But it wasn't a museum. The ancient buildings housed modern businesses, a ramen shop with a digital ordering screen, a Pokémon Center with traditional exterior and clearly state-of-the-art medical equipment visible through the windows, a bookstore whose hand-painted sign advertised both rare antiquarian texts and the latest volume of a popular manga series. Technology and tradition coexisted without tension, as if neither had ever considered the other a threat.
Locals waved as the unfamiliar vehicle passed. Not the cautious, evaluative looks they'd received in Kanto's larger cities, just waves, unhurried and genuine, accompanied by occasional shouts of "Welcome!" from shopkeepers opening their storefronts for the morning. An elderly man walking a pair of Sentret, small, striped Pokémon that stood on their tails to get a better look at the RV, actually bowed as they passed, and the Sentret mimicked the gesture with such precise formality that Kasumi laughed out loud.
"I like it here," she announced. "I like it here already."
Professor Elm's laboratory occupied the northeastern edge of New Bark Town, where the cobblestone streets gave way to a gravel access road that wound through manicured gardens and ended at a compound that couldn't seem to decide what century it belonged to.
The main building was traditional Johto architecture at its most stately, dark timber, curved rooflines, a covered entrance supported by pillars carved with interlocking images of Grass-type Pokémon. But attached to it, sprawling outward in every direction like ambitious afterthoughts, were modern additions. steel-and-glass greenhouses, concrete research annexes, satellite uplink towers, and, visible through a high fence at the compound's rear, a vast open-air enclosure where Pokémon of various species grazed, flew, swam, and generally went about the business of being studied by people who found them endlessly fascinating.
A Typhlosion was sleeping on the front steps.
It was enormous, easily two meters long, its cream-and-blue fur rising and falling with deep, contented breaths. Faint heat shimmered off the vents along its back, not the blazing inferno the species was capable of but a gentle, ambient warmth, like sitting near a banked fireplace. It opened one eye as the Mobile Home parked in the visitor lot, assessed the new arrivals with the profound disinterest of a Pokémon that had seen everything worth seeing, and closed the eye again.
"That's Elm's Typhlosion," Kiyomi said, consulting her tablet. "They've been together since Elm's own trainer journey, thirty years ago. Published papers reference it as one of the longest continuous trainer-Pokémon partnerships in active academic service."
They stepped over the Typhlosion, literally, because it occupied the entire width of the entrance steps, and entered the laboratory.
The interior was chaos.
Not dangerous chaos. Not the urgent, destructive chaos of an Aether Foundation facility or a Gym battle gone wrong. This was the specific, localized chaos of a brilliant mind operating on too many projects simultaneously and not enough filing cabinets. Stacks of research papers covered every horizontal surface, punctuated by half-empty coffee mugs and the occasional Pokéball that had apparently been set down mid-thought and forgotten. Bookshelves lined the walls, their contents organized by a system that was either deeply idiosyncratic or completely absent. A holographic display in one corner showed what appeared to be an evolutionary tree for the Eevee family, with handwritten annotations in three different colors of marker and at least one sticky note that simply read ASK ABOUT GLACEON???
"Ah!" A voice came from behind a towering stack of journals that wobbled but didn't fall. "The door, I heard the door. Give me one, just one second, I'm at a critical point in this..."
A crash. Something glass breaking. A Pokémon's startled chirp.
Professor Elm emerged from behind the stack with his glasses askew, his lab coat buttoned incorrectly, and his salt-and-pepper hair standing at angles that suggested either deep thought or recent electrocution. He was mid-forties, lean, with the pallid complexion of someone who spent more time under fluorescent lighting than sunlight and the bright, slightly manic eyes of someone who had never encountered a question that didn't deserve immediate investigation. He was holding what appeared to be a half-eaten rice ball in one hand and a genetic sequencing printout in the other, and he looked at his visitors the way a child looks at a birthday present, with transparent, uncomplicated delight.
"The Supernovas!" he exclaimed, and the plural felt generous, because his gaze was sweeping across all four of them with equal enthusiasm. "And you must be, wait, don't tell me..." His eyes landed on Kiyomi. The rice ball was forgotten. "Kiyomi Kurama. You published in the Johto Journal of Archaeological Sciences last spring. 'Pre-Pokéball Bonding Practices in Late Neolithic Kanto Settlements.' I've read it three times. The methodology was extraordinary, the way you cross-referenced ceramic fragment dating with behavioral evidence from fossilized Pokémon nesting sites, it's exactly the kind of interdisciplinary approach the field needs."
Kiyomi went red.
Not pink, not flushed, red, the deep and comprehensive red of a woman who had spent her entire academic career being the youngest person in the room and the least likely to receive unprompted praise from anyone, let alone a Professor of Elm's stature. She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, and managed. "You... you read my paper."
"Three times," Elm repeated. "I had questions. I actually drafted a response for peer review, but I got sidetracked by an Umbreon evolution study and then the Ruins of Alph seasonal data came in and, well, you know how it is."
Kiyomi did not, in fact, know how it was to be so overwhelmed with important research that one forgot to respond to academic correspondence, but she nodded anyway, because the alternative was to stand in Professor Elm's laboratory making sounds that weren't words.
Sasuke stepped forward and saved her. "Professor. We're here for Johto registration."
"Yes! Right. Registration. Of course." Elm set the rice ball down on a stack of papers, Miyuki watched it leave a small grease stain with the controlled horror of someone who valued document preservation, and led them deeper into the laboratory, navigating the cluttered aisles with the practiced ease of a man who had long since memorized the geography of his own disorder.