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Nova and Officer Jenny spent a while chatting with Granny in the yard, though the conversation had a way of drifting in unexpected directions. Before long, the old woman announced it was time for the midday feeding.
Officer Jenny headed off to change into her work clothes while Nova followed Granny to the storage room to help carry out the pups' lunch.
He almost stopped walking when he saw what was inside.
Moomoo Milk from Miltank. Lucky Eggs from Chansey. Fresh honey collected from Combee. He stood there for a moment, staring, before picking up the nearest crate and hauling it toward the nursery.
If I'd known the food here was this good, he thought, I'd never have hesitated about coming.
He wasn't entirely joking. These were premium ingredients — the kind that serious breeders and top-tier nurseries used for their most promising Pokémon. Each one was expensive, and together they made for nutrition that most young Pokémon would never see in their lives. It said a great deal about how Granny ran her kennel.
No wonder she had never brought in a professional breeder in all her decades of work. Every coin she earned went straight back into caring for the pups. At the prices she sold them, Nova suspected she had probably been running at a loss for years.
When he mentioned as much, the old woman just shook her head and waved the thought away.
"Profit or loss, who cares about that?" she said. "I've raised plenty of Pokémon over the years, and I've earned my share too. All I want now is to raise this last batch properly and find them good homes. That's enough for me."
Nova carried the food cart through the nursery door, and immediately ceased to exist as an independent person.
The pups hit him like a wave.
They were young, yes — but they were still Pokémon, and even the smallest ones had more energy than most fully grown animals. A tide of warm, wriggling bodies slammed into his shins, his knees, his torso. He managed one startled shout before disappearing entirely beneath a mountain of multicoloured fur.
By the time Officer Jenny pulled him back out, his jacket was covered in muddy paw prints from collar to hem.
She tried, and mostly failed, to hide her amusement. "That means they like you. Pokémon like Growlithe and Houndour are very physical — they tend to pile onto people they're comfortable with."
Nova said nothing. He was fairly certain they had been after the food cart, not him.
Once he had a moment to look around, he was genuinely impressed. After decades in the business, Granny had built something remarkable. The nursery held more canine-type Pokémon than he had ever seen in one place.
Growlithe, Houndour, and Poochyena made up the bulk of the litter — at least thirty of each visible at a glance. All three were well-established breeds within the Norlandia region, widely valued by Security Forces and law enforcement. Growlithe in particular had long been a favourite of Officers across every major alliance, known for its loyalty and reliability in the field.
Next in number were Snubbull and Furfrou, both popular as companion Pokémon and in steady demand among trainers and households alike.
Beyond the familiar regional breeds, the kennel had clearly gone to the effort of sourcing Pokémon from further afield. There were Yamper, which matured into the powerful Boltund — a Pokémon highly regarded by herders and known for exceptional Speed. There were also several Fidough, a rarer find outside of certain regions, valued for their calm temperament and surprising resilience.
And then there were the Riolu.
Just a handful of them, tucked near the back of the nursery, watching the chaos around them with careful, serious expressions. Riolu were not easy to come by. Often called Emanation Pokémon, they were coveted for their combination of fighting instinct, loyalty, and potential to evolve into the formidable Lucario. Their price reflected all of that — and then some.
What surprised Nova most, however, were the Hisuian Growlithe.
He recognised them immediately from their distinctive rocky horns and cream-and-orange colouring. Hisuian forms were ancient regional variants, known only from isolated populations preserved in remote wilderness areas or carefully maintained by dedicated breeders. They were exceptionally rare and, by extension, exceptionally valuable.
The Hisuian Growlithe in the nursery appeared to be the most energetic Pokémon in the entire facility. It had been the very first to launch itself at Nova when he walked through the door, and it had made another attempt while he was being helped up.
At Granny's sharp whistle, the pups broke off their chaos and trotted dutifully toward their bowls, forming a rough line with the automatic obedience of animals that had been raised with consistent routines. Feeding a litter this size was no small task. With Jenny and Nova both helping, the work was manageable — but he found himself thinking about what it must be like when it was just Granny out here alone.
He understood now why she had made the decision she had. It wasn't that she had lost love for the work. She had simply run out of the physical capacity to keep going. She was afraid she could no longer give the next litter everything they deserved.
Once every bowl was filled and the nursery had settled into the quiet of feeding time, Nova activated his scan and turned his attention to the pups.
The results stopped him cold.
Until now, the most impressive concentration of talent he had encountered had been at the Luma Gym. That was a serious facility — a major Gym with proven parent Pokémon and professional rearing standards — and even there he had found a large proportion of career-tier Pokémon with solid but unremarkable potential.
Here, it was an entirely different picture.
Setting aside the companion breeds like Snubbull and Furfrou, and the working breeds like Fidough and Yamper, every single battle-capable and guard-type Pokémon in the nursery showed blue-tier talent. Every one of them. That meant that if you raised any six of these pups with reasonable care and proper training, you would have a team capable of reaching Elite Four challenger level without struggling.
Nearly a hundred Pokémon with that kind of ceiling, all in one place. That wasn't a kennel. That was a small army.
The sheer density of blue tags was dazzling enough that it took him a moment to notice the purple ones scattered among them — which was remarkable in itself, because purple-tier talent was extraordinarily rare. In a population of this size, finding even one or two Pokémon with that level of latent ability was exceptional. Finding several was almost unheard of.
The thing was, talent alone didn't determine outcomes. Nova had seen that clearly enough by now. A purple-tier Pokémon raised by someone like Thelma Tucker — a trainer with real skill, real ambition, and the drive to push a Pokémon to its limit — had a genuine shot at Champion-level performance. That same Pokémon in the hands of an average trainer, someone like a random kid who just happened to catch it in the wild, might top out at the regional circuit and never go further. Not from lack of potential, but from lack of direction.
It was like the draft system from his previous world — same raw talent entering the system every year, but wildly different outcomes depending on where each player ended up.
Even Nova, who had seen plenty of impressive Pokémon through his system, felt the weight of what he was looking at. In the right hands, this litter represented something genuinely extraordinary.
He turned to Granny, who was rinsing out an empty Moomoo Milk container nearby.
"Granny," he said, "how would you feel about becoming a legend?"