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The Rainbow Wing.
A feather from the legendary Pokémon Ho-Oh, and among the rarest objects in the known world.
Most people who knew anything about Ho-Oh's feathers understood that they came in three distinct grades. The lowest was the ordinary Rainbow Feather, which was still far beyond any standard Fire-type held item in terms of value. A Pokémon that absorbed one would gain a meaningful boost to its Fire-type aptitude, recover from injuries more effectively, and develop stronger control over and resistance to Fire-type energy overall.
Above that was the Rainbow Plume, which carried all of the ordinary feather's properties and added something extraordinary on top: a genuine chance for a Fire-type Pokémon to learn Sacred Fire. Sacred Fire was Ho-Oh's signature move, shared only with Entei among all Pokémon. It hit with tremendous force and left opponents with a high chance of being badly burned.
And then there was the highest grade of all: the Rainbow Wing, Ho-Oh's crest feather.
The Rainbow Wing possessed everything the Rainbow Plume did, and one ability beyond it. Resurrection. The restoration of life.
In the anime, Ho-Oh had brought back the three Legendary Beasts after they perished in the Brass Tower fire. The Rainbow Wing carried a fragment of that same power. A Pokémon or a person who had died within the last thirty minutes, provided their body was intact, could be brought back.
It had only been confirmed to appear twice in recorded human history. Two instances, across the entire world.
A single Rainbow Wing was, in every practical sense, an extra life.
Jacob looked at the feather resting in the box and felt something shift in his chest.
His identification ability had confirmed it immediately. What sat before him was not an ordinary feather, not even a Plume. It was a Rainbow Wing.
It lay in the box almost casually, and yet waves of heat radiated from it steadily, the Fire-type energy so dense it was nearly visible. The box itself seemed like it should not have been able to contain it.
Jacob thought of Charizard. If Charizard were to absorb this, the improvement to its aptitude and strength would be difficult to even put into numbers.
He exhaled quietly and made himself think practically.
"Five hundred million!"
"Five hundred fifty million!"
"Six hundred million!"
The bids were coming fast. Many people in the room had recognized that this feather was well beyond ordinary, even if they could not identify it precisely as a Rainbow Wing. The bidding had crossed five hundred million in seconds and showed no sign of slowing.
Jacob watched the room and ran his own quiet calculations. The final price would reach a figure that most of the people here would remember for the rest of their lives. No one was going to let a Rainbow Wing go without a fight, not when it could give their most important Pokémon a second chance in a life-or-death situation.
He also found himself curious about who had put it up for auction in the first place. Keeping something like this within a family, passing it down across generations, would have been the obvious choice. Auctioning it suggested the families behind the Underground Black Market had found it together and could not agree on ownership. An open auction was the only way to settle it without someone losing face entirely.
Still. Putting a Rainbow Wing on the open market felt like a waste.
Jacob considered his options carefully. With his own funds and the Qi family's support combined, winning the bid was not impossible in theory, but it was not reliable either. And there was a more immediate problem: even if Erick was willing to cooperate, asking the Qi family to commit most of their remaining resources to win a Rainbow Wing for Jacob would be asking too much of an already strained arrangement. Erick was not going to accelerate his own family's ruin out of goodwill.
As for funding it himself: Jacob had Mega Stones and Key Stones he could liquidate. But moving that volume of rare items at an Underground Black Market, in a room full of people watching every bid, would draw exactly the kind of attention that could unravel everything. Even someone inattentive would start connecting the dots.
He let the thought settle, then set it aside.
He was not giving up on the Rainbow Wing. He was giving up on buying it with money.
There was more than one way to leave an auction with an item.
"One billion!"
The auctioneer's voice rang out clearly over the room.
"One billion one hundred million."
Jacob turned away from the stage and looked at Erick beside him. "Do you know the families still bidding?"
Erick caught something in the tone of the question. He paused for just a moment, then nodded. "Of course. These are well-known names." He kept his voice even and began to list them. "That one is the Chen family..."
Jacob listened and filed each name away carefully.
Erick, for his part, kept glancing at Jacob's mask, clearly trying to read something in his expression.
By the time the price had climbed to a level that made even the wealthiest people in the room go quiet, only two bidders remained: Private Room One and Private Room Nine.
Private Room One was the Chen family, one of the most prominent families in the East China region, as Erick had mentioned. Private Room Nine belonged to the Xiao family, a major wealthy family from the Northwest.
Both had deep pockets, and neither was willing to concede easily. The exchange went back and forth. But eventually, the Xiao family reached a point where continuing no longer made sense. The Rainbow Wing was priceless in the truest meaning of the word, but even priceless things have a ceiling beyond which spending more becomes something other than rational.
They went silent.
"Any further bids?"
The gavel came down.
"Congratulations to the guest in Private Room One. The Rainbow Wing has been acquired."
Applause, and then something more complicated settled over the room. Winning the bid was one thing. Leaving the building with the feather in hand was another matter entirely.
Jacob was not the only one in the room who understood that distinction perfectly well.