Nova opened the elegant case Gilbert handed him. Resting inside, on a bed of dark velvet, was the Layered Peaks Badge.
It wasn't the most handsome badge he had ever seen. Three golden triangles overlapped one another, each slightly offset, suggesting a range of peaks rising behind one another. The design was plain, almost blunt in its simplicity. No one could honestly call it beautiful.
And yet, as proof of a successful challenge against a first-class Gym, the Layered Peaks Badge carried more weight than most. That weight was, in a sense, quite literal. The badge was cast from twelve-karat gold.
Among all the Gym Badges issued across the Norlandia Alliance, the Layered Peaks Badge was the most valuable by material alone. Nova found the design underwhelming, but he had been told that badge collectors across the region consistently ranked it as one of the most prized in the whole Alliance. It was hard to argue with that. Gold had a way of making its own case.
That the Gym could afford to hand out solid gold badges to every challenger who earned one said something about the resources the Layered Peaks Gym controlled. The Cengluan Mountain Range was rich in ore and mineral deposits, and the Gym held direct claim over seven or eight gold mines of varying sizes scattered across the range. Nova had learned this from Mort, who had shared the detail one evening after one too many drinks. Normally he might have taken it with a grain of salt, but Mort was the rightful heir to the Layered Peaks Gym, even if that chapter of his life had been left far behind. If anyone would know the numbers, it was him.
Nova turned the badge over once in his palm, then tucked it away. There was something else to focus on now: the battle he and Gilbert had agreed to.
Strictly speaking, Nova had already fought twice that day. It wouldn't be reasonable for Gilbert to expect a full six-on-six match under those conditions, and to his credit, Gilbert hadn't asked for one. This was an exhibition battle, more than anything else. Both sides would compete seriously, but there was no need to push it to the bitter end.
There was also the practical matter of Nova's team. Truthfully, only one of his Pokémon had any realistic chance of standing up to a partner trained by an Elite Four member. That was Nidoking. Fielding the rest would simply mean giving the opponent more targets to work through. After Gilbert took a careful look at the state of Nova's team, they settled on a one-on-one format.
Gilbert had also made another quiet concession. He would not be using any of his six primary partners, the ones he would bring to a match against the Alliance Champion. Instead, he would draw from what Nova came to understand was his third team.
A trainer of Gilbert's calibre, one strong enough to stand at the doorstep of a Champion challenge, generally kept multiple rosters prepared for different situations. His first team carried no type restrictions and represented his absolute best. His second team was built around his primary type and could slot into the first team's gaps during the Norlandia Alliance Master Tournament, where rules required six Pokémon of a matching attribute. The second team's members had to match not just the type requirement but the strength standard of the first team, so there could be no weak links when the tournament arrived.
The third team was different. Those were the Pokémon Gilbert had raised in his earlier years, the partners who had been with him before he reached his current standing. Every trainer made mistakes early on, misjudging potential, rushing development, or simply lacking access to the resources needed to train well. Even Gilbert had gone through that stage. The Pokémon from those years had grown alongside him and fought in competitions by his side, but as the demands of high-level battling grew more intense, they had gradually moved to a supporting role.
The situation was similar to the eight Pokémon that Charlie Tucker had passed along to his daughter Thelma to train. Thelma's ability as a trainer was exceptional, and those Pokémon would no doubt be raised well under her care. But they had been given to her as practice partners, not as the foundations of a future Champion's roster. There were limits to where that path could lead.
Gilbert's third-team partners had those same limits, in a sense. They were no longer the cutting edge of what he could field in a Champion-level fight. But they had decades of real battle experience. Each of them had almost certainly reached the peak of its individual potential. That was no small thing. A single one of those Pokémon could sweep through an entire team fielded by a trainer like Aston.
Nova stood at the edge of the battle area and took a steady breath. He wouldn't pretend he wasn't nervous. This was unlike any battle he had ever entered. He wanted to see it clearly, the actual distance between where he stood and the upper tier of the Alliance, measured not in numbers or rankings but in the space between his Pokémon and Gilbert's on an open field.
Gilbert, for his part, showed the ease of someone who had long since stopped needing to prove himself. Before the referee had even called the start, he reached for his Poké Ball and released it. A quiet gesture: he was giving Nova first knowledge of the match-up, voluntarily giving up any advantage that came from responding to an unknown opponent.
"Come on out. Time to stretch your legs, old friend."
What emerged was a Whiscash. Nova had seen Whiscash before, but nothing like this one. It was enormous, and it settled onto the arena floor with a heaviness that seemed to press into the ground around it. The air near it looked faintly distorted, the way heat makes the road shimmer on a hot day, though the cause here wasn't warmth. It was the energy radiating off the Pokémon's body, too dense to be fully contained.
Nova glanced at the information available to him before the referee signalled the start. The nameplate glowed a deep violet. The level read eighty.
He had understood, in an abstract way, that Pokémon with that calibre of natural talent typically reached their developmental ceiling around level seventy-five. Going beyond that required either an extraordinary external resource or years of effort beyond what most trainers would ever commit to. Either way, it meant this Whiscash had pushed past the point where most Pokémon stopped growing. It wasn't just a strong opponent. It was something outside the range of anything Nova had ever faced.
For the first time all day, his confidence slipped.
A Pokémon like this... can I actually win?