“Farfetch’d” a brown bird squawks and Heath startled to become awake. He jumps out of bed and screams like a little girl with his eyes widened to find out what scared him. Seeing the brown duck looking at him plainly, Heath rubbed his eyes in irritation.

“Ahhhhhhhhh,” Heath quickly calmed down once he saw his new team member and instantaneously became pissed.

“Why the fuck are you waking me up so early?” Heath says in a deep voice trying to redeem his self-esteem. Guts slowly blink while Heath sits down and sighs.

‘What is wrong with him, Piplup never wakes me up like that.’ Heath grumbles to himself as he looked for the missing penguin. He spots a lump under the cover and immediately recognizes its shape as he then summons all of his consciousness to wish for a god to smite the both of them. After seeing the wish fail, he glares at Guts as he starts to regret his decision.

“Are you finally calm?” Guts asked. Heath wants to hit the duck for asking that stupid question but when he sees the menacing look on his face and the dangerously lethal leek that was the same murder weapon used to splatter the strongest pokémon he has met in his life so far, Heath made a conscious decision to save his own life by not replying sarcastically but sighed instead.

“Yes” Heath swallowed.

“Good, feed me. I am hungry” Guts orders. Heath sighs once again at the request. Heath ignored the quest to go back to sleep but as a result Guts decided that after a couple of minutes of inactivity, going for a poke using an abnormally large leek would be the best solution.

‘If this continues, I’m never going back to sleep’. Heath thought as he reached over and grabbed the alarm clock. He turns it around, seeing that it’s around an hour or two before the time that he normally gets up.

‘My precious sleep’ Heath internally cried and figured that if he was going to feed Guts that he might as well start his day and feed the pokémon a little early. Heath gets up once more and stretches his body which was still sore from yesterday.

Heath then takes a shower and then going to brush his teeth and fix his hair, he notices two exaggerated bags under his eyes which put him in a fouler mood. Heath then puts Guts back in his pokéball and before going downstairs where he hears a bunch of scrambling. Not being able to see due to the darkness of the downstairs, Heath cautiously continued his descent down the stairs only to find Professor Birch, who similar to him had bags under his eyes but unlike him, Birch was wearing the same plain clothes from yesterday and had a cup of steaming coffee that at this moment Heath could not help but be desperate for.

‘I wonder if everything’s okay with May and him.’ Heath ponders as he asks

“What are doing here Professor?”

Birch sighs and looks away for a second before scratching his head and admitting.

“Sophie kicked me out for the night. I can’t blame her since unknowingly, I’ve been shunning my daughter. Thanks to you I found out now, rather than later when she could drift away from us or worse! get herself killed.” Birch said has he faked a laugh.

A quiet spell was casted as the two of them looked away, Heath not knowing what to say. He figured that Birch probably felt depressed from treating his daughter wrong but knowing that it was over, Heath was he was glad that everything was solved now.

“Im sorry?” Heath replied awkwardly and coughed to relieve the tension.

‘Consoling May was one thing but Birch is another thing all together’

“No need, I’m quite happy that we’ve solved this issue. May and I have been at each other’s heads for the longest time but I didn’t know why. She’s my little girl, she my first child so when she tells me she wants to get next to these potentially dangerous pokémon who have good and bad days like humans that occasionally come through my lab. Of course, I want to shield her from it. I love May but I loathe the Idea of letting her do something that’s so dangerous.” Birch continued.

“I’m sorry for spring this on you, it’s just I haven’t been able to just accept her wishes yet” Birch sighed.

“What exactly are May’s wishes?”

“To help around and to feed the pokémon, which would eventually led up to her being able to go on a pokémon adventure”

“Well, she’s strong and this is probably for the best in the long run. She becomes capable and you can trust her to do things that you might not be able to trust other trainers with” Heath offered.

“May is just like her mother so I know, I’m just scared. It’s just when you have a child, you can’t stand to see her go off on her on. It was like the other day when she was my little girl and we would go to Oak’s lab to see his pokémon.” Birch sighed and another long quiet spell was casted between the two of them. Heath felt like it wasn’t his place to intervene at this point and Birch felt like relying on a kid who’s his daughter’s age would be ill advised. This happened for a couple of minutes until a pop was heard and Guts came out again. Birch heard the noise and quickly snapped his head around and saw a pokémon he wasn’t all too familiar with.

“What?!?” Birch blurted out.

‘When did Guts get out of his Pokéball. I didn’t even know he could do that’ Heath could see his pokémon standing there. Taking advantage of Birch’s drastically increasing curiosity, Heath decided to capitalize on the subject change.

“I was in the forest yesterday and I stumbled across this Galarian Farfetch’d. He ran off but luckily I found him and I managed to make him apart of my team.” Heath explained quickly.

“Hello bigger human” Guts squawked and then looked at Heath.

“I am hungry”

Heath ignored the pokémon and looked at Birch who made a creepy smile that was so powerful that it sent sent a small chill down his spine.

