"Bribe? Nahh, not at all." Aiden waved the concern away with his non-sugar-coated hand. "More of an apology, really. I'm sure y'had other plans for your morning. I'll try to be quick, though," he promised. And if the dozen freshly iced apologies smoothed things over and gave him a better chance of starting off with a fire type, well... that would just be a coincidence. A wonderful and welcome one, to be sure.

"Well, Tate, it's lovely t'meet you." He grinned at the handshake-fistbump, then grabbed the pen. "Glad you like 'em! Hopefully they're good enough to make up for my chicken scratch, too," he joked. He started filling out the paperwork, writing slowly to make sure it was legible at all. If he wrote too fast, the letters just turned into nondescript lines. He was halfway through scrawling out a messy address when Tate mentioned a pokemon. He looked up from the page and beamed. "Absolutely! There's plenty for everyone."

His exuberant smile faded ever so slightly when he caught sight of the Rowlet. The fact that she was too fat to fly didn't bother him; the girth could help in battles. She'd be a bigger target, but a tackle from a large bird like her would hurt more than one from an average sized Rowlet. There were always silver linings to be found, always strategies to work with. And she loved food! Perfect trait for a trainer who loved to cook. If she'd been a fat Litten instead of a fat Rowlet, he would've grabbed her and run off with her without a second thought.

But she wasn't a Litten. She was a grass type. How well would a grass type fare in a team that would (hopefully) be full of fire types?

Aiden couldn't see himself choosing her, but that didn't mean she didn't matter. Everyone had to eat. So he grabbed one of the cinnamon rolls and knelt down to present it to the owl. "Here y'go, little lady. If ya want more, just holler." Aiden glanced back up at Tate from his kneeling position on the floor. "No worries, Tate. Always happy to find someone to eat my food. I come from a family of ten so I'm not used to just cooking for me." She mentioned type preferences and he stood up in an instant, all but quivering with excitement, like he was a Growlithe and Tate had just shown him a tennis ball. "Mm, yeah, I do! Fire types all the way. They're my favorites." He beamed and glanced down at the Rowlet. Hopefully she'd be too preoccupied with the cinnamon roll to be offended by his answer. "Been in love with 'em for... a decade now, I s'pose? I plan on specializing in them as a trainer."

The question had been a two-parter though, so he hurried onward. "I grew up in Rigel. My parents took in a bunch of strays and injured pokemon before Peaceberry was founded. We still have a couple of 'em. Me 'n my siblings helped take care of them. Feeding 'em, cleaning up after 'em, walking and playing with 'em, all that. S'all pet stuff, though, not trainer stuff." It wasn't much experience for a budding trainer-to-be but it was all he had.

"Outside of that, I've watched a ton of battles, but that's about it. It's the one thing my parents were strict about--we have to graduate high school before we can get pokemon of our own." He wasn't trying to blame his parents; he just had a serious case of verbal diarrhea. Once Aiden got talking, it didn't occur to him to stop until he literally had nothing else relevant to say. After he shut up, he realized he still had paperwork to fill out. He picked the pen back up and got to work, filling the pages with line after line of chicken scratch.

WORDS → 651
NOTES → fitz

Tate released the second pokemon and, oh, Aiden wanted to hug her--just wrap the short little lady up in the largest ursaring hug in the history of ursaring hugs. A Tepig! Her sides bulged out and she had a delicate double chin going on, and the pudgy piglet's large body made her large eyes look all more endearing. So cute. So fucking cute. The only thing mildly out of place was her voice. The gruff tone, in Aiden's heart-filled eyes, just added some character to her.

"Hello," he responded, very nearly physically restraining himself from overwhelming the lil dude. (Or the lil dudette, he supposed.) The Tepig wasn't terribly talkative but if the Rowlet's response was to be trusted, she wanted a cinnamon roll of her own. Aiden opted against grabbing her one. The Rowlet had the right idea, he thought; the Tepig could ask for her own if she wanted one. A little test, if you will: does she have the nerve to ask for what she wants? Yes or no? And if the answer was no, that was fine; not everyone had to be brave. But a pokemon that timid was perhaps not the best fit for a trainer-in-the-making, no matter how wonderful said trainer-in-the-making thought she was.

Rowlet carried on the conversation so Aiden focused on her. She certainly knew all the big points to hit. Had she been through all this before? He hoped not. If she'd been through this before, it meant she'd been rejected before. If three pokemon were offered to every trainer, it made sense that the majority of pokemon were turned down, but he'd never thought about what life was like for the ones who weren't chosen.

