’s red shell and then patted the shell gently. It continued speaking, and after a minute Shuckle’s noodle head peered out from its forward hole. “Shuuckle?”

“And as always, Ethan is right. Told you they wouldn’t hurt you. Have a little faith.” Ethan teased, causing Shuckle’s yellow cheeks to redden in embarrassment.

The fire lizard scuttled forward on all fours and joined the conversation. Shuckle looked wary, but then quickly smiled and rattled off its name with excitement. With a snort, Ethan guessed that the fire-starter brought up berries.

“You guys have some fun. Shuckle, ‌give them some berries from your stash if they ask. Maybe a little sippy-sip of your good stuff?” Ethan said as he turned to walk down back toward his home.

Shuckle paused in his conversation, looked at Ethan, narrowed his eyes, then shook his head. It seemed berry-juice wasn’t on the table today. “That’s fine. It's yours, you can choose what you do with it. The berries though, those are ours. So, they can get some of those.”

Shuckle nodded easily, that wasn’t even in question. Everyone should get berries.

After making it back to his house, Ethan came across his horde of Oddish speaking to one another in front of his home with looks of anger.

A mob had formed, and a group of angry Oddish was never good.