New Beginnings - Chapter 173: Tinka-baba (Patreon)

A.N: Sorry for the little break. I was very burnt out and hadn't taken a real, emergency/busy break in... over three years. This is a little chapter from Tinkatuff's PoV taking place a few days after last chapter. The spelling 'mistakes' are not mistakes in this chapter, as it is Tinkatuff getting stuff wrong.

Hope you enjoy a little inside scoop on the gremlin, and learning what baba means.
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“You know that Ethan will buy you more metal, right?” Smeargle said as he dumped the rest of her metal scraps down onto the floor before wiping his hands. “You don’t have to reuse all this over and over again. Ethan has his trainer card, with it, you can get lots of stuff.” 

Tinkatuff extended her hammer, using it as a broom to sweep the metal scraps towards herself and her main pile of steel. To waste metal was to waste potential! What if one of these little odd-ends was the key to improving her terrible hammer? It was better than it was in the past, but it still didn’t feel complete. 

If I had gotten that Skarmory… or that Steelix thing! She thought, saliva thickening in her mouth at the missed opportunity. 

They were in her sanctioned smithing area in the barn, where she was given free reign to experiment to her leisure. “If papa bought metal, it would be bad metal. Nobody would sell good metal for hammers, cause they’d use’em theirself.” 

Smeargle blinked owlishly. “Ethan buys my paint. It’s good paint. Most people—”

“THEY WOULD SELL ME TERRIBLE METAL! I KNOW METAL BETTER THAN EVERYONE!” She snapped! “I will get my own metal from the mountains! Good metal! Untainted!” 

“Untainted? Have you been listening to Ralts again?” Smeargle questioned, unbothered by her outburst. “She says a lot of words that she doesn’t really know the meaning of. Have you ever heard Ethan use the word untainted before? Ralts read a lot of books, apparently she took them from that haunted place in the forest with all the ghosts.” 

“Untainted! Not contam-mi-mo-natered, spoiled, or damaged by anything bad! I know what it means! The metal from the mountain is raw and natural! Untainted! Perfect for my hammer!” She huffed, then went back to sorting her metal bits. She knew all of them like they were her hammer themselves. At one point, most of them were a part of her hammer. “Papa will take me to get more. He promised.” 

Smeargle simply stood nearby watching her work, probably basking in her genius. “Ethan’s very busy. Maybe you can take Snorlax with you and you guys can get the metal—”

“No! Papa said he’d get me metal! He will be the one to come with me! Nobody else!” She snapped again. Why was Smeargle being a meanie? Papa already promised, what was the big deal? It was her turn for his help. She’d been patient. 

Smeargle frowned. “Well, I would have to come with you guys. I can Teleport everyone back—”

“No! It’s my turn with papa! We will walk there and walk back!” She stood, then stormed off, brushing past Smeargle as she stood in his way. “I’m going to go get him right now!”

After thrusting open the sliding barn door, she took a brief look in the sky in case any large metal poke-birds decided today was her lucky day. It seemed that today, like all other days, was not the lucky one. With her hammer on her shoulder, she ran to the house and then lightly jumped just high enough to twist the doorknob to open it. Inside, Ethan was sitting at the kitchen table with some papers and the home of the Poryblob. 

Poryblob was a very quiet pokemon who knew an awful lot about everything. He didn’t speak much—unlike Ralts—and didn’t leave his house very much. He was more like Skiddidido. Skidido? Skiddo? One of those was right. Both were okay in her mind. 

“Hi Tinka.” Skididoodoo said from beneath the table, not even turning to look at her entering. How did she know it was her? 

“Hi.” She replied, watching as Skiddo wiggled her legs as she laid on her side—much like Growlie the Growlithe after a long run with blue-hair. Skidididido was… weird. Nice, but weird. She liked grass. That said enough. 

She pulled out a chair then hopped up onto it with a single leap, startling Ethan who hadn’t seen to enter. She liked how she knew what Ethan felt like. It made her learn a lot about what is right and what is wrong. If she did something he didn’t like or found wrong, she knew. If she did something right and made him proud, then she knew. It was a good thing. 

It also taught her that even Ethan made mistakes, and she remembered the first time he realized he made one with her. When she was little, she didn’t have any metal. When they went on their first trip to get some, it was one of the best days of her life. When he saw how happy she was, she felt his shame and sadness at not letting her have any metal when she was a baby and his emotions mixing and changing to something along the lines of ‘she will get metal’. It's very hard to explain, but she didn’t need it explained if the results were more metal. 