Regardless, Aiden brushed the sad thoughts aside and focused on her questions instead. "Mm, training and gym, definitely!" He nodded eagerly. "I've been watching that tournament that's going on, too. I want to enter something like that someday." That particular tournament style didn't appeal to him much. Win or lose, he wanted all of his battles to be fought with his team. "And I want to raise a shit ton of fire types--excuse my language," he said with a laugh. "If I had my way, I'd raise some of all of 'em."

That was a bit of a pipe dream, and Aiden knew it. There were a lot of fire types in the world and most of them weren't native to Inset. But what was the point of dreaming if you dreamed small?

"As for the rangers, hmm..." The ginger fell uncharacteristically quiet for a moment while he thought it over. He'd never seen himself in the rangers before but Rowlet had a point. At least on paper, it sounded similar to the rest of his experience with pokemon. "Maybe?" It wasn't a particularly confident answer but it was a truthful one.

"I would help pokemon if I found one who needed it, but I mean, hopefully anyone'd do that. It wouldn't be the focus of my journey, I guess." Just saying it out loud made the normally chipper boy's smile fade away. It hadn't felt so bad in his head but now that the words were out there, it sounded awfully selfish. Not wanting to end his spiel on such a sour note, Aiden looked between the two plump pokemon before him. "What about you guys? What are you hoping to do once you get out of the lab?"

WORDS → 577
NOTES → fitz

The impromptu test of his didn't last long and Tepig passed it with flying colors. Aiden waited for less than a minute before she stepped forward to ask for a cinnamon roll in the sweetest freaking way. While his heart was busy melting, Aiden grabbed the tray of cinnamon rolls from the counter near Tate and brought it down to the floor with him. (Tate seemed to be looking for a third pokeball and if the next arrival wanted a cinnamon roll, he didn't want to have to reach all that way again.) "'Course you can," he said happily while he pulled a roll out for her. He set it on the tile floor a few inches in front of the piglet.

Tepig was possibly a little shy, maybe a little fearful, but incredibly polite--and that bulk, man. Aiden couldn't get over it. What would she look like as an Emboar? They were already the heaviest of all the typical fire starters, and by a wide margin. Charizards, if Aiden recalled correctly (and he usually did, where fire types were concerned), were the next heaviest among the starters. The standard Emboar easily had a hundred pounds on the standard Charizard.

Were Emboar the heaviest fire types in the world? It was possible. He wracked his brain for a moment, trying to think of others. Camerupts beat them, probably. This gal, though... hoo boy. If her girth stayed with her, Tepig could even give the living volcanoes a run for their money by the time she was done evolving.

"Tournaments, yep!" He grinned at her question. Between her voice and her face, Tepig sounded like murder and looked like anxiety. The juxtaposition was endearing, somehow.

Not that Aiden was unbiased. Most things fire types did were endearing to him. Tepig could have tackled him to the ground and suffocated him with her little hoof, and with his dying gasp, Aiden would've told her what a good, smart girl she was. Luckily for everyone involved, Tepig seemed far too polite for such a thing.

"Not right away, though," he added, hoping her eyes would un-widen a bit. He didn't want to scare her off. "I'd want my team to have a badge or two under its belt first." Aiden eyed the pan of cinnamon rolls, almost half-gone, and decided to indulge himself. He picked another one up and took a small bite out of it before continuing. "Gym leaders are definitely more, eh, technically gifted than the average tournament entrant, I suppose. But gyms are easier to prepare for. You know the arena, the types, and you can watch their matches to get a feel for their style." That last bit didn't apply to Inset, not yet; the first gym leader had only recently been announced. But he didn't anticipate being ready for a gym challenge tomorrow or anything. There was plenty of time for other trainers to give the fighting type gym a go in the meantime.

While he bit into his cinnamon roll for the second time, he turned back to the Rowlet. "Mhm," he said through closed lips. "As many as I can actually keep, y'know, healthy and entertained." Shortly after he answered, Tate broke his heart for a second time by releasing another fire type: a Cyndaquil.

This one was notably less timid than Tepig. His nose twitched away for a long moment, evidently more interested in the food than the company. The impulse wasn't exactly foreign to Aiden; he was an extrovert by nature but people were everywhere. Genuinely good food was a bit harder to come by sometimes. "Thanks! And damn, you're good," Aiden complimented. He always admired people and pokemon with good noses--doubly so when the nose belonged to fire types. Most pokemon liked his food but few had been interested in the recipes themselves. Did pokemon cook? Could they, without opposable thumbs or whatever? It was an intriguing idea.