“Is Birch trying to imitate scary face?”

Birch noticing this quickly stopped his expression, replacing it with a regular awkward smile.

“I’m sorry, I’ve just never seen a Galarian Farfetch’d. Galar just recently made contact with us for treaties and they also signed not too long ago. Unfortunately, They’re Dynamaxing is unable to the rest of us.”

‘I guess they would know about that. I was hoping they wouldn’t know everything but if they know about Dynamaxing they should know about Megas, that cancels my dream of making a fortune.’ Heath said disappointed.

“Human feed me” Guts asked once more. Heath sighed but did as it was asked and nabbed some food for pokémon and a bowl. He set in front of the duck before Sitting in one of the unoccupied chairs.

“So may I analyze it?” Birch beamed a charming smile to with Heath shot down with a head shake.

‘I simply don’t know if his testing would uncover Heath’s secret. I can’t take the chance’ Heath thought simultaneously. He anticipated this would happen, but he thought it would be for Piplup.

“No, I’m sorry Guts probably wouldn’t like to have an examination.

“But-”

“ I’m sorry but I’m afraid that although Guts is a good pokémon. He’d mostly likely would clobber you with the leek before you had a chance to say hi, then move on to me, isn’t that right Guts” Heath joked but was evidently still mad at Guts for waking him up. Heath looked over and saw Guts was still eating and wasn’t paying any mind to him and the professor.

‘I guess the turning it really took a lot of energy. He’s acting like he’s starving and he was in his pokéball and normally a pokémon‘s hunger should be a lot more robust than humans.’ Heath analyzed before making a sad face

‘I should get him some better-quality food. I feel kind of bad now for being neglectful’ Heath smacked his teeth and that for the next time he would turn a pokémon. He was then reminded of all of the pokémon he had captured before Farfetch’d.

“Professor..” Heath called

“So, you’ll let me!!?” Birch got excited and it seemed that work put his family problems immediately to the side while his curiosity over a rare pokémon for the region they were in took over.

“No anyways but I do have pokémon that you may be interested in. I got them during my time in the forest before I caught Guts.” Heath offered

“Really how many?” Birch eyes widened.

“Four” Heath emphasized with three fingers, suddenly becoming embarrassed as he proceeded to correct his fingers and put his hands down as simultaneously. Birch chuckled at the mistake but continued questioning.

“Where are they?”

“In my SSD, I figured that would be best. They could have broken out even with the pokéball’s calming effect” Heath replied.

“Smart, the calming effect does work on most pokémon but what’s most paramount is the stasis effect. Stasis is inflicted on most if not everything in the SSD’s and prevents them from getting hungry so fast though I recommend not using that on your personal pokémon, so don’t like that.” Birch paused to look at the time from his PokéGear”

“Go get them for me and I’ll evaluate them. I have a meeting soon but I wanna do this for you really quickly and depending on how good they are, I’ll give an estimate. I’ll even give you a bonus for getting that amount.” Birch explained.

Heath nodded and headed upstairs but midway through Heath stopped as he remembered something.

“I also have some pokémon carcasses, Max said that you would take them?” Heath added. Birch popped his head out to where Heath could see him before saying.

“Bring everything that I might be interested in. It might take a while but I can get through them while you start on your task which at this current rate, I might just change it to catching pokémon for the beginning trainers. I needed someone who would be willing to capture pokémon in the forest for starting trainers. Either members who aren’t in the VIP category or just amateur trainers who need their first pokémon. VIP members are really the only ones who get to have regional starters, otherwise they usually get a Nidorans or Rattatas.” Birch admitted

Heath was a little happy with the mention of a job change. Even though he didn’t mind feeding the pokémon early, he felt like the amount of work that he performed was simply not enough to have an apartment taken solely for himself and hopefully he could start pulling his weight.

“I hope May doesn’t mind feeding them in the morning. They recently got into the habit of getting food so early” Heath quipped

“Well, it’s looking May and Max will have start waking up early soon.”

Laughter was heard resoundingly through the lab. Heath and continued to go to his apartment connected through the lab, nodding along the way trying to create different types of situations.

‘I am going to need some way to explain this sudden growth of my Pokémon. At least at the beginning. There’s a lot of things I don’t know and I would rather everyone be in the dark.’ Heath thought. With potential explanations of the reason for his Pokémon’s explosive growth being committed to memory, he soon reached his bag where he took out all of the pokéballs that he had in the SSD. Heath also took the bag with him, not wanting to get carcass fluid all over the place and made his way downstairs where he found a table and laid all of the balls in no particular order.

“Can you put them over there” Birch directed him in where to place the carcasses of the dead pokémon he collected. Heath put the items in their proper place and then went to feed all of the pokémon since Birch would be busy for the remaining time the professor had left. Over the next couple of hours Heath would spend socializing with most of the pokémon in the back until Max and May arrived quietly behind him.