Chapter 8: Builder Boys
Matty looked down at the small stall. It was on the outskirts of town and stood far from the other buildings. It was similar to a child's lemonade stand, made of a crude wooden crate. Across it, a banner read, “Jack’s Building and Gym”. Behind the small box, there was a smattering of what seemed to be gym equipment. They had everything from crude dumbells formed from rocks lashed to sticks to hand-carved stone barbells. At the very back, some targets and dummies were sitting in a row. Matty looked around and noticed a small crudely drawn sign. It said: “Out for lunch. Feel free to use gym equipment until our return”. Shrugging, Matty sent out Pancake and Grub. Matty set a small barbell on Pancake’s leaf and carried Grub as a weight.
After around thirty minutes of strength-training exercises, Matty decided it was time for a break. Pancake was doing her best to keep up but could barely go fast enough and had started falling behind. “Don't worry, you’re doing great!” Matty said. He smiled down at Pancake and crouched down to scratch her leaf. “Just because Aura can run fast and fight like a monster, doesn’t mean that she’s better than you.” (somewhere in the distance, for some reason, Aura suddenly felt extremely offended) “Just do your best, and you’ll do great.”
After consoling Pancake some more, Matty sat with her and Grub, cooling off and stretching after their tough workout. Walking up to them, a crowd of small child-shaped humanoids of various colors walked up. They all had extremely defined muscles for their size; some were tannish and had red markings and carried wooden beams, and the others were solid grey and had three parallel tan crests. Walking out of the crowd, one of them spoke, HI! “Wait, did you just talk?” Matty looked at the creature, astounded. “I am not a Pokemon!” it cried. Muttering to itself about stupid older people and their bad eyes, it explained: “These Pokemon are my friends, and you will be nice to them. No catching them either.” On closer inspection, Matty noticed that he was wearing dusty pants and a wrinkled shirt and was just an extremely dirty child. “Are these your Polkemon?” Matty asked. The small boy looked up angrily. “NO! Like I said before, they are my friends!” Matty quickly apologised and asked his name. “My name is Jack”. After calming down a bit, the boy explained: “These Machop and Timburr are my parents' Pokemon’s children, so I was practically raised alongside them. The ones with red spots and wooden beams are Timburr, and the fully grey ones with the crests are Machop. We decided to run a small business here in town. We have an exercise gym for both Pokemon and people.”
When Jack had calmed down and finished explaining, Matty looked at the price sheet on the sign. The gym was priced by the day and had a membership option that paid by the month. There also were special options that boasted personal training to boost skills and abilities for people and Pokemon. They also advertised a move training camp. Next to the list of gym prices, the construction side was rather small. It was a reasonably priced day rate and showed material costs.
After looking the prices up and down, Matty decided to leave Pancake in Jack's care for a few days and hire four Machops to help put up his house. After he had paid Jack, Matty bent down and patted Pancake on her leaf. “Listen, I know you want to get stronger, so why not stay here a while? Jack seems nice, and you could even get to know some more Pokemon.” Pancake looked up at him with watery eyes but nodded and waddled over to Jack. Matty then paid for a basic building crew and started walking back.
Matty led the crew over to his growing farm, walking ahead so he could introduce them to Aura so that she would not attack them. The Timburrs carried their beams and some basic tools, and the Machops had a backpack full of supplies. While he was gone, the camp had not changed much. Matty’s lean to sat in a corner, and the berry field was growing nicely. The builders looked over his progress, noting the marked area and pile of lumber and split planks. They quickly went to work, compacting the marked area until it was flat, and then stopped, looking to Matty. He inspected the area and saw that it was packed well, both even and hard.
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“Okay, good job. Do you guys want a break, or to start on the foundation?”
The two Machops walked into the woods and disappeared, and the Timburrs walked towards the pre-cut lumber. They began to square it and take the bark off with a draw knife, a blade between two handles. Matty then directed them to cut slots so the beams could fit together. After they had used almost half the logs, the Machops that had walked off came back with several boulders. They carried them in some kind of harness and laid them next to the worksite. All four Pokemon walked up to the largest of the boulders and started chipping away at it. After about an hour, the stack of boulders was reduced to a pile of rough bricks. Noticing the commotion, Aura had come over to observe. When the Machops were carrying the loads of bricks to the house, she helped by lifting one onto her small back and walked it over.
While the Pokemon continued the process of laying the bricks, Matty pulled out his small pot and began making a stew for dinner. He gathered some berries from the woods, picked some herbs his guide said were aromatic and contained nutrients. After he had a nice broth going, he called Aura to help him. Thirty minutes later, the stew had a nice fish smell and some chunks of white meat in it. Aura was sitting at the edge of camp, messily enjoying a pile of something fishy that smelled terrible. The Machops finished laying the bricks, cementing them with a cement slurry that they had gotten from their packs. Smelling the stew, they all washed up in the river and sat down next to him.
After the building crew had eaten their fill (Aura had eaten well already, and Grub didn’t need to eat), they looked towards Matty. “I just want to thank you so much for helping me out today. Do you guys need to go back to town, or do you guys want to camp out?” One of the Machops looked at him and made some hand gestures he didn't recognise. After a minute of confused back and forth, the Machop sighed and made a triangle with its hands, and then pointed to the ground. Realising it had been trying to say they wanted to camp here, Matty laughed and started to help them set up.
They set up a basic tent using the tarp Matty had left over, and all went to sleep. Matty looked at the foundation for his house and the sleeping Pokemon nearby. The building crew snored in a big pile under their makeshift tent, Aura swung ominously from the trees, keeping watch from above, and Grub sat where he had been left, resting peacefully. Matty missed Pancake but hoped she was doing well and that Jack had taken care of her.
Aura hung from a tree, swaying in the breeze. The remains of the [RiverPrey] she had caught and killed for Matty had filled her up quite nicely, and her rest had not been disturbed by any [Enemies] yet. She [Felt] a new [Ability] coming to the surface, but had waited for the right time to test it out. Aura watched and waited.
The wild Munchlax crept through the brush. It knew now, after casing the camp and watching several smaller Pokemon be defeated, to avoid the patches of web and the area where the {It} hunted. Crawling carefully through the brush, it had almost reached the fence, behind which stood its prize. Closer, closer, SNAP. Munchlax looked down, horrified. It had stepped on a stick and possibly alerted {It}. Suddenly, without warning, {It} swung from a tree and landed directly in front of them. Munchlax knew that he had two options to escape, either by fighting or running away. {It} made that choice for him when it used something he hadn’t seen before. A dark energy flowed around {It}. Space and darkness seemed to stretch in several directions before consolidating around the angry spider. The ball of darkness shifted, a maw of darkness of fear opening up and preparing to swallow him. Munchlax wisely decided to bolt as fast as he possibly could.
Aura watched as the [Enemy] fled from her in fear. Her new [Ability] seemed to mess with the target's perception, showing her as a massively dangerous threat. Happy to have defended the [Nest] once more, she returned to her tree vigil.
Matty woke up to hammering. Climbing out of his lean-to, he saw the building crew hard at work. The Timburr were putting more framing together, the Machops brought more wood, and the work was going along nicely. Matty sat by, helping when they needed it, getting ready to prepare lunch.
What would you prefer?