“Hello, papa! We are going to go get metal right now!” (Tinka-baba! Tinka-tuff ti-tuff!)

Ethan felt glad to see her, which made the warm feeling in her chest appear. That was a good feeling. It was sad that he couldn’t understand her fully, but she’d learned that even if he didn’t know exactly what she said, he somehow knew roughly about what it was. How? No clue. It didn't matter. 

“Metal?” Ethan asked, following it up with a knowing sigh.

“You promised me! You promised we would go get metal! I want more metal now, papa!” (Tinkatuuuuff! Tin-tinkatuuuuff! Tinka-tu-tinka, baba!)

Ethan sighed again (he liked doing that) then closed Poryblobs house up and gathered his papers… then he paused.

The sudden feeling of mirth swelled in him and it made her confused and happy? Happy-fused? 

“You know,” Ethan waved her to follow as he began to move towards his room. “I knew you’d come ask me sooner or later. I discovered something after talking with Joyce a few days ago.” She waddled along, following on his heels as he kneeled down by his bed and pulled out… a box? 

It was a brown box, made of… hardy paper? Much weaker than metal, that was obvious. It had a white sticker with human-writing on it and was closed with the sticky-clear-strips. “This here is a package. I never thought I’d get packages, because we live in the forest of all places, but there’s a delivery service that ships packages all over the region. A nice Pidgeotto brought this over this morning. Do you want to see what is inside?” 

She nodded, then quickly closed her mouth as the drool started to pool within it. Her eyes were locked onto the box… something inside was… very nice. 

Ethan slid the box over the ground, causing it to skid slightly over the wooden floors. Whatever was inside the package was heavy… and heavy was good. She stepped over and tried to figure out how to open it, causing Ethan to help show her how to do it. It would have been much better if they were wrapped in colorful paper like the gifts Santa had brought, but she guessed that those were special.

When she finally flipped the flaps that kept the package closed and opened it up, she finally laid eyes on what was inside. And, it was one of the best things she’d ever seen. 

Square, solid, sheeny, hefty, and all too metallic! It was a perfect square of metal! Before she even registered it fully, her hands were out and trying to lift it… and she struggled! This small square of metal was so dense that it weighed much more than she could have ever expected! 

“Oh! Yes! Metal! Yes! Metal! YES! METAL! YES! METAL! YES! METAL! YES! METAL! YES! METAL! YES! METAL!” (Ti-katuff! Ti-katuff! TI-KATUFF! TI-KATUFF! TI-KATUFF!TI-KATUFF! TI-KATUFF! TI-KATUFF!)

Ethan felt glad and had a familiar warmth within his own chest. How did she know? She didn’t care. The warmth was good though, that’s all that mattered. “Yes, this is metal. It’s a special kind of metal called tungsten. Back in my world, a cube of tungsten this size would have cost me an arm and a leg. For reasons I don’t fully understand, tungsten is much cheaper here. Whether it’s because there’s much more of it or that it doesn't have much uses, I’m not sure. I figured you’d like it though.” 

When he brought up the price, it kinda went over her head in her ongoing excitement. She didn’t know where she started to hug and drool on the cube, but the next thing she knew that was exactly what was happening. She only really noticed when he mentioned the word ‘price’. He had a faint pang in his belly when he said it. This must have cost more than he wanted… 

But this was good metal! She just knew! She was wrong! They did sell excellerant—No, excellent! Yes, excellent metal!

Like putty in her hands, she began morphing the tungsten cube into ideal pieces for perfecting her terrible hammer. There wasn’t enough tungsten here to reforge it anew, but there was enough to at least reinforce its bad parts. 

How did she know there were bad parts? She didn’t know or care, only that she knew and that it was a fixable issue. 

“Uhh, Tinkatuff. Maybe we can leave my bedroom floor before you start melting or morphing metal all over the place?” Ethan asked, and she completely ignored him. 

He may have gotten her this cube, but that doesn’t mean he went out with her to get metal. That wasn’t the promise that was made. She began disassembling her hammer to upgrade it right then and there, ignoring Ethan’s fond sigh of acceptance. 

That sigh. It made her chest warm.