Right. If the old man wanted to do this the hard way, so be it.
Nova wrung out the damp cloth and snapped it across Mort's head again.
"Up. Are you getting up? Are you getting up?"
"I'm up, I'm up! Lay off, you brat!"
"Once a month, Mort— the Gym opens once a month — and you can't even manage that. Keep this up and the Norlandia Alliance will pull your licence, and then you'll be sleeping on the street."
Mort straightened up with great dignity. "They wouldn't dare. When I was competing in the Master Tournament, those little pencil-pushers were still—"
"Still in their mothers' womb, yes, I know." Nova dropped onto a nearby chair. "That was forty years ago. You're getting old, Mort. Accept it." He paused. "Is there some great secret buried in the Tamar Desert that keeps you going back year after year? Because from the outside, it looks like you'd rather eat sand than do a single day's work."
Mort opened his mouth, closed it, and settled for a glare.
"I'm not asking you to run the place properly," Nova continued. "Just come home. Open the Gym a few days a month. When you feel like it, take on some students. When you don't, do whatever you want. Isn't that better than disappearing into the desert for months at a stretch?"
The old man knew Nova had a point. He chose not to say so. Instead he muttered something unflattering under his breath and shifted on the sofa.
"What do you know, kid? There's something out there in the deep desert — something none of you youngsters have the patience to look for. Back in my day—"
"Back in your day," Nova cut in pleasantly, "you were dominating the Ground-type bracket at the Master Tournament. And then you got sent home early by 'Howling Tempest,' and you've been strange about it ever since."
That landed exactly where he meant it to.
Mort went red from his collar to his hairline. "You can't just say things like that! Type disadvantage is not—it doesn't count as—if there's no knockdown, you can't call it a—"
The rest dissolved into a string of half-finished protests, something about bad luck with the draw, and an insistence that he had beaten the Electric-type specialist six to zero in an earlier round, which Nova privately found funnier than anything else.
The dim living room felt warmer than it had a moment ago.
They were talking about a match from forty years back — one of the most memorable battles from Mort's prime. It was worth explaining why.
Beyond the annual Norlandia Conference, the Norlandia Alliance held a higher-level professional tournament once every five years: the Master Tournament. Any Trainer who had placed in a previous Norlandia Conference could enter, provided they had a declared type specialty. All six Pokémon used in competition had to carry that type. After a series of qualifying rounds, eighteen Trainers advanced — one representing each type. From those eighteen, the four strongest were chosen as the Norlandia Alliance's Elite Four.
If one of the four stood clearly above the rest, they could be named Champion. If there was no obvious separation in strength, a Champion Challenge was opened to all Trainers in the Alliance. Anyone who could defeat all four in succession earned the title.
Forty years ago, Mort had come through the Ground-type bracket and earned his place in the final rounds as Ground-Type Master. He was then beaten decisively by Gao Nici, the Flying-type Master known as "Howling Tempest." The match had gone down in the record books as a classic — which meant the old man had been hearing about it ever since.
It had not done his temperament any favours. Already a solitary and eccentric person, Mort withdrew further after that defeat. He stopped showing up to things. He threw himself into the desert for long stretches, ignoring career and family alike. The result was a man now in his seventies, still unmarried, still wandering, and apparently still turning the TV volume to maximum at night.
Adding to the sting was what had happened in the years that followed. His junior, "Armed Mountains" Gilbert Armstrong — a Trainer Mort had consistently beaten in their youth — had gone on to claim the Ground-type title in a later Master Tournament and had held a seat among the Elite Four for several decades running, making him the longest-serving of the current four.
Being surpassed by someone he once dominated was the second-greatest source of frustration in Mort's life. Marty was the first.
Nova himself occupied a particular place on that list as well, which was why the old man had always called him an ungrateful little brat.
Three years ago, Nova had just finished general education — no Pokémon, no connections, no clear path forward. He had heard about the Withered Gym and decided to try his luck there.
Mort had never kept staff. Apart from a cleaner who came by occasionally, he ran the place entirely alone. Plenty of young people had tried to get a foothold at the Gym over the years, but Nova had been the one bold enough — or oblivious enough — to walk in and ask for the position of Battle Master.
A Battle Master at a Pokémon Master's Gym should at least be a Professional Trainer. Nova was thirteen, owned no Pokémon, and was apparently serious.
Mort could have turned him away at the door. Instead, perhaps out of boredom, he made an offer: a battle. If Nova could hold out for thirty seconds, he could stay and work at the Gym.
Since Nova had no Pokémon, Mort let him pick one from the Gym's own collection — a mix of interesting specimens the old man had caught on his travels over the years. They weren't his main team, and he hadn't paid them much attention. Mort would also pick one from the Gym's roster to keep things even.
What happened next was something Mort never fully made peace with.
He lost. Nova won, and won clearly. It was Mort who failed to last thirty seconds.
In fairness, Mort couldn't entirely be blamed for not anticipating it. Somewhere among the Gym's roster, overlooked and unrecognised, was a Pokémon with exceptional talent — what the system would have shown as a purple nameplate. Nova had spotted it immediately and chosen it without hesitation. Mort had picked at random and found himself on the wrong end of a very sharp opening combination before he had time to recover.
The Pokémon Nova had chosen that day was an unusually large Nidorino.
That was how Arno and Nova met for the first time.
In a strict sense, Mort was Nova's first real benefactor — not Charlie Tucker.
Mort had seen immediately that Nova had genuine talent for battling. He had hoped Nova would stay and give the Withered Gym a future. But Nova had his own path in mind. The old man had been kind to him, and Nova was grateful for that — he just had no intention of tying himself to a Gym that was slowly fading from the world's memory.