The intern watched as the cottonee began to whimper slightly after accidentally running face-first into the glass door of the lab. He jotted down a few notes in his observation log, making careful note of the fact that it first laid eyes on the young teenager that remained in the lab. Evee carefully opened the door and to her surprise, the newborn immediately leapt up into her arms and rubbed its body against her shirt. J. T. made a note of how the girl's face seemed to turn a bright pink from embarrassment as she stood there in the doorway, flustered and unsure as to what she should do next. Was it a question of everything happening so suddenly, or did she not have that much exposure to pokemon before now?
"I-I'm sorry, I hope I didn't do... anything wrong..." The intern heard the girl's voice crack slightly before listening to the words taper off to nothing. So it was more the latter than anything else--either that, or she had never seen an egg hatch before her very eyes before. Angelique, however, seemed to be awestruck by the entire spectacle. With a flash, the green-haired woman was up and running around the lab, grabbing various objects and placing them on a small table nearby before offering a cloth to the bewildered girl with the pokemon in her arms.
“Wrong? What in the world could you have done?” Angelique seemed to be too chipper for her own good despite the circumstances. Could she not see that Evee was being rather timid and could not honestly tell what to do? Still, J. T. did not want to interfere quite yet--after all, Angelique was quite excitable and tended to get this way whenever any egg hatched; this was the same thing that happened when she had brought an egg to his mother's house in Nimbasa a few years earlier, he recalled...
“Use this to gently wipe down the cottonee, removing any remaining pieces of eggshell,” Angelique instructed, handing the frazzled girl a cloth before turning away to prepare a small bowl full of berries and a bottle of milk. Good Arceus, did the professor just have a stash of this stuff laying in a storage shed underneath his lab!? Did he have his own private herd of miltank that he could use to feed hatched pokemon on a whim? Regardless, he watched as Angelique's pokemon leapt onto Evee's shoulder for a brief moment before making some gesticulations toward the baby in the girl's arms.
And I thought Hex was bad... J. T. chuckled to himself as Zeke looked between his trainer and the others in the lab. At least Hex can't jump onto people's shoulders like that...
“Aria – Cool it, please. Make use of yourself – Take Mint her egg, please and thank you.” Angelique ordered the now orange-haired pokemon to get off of Evee's shoulders. It was for the best, anyway--J. T. doubted that the young girl needed the extra attention at this point, especially when Angelique was providing what he felt was too much anyway. A few seconds after her command, the meloetta bounded out of the lab with an egg in her arms, heading toward the green salamence with a smile across her face. No sooner than the pokemon made its way out of the lab had Angelique already begun to lead the flustered teenager out of the lab and back to the outdoors, a bowl of berries in one hand and a bottle of milk in the other.
“Sam – It looks like this little ball of cotton has imprinted on this young lady – What are you going to do about it?” The intern gritted his teeth at the sound of Angelique calling the professor "Sam" once again--could she at the very least refer to him as "professor", even if they had some sort of prior relationship? It was at least professional. He put the log back down on the ground next to the bag and stood up, releasing Hex from her capsule.
"Zeke, make sure Hex doesn't do anything that might cause too much trouble," he told the tynamo. "I'm already not in the best of moods, and I don't need her causing me any more migraines..." J. T. rubbed his temple after taking off his glasses. The levitating tadpole responded with a bzzzzt of approval, floating down around Hex's level and swimming through the air around her face, causing the scraggy to swat at him. The intern smirked--this usually was enough to keep Hex occupied for a while: a nice game of "Hide'n'go Zeke", as he called it.
“Tell me, Evee. Given a pokémon...What will your path be?” Oh no. Not this question. J. T. was asked this question once before by Angelique when they were younger; he remembered answering it honestly: if given the choice, he wanted to merely research them, not own them--ironic now that he was forced to babysit two of them during his travels and his internship. The girl, for whatever reason, had taken it as some sort of personal offense that someone would not wanted to be given a free pokemon to do what they pleased with it. In J. T.'s mind, pokemon were creatures that needed to be respected and further studied, not necessarily turned into fighting machines or into models for fashion. While his mother had been supportive of his interests, Angelique... well, at least when she was a teenager, she was rather passionate about them, to put it bluntly.
"Angelique, don't you think you're being rather forward by insinuating that she wants to do anything with pokemon at all?" the intern interrupted, now feeling the need to intervene. He could see not only Evee's apprehension and uncertainty but also that of the newborn. "I mean, sure, she just came to the lab today to ask some questions, but don't you think that could be more for curiosity's sake than anything else? Besides, some people don't want to battle or learn about breeding or go into fashion--some are more than content with having one around the house just for companionship, and that's enough for them. Can't you see that she's scared about having a pokemon imprinted onto her--a pokemon which, I might add, hatched from the egg that I brought for the professor to study..."
"Oh, J. T., it's fine," Oak's voice called from the lab. "You're being over-dramatic. It's no big deal--I'll just ask Angelique to get me another--"
"No, professor!" The intern could not control himself at this point. " You don't understand--it's not the fact that the egg hatched, it's more the principle of the matter! I went through so much to get that egg--that one egg--for you to study, and what happens when I get back? Miss Romain swoops down from the sky and hands you four and acts like it's no big deal! It might not be a big deal for her, considering it's what she does for a living, but to me, it's such a huge deal taking care of an egg on the road! I brought that egg for you to study, professor, and you and I both know that this particular egg should not have hatched as soon after I arrived as it did!! I'm going to--"
"Scraaaaaaaaa?" A tug at his pants suddenly stopped J. T.'s ranting. Hex was looking up at the intern with large eyes and a slight frown across her face. Taking a brief second to recompose himself, the young man sighed and wiped his glasses on his scarf before picking up the lizard and letting her play with the fabric around his neck.
"Professor, I promised you that I would hand-deliver an egg for you to study," the intern's voice was much calmer and more collected after a few moments to collect his thoughts. "I'm going to be heading to Unova, come hell or high water, and I assure you that I will be getting another egg for you to study--one that will not hatch in the first five minutes of my arrival."