As a bit of a follow-up to my previous post about Iris and Benga’s family, I’ll go into a bit more detail here about all their kids and the family dynamic. Warning – this gets really long.

For starters, Iris and Benga certainly didn’t plan on having six kids. When they first discussed starting a family, they decided that two was a good number. Both of them are fairly busy people, Iris especially since she’s the Champion. Benga is also somewhat often away from home due to his work as a Pokémon Ranger (the wildlife/parks kind, not the capture styler kind). Neither of them wanted to create the stressful situation of trying to balance a busy work life and a large family, since it wouldn’t be fair to the kids. 

Acacia was born first and all in all, everything went well. The pregnancy was smooth and there were few complications in the whole process. She was quite the boisterous baby, which was just a hint of how wild she’d be as she grew up, but between the two of them, her parents were able to lead her through all her milestones, from first steps to first day of preschool. With everything going so well with Acacia, Iris and Benga decided to try for their second, and in theory final, kid. Acacia was just about to turn four when Iris discovered she was pregnant and the whole family was elated. What was unexpected, however, was when they later found out that Iris was going to be having twins. She and Benga were nervous about having three kids, but they both knew they could make it work and promised each other that, when it came down to it, family was more important that work. Acacia went around telling all her preschool classmates that she was going to be a ‘double big sister’, while Iris spent large amounts of time trying to come up with matching names and Benga got very emotional about matching baby outfits.

When Iris was about seven and a half months pregnant, the second unexpected addition to the family occurred. Benga was on a longer assignment to a more secluded area of a national park in northern Unova, when he returned to his camp one morning to find a wild-looking kid and a young deino doing their very best to bite their way through the wrapper of some of his granola bars. Both parties were very surprised, to say the least. Luckily, being dragonblood himself, Benga can naturally understand dragontongue and was able to communicate with the two (or at least understand them, being unable to actually speak dragontongue himself). After some back and forth, and with some help from his haxorous as a translator, Benga was able to figure out the the boy had been adopted and raised by the deino’s parents after being abandoned. He was able to convince the two youngsters to take him to their parents, which then led to a very long conversation that ended with Benga agreeing to take the boy and his dragon sister to be raised among humans, which his parents agreed was what was best for him. By the time the trio made it back to the nearest town, the boy and dragon had both grown quite attached to Benga and protested quite loudly when the authorities tried to separate them in any way. Benga had to admit he’d grown fond of the two kids as well, and agreed to look after them ‘temporarily’. This was how Iris, nearing the end of her pregnancy, tired and stressed from both that and the demanding job of being Champion, not to mention looking after her excitable daughter, went to greet her husband returned from a weekend away for work to find he had brought back a feral child and a wild dragon with him. Needless to say, she was not impressed.

While things definitely got off to a rocky start, Iris, and especially Acacia and her axew companion, warmed up quickly to the latest additions to the family. Iris and Benga decided to name the boy Cypress, as it was a male name they had wanted for a child, but since Acacia and Iris’ upcoming twins were girls, had never had the chance to use. It was originally intended to be a temporary name, but Cypress grew attached to it quickly and it’s stuck ever since. After his first checkup, the family pediatrician discovered that while Cypress was half dragonblood, he had significant heritage from an unknown supernatural source as well. Since in some areas, such unions are stigmatized, it brought up the theory that Cypress had been abandoned due to his heritage. Since Benga’s father had been an unknown being his mother, Kino, had had a one night stand with, and he grew up somewhat ostracized for not being fully human, Cypress’ plight resonated with him, and he was all the more determined to take care of the boy.

Cypress was a quick learner, in no small part thanks to his hatred of being left out, so he devoted as much effort as an eight year old could spare to learning how speak League Standard and Unovan, as well as read and write in those languages. Jasmine and Clementine were born not long after Cypress joined the family, and for a while after that things went as smoothly as they could in this boisterous household. Acacia started kindergarten, Cypress was well on his way to catching up enough to start school in a couple years, the twins were growing from babies into toddlers with all the joy and tears that come with, and Iris and Benga were settling into the routine of being working parents with a large family. Benga was taking more time off from work and eventually got a job in the Parks Service that let him be closer to Opelucid all the time. And then, seemingly out of the blue, Iris discovered that she was pregnant again. 

It took her a while to realize the symptoms, and the discovery caught her and Benga completely off guard. They did consider terminating the pregnancy, but ultimately decided that they would go through with it, as they were both willing to handle the responsibility. Cypress and Acacia were both excited when they found out, since they both liked being older siblings to the twins. Jasmine and Clementine were a bit too young to understand, but the energy of their siblings got them excited for their new sibling as well. Things got a bit tense, however, when Iris found out she was, yet again, having twins. There was a point where she speculated that she must be cursed, or that her family must be cursed when she considered that her cousin/adoptive sister Phoebe had had triplets. On top of it all, the second set of twins were a rough pregnancy that led to a difficult delivery, culminating in Iris needing a c-section after a painfully long labor. Laurel and Poppy were finally born in the early morning of December 25, which led to plenty of comments on how they were special holiday gifts. Iris was not particularly amused. 

Following the stress of the second set of twins, Iris and Benga both decided to have their ability to have children removed, just to be double sure there would be no more accidents in the future. Laurel and Poppy proved to be fairly well behaved babies, and thanks to the help of friends and family, Iris and Benga managed to raise them and the four other kids into productive adults and ambitious teens. Iris managed to continue her Champion work with the energy and passion she’s famous for, leading to her gaining even more of a reputation as someone not to mess with consider she makes time to be a mother as well as lead a region. Benga started working part-time and being a stay-at-home dad for the most part, which he loved and the kids appreciated. All in all, Iris and Benga certainly never planned on such a large family, but looking at the kids now and all their memories, the couple wouldn’t trade them for the world.