Species: Arbok Level: 59
Ability: Shed Skin
Hidden Ability: Unnerve
Notable traits: boosted speed and evasion in sandy terrain; extended attack range on its fangs and Acid Spray; greatly enhanced Acid with severe corrosive properties on contact. Moves: Acid, Glare, Toxic, Acid Spray, Sludge Bomb, Haze, Coil.
A level 59 Arbok. Acid as its signature move.
It all matched.
There was no clean way to describe what Nova felt in that moment. Something between relief and dark satisfaction — like he had been chasing a shadow across hundreds of kilometres of desert and had just walked straight into it.
You absolute piece of work. I've finally found you.
Taylor had not expected anyone to block Arbok's opening strike in terrain like this. The desert favoured the ambush completely — limited visibility, soft ground that muffled movement, and an opponent who would have no idea what was coming until it was already on them. The two Trainers who had ventured into the Trapinch colony before this one had both been finished exactly this way. Neither of them had managed to get a proper command off before it was over.
That made Taylor careful. The Nidoking standing across from him was large and clearly formidable. This was not going to be a quick finish. He was already weighing whether to release his other Pokémon and end this cleanly through numbers rather than give the boy room to breathe.
Then the boy started taking his jacket off.
Taylor's train of thought derailed entirely.
This... was not what he had been expecting.
He had heard that the neighbouring League had some unusual tradition involving public acts of undress as a form of apology or surrender — though even there it was supposedly limited to specific circumstances and certain people. This was not that League. And Taylor, whatever else he was, had no particular interest in this direction.
This was entirely his own imagination running into territory it had no business visiting.
Nova was simply pulling off his outer windbreaker to reveal the uniform he was wearing underneath — an Original Team uniform, taken from the same member he had confiscated the flight pack from during the airship incident. The Trainer had been a size larger than Nova, but the fit was close enough.
Original Team was a large criminal organisation with a track record spanning multiple Leagues. Despite that, its internal structure was surprisingly organised. Every member, regardless of rank or strength, received a baseline of resources and equipment from the organisation. A flight pack of the quality Nova was wearing would cost an ordinary Trainer tens of thousands of League Coins on the open market. Join Original Team and the organisation handed one over for nothing.
It was not hard to see why a group like that had no shortage of recruits. People with no money, no connections, no Pokémon system backing them — people with nothing — were exactly the kind of targets such organisations preyed on. Small favours led to dependency, and dependency led to loyalty that could be aimed wherever the organisation needed it.
Uniforms were part of the same system. Members were expected to wear them so they could identify each other — though in practice, nobody wore them during covert operations. The uniform came out during open confrontations with the League, when showing your colours was the point.
The moment Nova spotted Taylor, he pulled the uniform on over his clothes. Then he activated what he privately considered his most reliable skill set — deception and performance — and produced tears in under three seconds.
"Boss Taylor! I'm one of ours! I've been trying to find you — I've been out here looking everywhere!"
Taylor, a man who could end a life without his expression changing, stood completely still. His mind had simply stopped.
One of ours?
He ran the logic. If an Original Team member needed to find him, the proper channel was through the contacts he had left at the Lune Town branch. No one should be wandering blindly through the Desert trying to track him down on their own. And that Nidoking — even Arbok might struggle against something that size. When did ordinary members start travelling with Pokémon at that level?
But the details were hard to dismiss. The uniform was right. The flight pack was right. And that bird Pokémon — the one that had blocked Arbok's opening strike — was a Corvisquire. Corvisquire were native to the Brittany League. You would not find one in the Norlandia Alliance through any legal means.
The only way to have one here was through Original Team's cross-border poaching operations.
Taylor had not made up his mind, and Nova could see it. He pressed forward.
"Boss Taylor, you've been out here in the Desert for a while now. You must not have heard the news from headquarters."
Taylor's guard and his disbelief were fighting each other, and for a moment his guard lost. "What news? There's no signal out here. How would I have heard anything?"
Nova had counted on exactly that.
The Uninhabited Area had always been Taylor's advantage — remote enough that no incident, no matter how large, would attract attention. What he had not considered was the other side of that coin. In an area with no signal towers within three hundred kilometres, communication with the outside world was simply not possible. The nearest tower barely reached as far as Shachui Village, and only just. Deeper into the desert, there was nothing.
The entire plan hinged on one assumption: that Taylor had been cut off from the rest of Original Team the entire time he was out here.
As long as he had no outside information, Nova could say almost anything.
"Boss Taylor — the Grand Administrator was ambushed. A team of Security Officers, over a dozen of them. He's gone."
Taylor's expression cracked. "What?"
The Grand Administrator was the supreme commander of Original Team's operations in the Norlandia Alliance. The title was well known — it appeared in news coverage, in official League reports on criminal organisations. Knowing the title was not suspicious. But the Administrator himself was a different matter. Even Taylor, an executive within the organisation, had never actually seen the man in person. He was famous in the way a rumour was famous — widely known, never confirmed.
Which meant Taylor had no way to immediately verify or disprove what Nova was claiming.
You can't reach anyone out here. So let's see how far I can push this.
"That's impossible," Taylor said slowly. "The number of people who actually know the Administrator's identity — you could count them on one hand. How would Security Officers have been able to set up an ambush?"
Nova looked up at the sky with the practiced calm of someone delivering information too sensitive to say plainly.
"There's a problem," he said. "From somewhere higher up."