The Pokémon Prison was exactly what it sounded like.
It was a facility designed to hold Pokémon that had committed serious offences against humans — not as victims of circumstance, but as participants. Most of them had been partners of convicted criminals. Their owners bore the primary responsibility for what had happened, but Pokémon capable of intelligence and decision-making couldn't simply be classified as objects and released into the wild without consequence. After a thorough investigation and formal process, those found culpable were placed in long-term custody.
As Mort had pointed out, the facility didn't run on Alliance funding alone. Pokémon inmates who weren't considered high-risk were directed toward productive work — tasks suited to their abilities, with the earnings going toward operational costs. The principle was straightforward: if you are capable of contributing, you contribute.
Naturally, this service wasn't open to just anyone. The Pokémon available through the programme had real histories — genuine offences, genuine victims. An applicant had to demonstrate that they had sufficient ability to keep the Pokémon under control for the duration of the work. The prison wasn't in the business of releasing problem Pokémon into situations that would create new problems.
Nova could see, in hindsight, exactly why he had never come across this. For most of his two-and-a-half years as a Trainer, he had been treated as a novice. By the time his Nidorino had grown into something approaching Elite-level strength, he had been too busy and too isolated to spend time in Trainer circles where information like this circulated. Without the right connections and without the right environment, an unorthodox system like this simply never came up.
The other issue was certification. Nova's actual ability was one thing. His official standing was another. He had never challenged a Gym, never entered a formal regional competition, never accumulated any record that a third party could verify. Walking into a Pokémon Prison and describing himself as a capable Trainer without any documentation to back it up was not going to accomplish anything.
Mort, on the other hand, was a certified Ground-type Master. His record spoke for itself.
The relationship between the two of them had always been somewhat loosely defined. Mort considered himself Nova's mentor. Nova had, in practice, worked out most of what he knew on his own — battling without instruction, learning to raise Pokémon without guidance, rarely bringing genuine questions to the older man. What Mort had actually provided, in concrete terms, was a Nidorino at a critical early moment. That was significant. Whether it constituted a mentor-student relationship in any meaningful sense was open to debate.
What mattered now was that Nova finally had a request that required the older man's standing rather than just his advice. Mort had been waiting for exactly this kind of moment. He took the request seriously, and moved quickly.
He filed the application in his own name, sent formal notice to the prison in advance, and arranged everything before Nova had finished processing the plan.
They had dinner in Harmony City that evening. By the time the sun rose the next morning, they were already over open water ten thousand kilometres away.
The transportation was Mort's Garchomp.
Garchomp wasn't a Flying-type. What it was, in practical terms, was a Pokémon that had evolved to hunt fast-moving aerial prey. A species that couldn't outpace its food source would not have survived long enough to become a Pseudo-Legendary. In terms of raw flight speed, Garchomp sat second only to the fastest Flying-types in existence — and if legendary Pokémon were excluded from the comparison, the only Pseudo-Legendary that could match it was a Dragonite using Extreme Speed.
Mort's Garchomp was somewhat smaller than the average specimen. The older man claimed it was also faster than average.
Nova scanned it and found a trait the system labelled Supersonic Cruise: the Garchomp could sustain flight at Mach 4 for up to thirty minutes.
He stared at that readout for a moment.
In his previous life, sustained supersonic cruise was a capability reserved for fifth-generation fighter aircraft. He had just spent six hours on the back of one, going from dinner to sunrise over a different ocean.
Mort mentioned, in passing, that the Garchomp was getting on in years and hadn't pushed itself.
Nova thought about Corviknight — how thrilled he had been when it evolved, how much he had looked forward to having a reliable aerial partner.
Corviknight, from its position slightly behind them, appeared to understand that some kind of comparison was happening and did not appreciate it.
I'm built for defence and endurance, it communicated through posture alone. If speed is the metric, ask Garchomp how many hits it can take before it drops.
It was a fair point. Nova let it go.
The paperwork had been filed and confirmed before they left. When they arrived, the prison staff were already expecting them. For a Ground-type Master of Mort's standing, the facility assigned its most experienced officer to handle the reception.
The officer was a solidly built man somewhere in his middle years, the kind of build that came from a long time spent in physical work rather than just training for it. He had apparently spent years competing in amateur fighting bouts before moving into this role. Nova privately respected that background. Amateur fighting events had a reputation for being genuinely rough around the edges, and anyone who had held their own against Fighting-type Pokémon in that environment was not someone who had chosen an easy path.
He led them into a reception room, made tea, and asked about the nature of Mort's application.
Nova repeated the version he had used at the Pokémon Center: he had found a heavy container out in the field, couldn't move it, couldn't open it, and needed a Pokémon with the right capability to deal with the lock.
The truth — that the container was a safe that had belonged to a senior Original Team officer and almost certainly contained a substantial sum of money — was not information he planned to share with an official facility. If he admitted that, the most likely outcome was a formal report, a confiscation order, and, if he was lucky, a commendation certificate. He would earn recognition and lose everything else.
The story about finding a mysterious locked container in the wilderness would have to be sufficient.