"Nutmeg indeed. I think the scent's mostly from that, the cinnamon, and the vanilla extract." The real vanilla extract. Aiden's wealthy upbringing had made him a snob to cheap alternatives like imitation vanilla. No ma'am, no thank you. "But human noses are pretty weak, so I can't say for sure. You might be picking up on the honey in the dough too. Secret ingredient," he said with a wink while he took another bite. "Do you cook? Or bake, or anything?"

He laughed along with the Rowlet and beckoned towards the tray. "You're free to take another--and you can have one, too, if you want," he added to the Cyndaquil. Everyone else in the room had actually tasted the rolls, but he'd only admired their smell so far. "Mm, yeah," he said, returning his attention to Rowlet. "I don't know much about preparing for contests, but going on looks alone, you'd sweep in a cute contest as a Rowlet or Dartrix. Decidueye... Tough or cool contests would be a breeze, I bet." He liked the Rowlet. She was kind, thoughtful, curious, all good things. But the grass typing... she said it herself: fire and feathers don't mix.

Tepig spoke up next and Aiden listed with rapt attention. He talked to Rowlet because he liked talking to everyone he met and she was cool, but he talked to Tepig because he was legitimately considering her as a starter. He watched her body language more closely than he'd watched Rowlet, and listened just as intently to the pauses in her speech as he did to her actual words. She sounded...something. Bored? Depressed? Ashamed? Aiden was rarely any of those things so it was a hard feeling for him to pinpoint. "Do you have many friends at the lab?" In his experience, people whose goals included making more friends often didn't have many at the time. He assumed the same was true for pokemon.

"I don't mean to pry. It's just, if you have friends here, I don't... I wouldn't want to take you away from them." Truthfully, he desperately wanted the Tepig. She was, ugh. Heartbreaking. Adorable. And the potential of an XL Emboar charging down its opponents in gym battles and tournaments and all manner of fights? Talk about flawless. But if staying in the lab with her friends was better for her, he wouldn't take that away from her.

Because he was shameless and a tad bit selfish, though, he carried on talking. "This lab is beautiful but the world's a big ol' place. Lots of opportunities to make friends out there. New pokemon that we'd--" he hoped the extremely subtle we drop was okay "--meet, new trainers, all sorts."

He hesitated before addressing her second point. He vehemently wanted to agree, wanted to guarantee that leaving the lab would help her lose weight, just so she'd be willing to leave with him... But Aiden wasn't a liar. "Training might help with that." He said slowly, like he was trying to talk himself out of saying more. "Like, it might not make you lose pounds, but muscle's denser than fat. So the number on a scale might stay the same or even increase, but you'd look more compact. If that's what you're after."

Otherwise, dieting was the way to go. But as the Bringer of the Cinnamon Rolls, Aiden couldn't very well say that. How big of a hypocrite would he be then--offering her a second roll in one breath and telling her to diet in the next?

He eyed the Cyndaquil again. Until he knew for sure that Tepig was okay leaving her home, Cyndaquil was the next best choice. There were no points against Cyndaquil at the moment--he just knew Tepig better because she'd been out longer. That wasn't Cyndaquil's fault. "Outside of having that bamf nose of yours, what are your goals for once you leave the lab? Training and gyms, coordinating, Ranger work?"

He hoped Rowlet wouldn't mind him stealing her phrasing. She'd sounded so smart, covering all the relevant bases in one go--he admired that. With two fire types to choose from, he almost definitely was not going home with her but he hoped she found a trainer soon. The ambitious owl seemed like she needed a chance to stretch her wings out in the real world.

WORDS → 1,384
NOTES → fitz

Aiden listened to each pokemon in turn. Now that the conversation was flowing, both Tate and Rowlet seemed content to step aside and let the fire types take control. Aiden finished off the last bits of his cinnamon roll and dusted the sugary residue off his fingers. It bought him a few extra moments to think over his options. Either of the fire types would've made an excellent starter. (Rowlet would have made an excellent starter, too, just not for Aiden.) Cyndaquil sounded like a kind soul, if a bit world weary. They were both friendly. They were both thoughtful. They were both a little down on themselves but not so much that it was crippling, at least not that Aiden could see.

He hummed to himself and looked from Tepig to Cyndaquil and back to Tepig. The Cyndaquil was such a sweetheart, but... He couldn't quite put his finger on what the but was, but did it matter? If he was thinking that way, it meant he'd already made up his mind.

It was the damned idea of the extra large Emboar--it was the sad way she said she wanted more friends--the shy way she needed prompting to ask for a cinnamon roll--it was everything. Fuck. Yes. He'd already decided. Tepig had said it herself: they all had to go sometime. He looked her in the eyes and grinned. "How do you feel about going today?"

WORDS → 240
NOTES → fitz thank you so much for modding & please excuse the length lmao I have no excuse