Where there are locks, there are always people who have lost their keys — and locksmiths who make a living finding ways in.
The Pokémon world had the same trade. The main difference from Nova's past life was that human craftsmen with specialised tools were largely replaced here by Pokémon with the right moves and instincts. The work was the same. The workforce was different.
His question cut straight through the café chatter.
Every person in that lounge was a Professional Trainer. Trainers developed sharp instincts about two things above all else: danger and money. Someone suddenly asking about a locksmith in a room full of Trainers was not going to go unnoticed.
They pressed him for details.
Nova told them a version of the truth: while exploring an uninhabited area, he had come across a locked container he couldn't open, and he wanted a locksmith to take a look.
The collective sharpness in the room dialled back almost immediately.
Among Trainers, this sort of thing wasn't common, but it wasn't remarkable either. People who spent their days moving through hazardous wild areas occasionally turned up unusual containers — abandoned crates, old storage boxes, things left behind by previous explorers or wild Pokémon. Most of the time they held nothing useful. Every once in a while, something genuinely valuable turned up.
There was a story that circulated in Trainer circles about the current world Champion — a celebrated figure from the Inca League who went by the name Mr. Syndicate. The story went that early in his career, he had cracked open a rotting old chest and found a Master Ball inside. That Master Ball eventually helped him catch the Pokémon that anchored three consecutive world championship wins.
Stories like that kept the dream alive.
The reality, as most experienced Trainers knew, was that the vast majority of wild containers yielded decayed supplies, broken items, or nothing at all. The unlucky ones occasionally produced something worse — there were accounts of what some darkly called "People Fragments" turning up in remote areas, and anyone present when something like that surfaced could expect a visit from a Security Officer and a lengthy interview.
With all of that in mind, the group's interest settled. Nova had the container. The outcome was uncertain. There was no obvious reason to get involved.
If he had told them he had taken a safe directly from an Original Team officer, the calculation would have been different entirely. A criminal cadre's personal safe almost certainly held something worth the risk. A random box found in the wild was another matter.
Since their own interests weren't on the line, the female Trainers were happy enough to give Nova what he had actually asked for: addresses.
He copied them all down, thanked the group, and excused himself under the pretense of getting dinner.
He found a nearby restaurant, spent a portion of what Sprigatito had earned that afternoon on take-out for two, and headed home to share it with Aresdra. The locksmiths could wait until morning.
Sprigatito, riding on his shoulder, made her feelings about this clear through pointed silence and a fixed, accusatory stare directed at the bag of food.
"You earn money too, you know," Nova told her. "And who pays for all the treats you eat every day?"
She stared at him for another moment, then looked away. The matter was not settled as far as she was concerned.
The evening passed without incident.
The next morning, Nova dropped Aresdra off at school and began working through the list.
Locksmiths tended to set up in out-of-the-way spots — quieter streets, back alleys, the kinds of locations that suited a trade built on discretion. He covered a lot of ground over the course of the morning, and every visit followed the same pattern.
The moment a locksmith heard there was a job, their expression brightened. The moment Nova mentioned the location was somewhere in the Tamar Desert, it closed again.
No one was willing to travel into an uninhabited area with a stranger. The practical risks were obvious, and beyond that, there was a simpler concern: they had no way of knowing who Nova actually was. He looked fine. That meant nothing. A Trainer with bad intentions could look perfectly ordinary, and the desert was far enough from the city that shouting for help would accomplish little.
Nova had pointed this out to one locksmith, who had responded with complete seriousness: "Exactly. That's the problem. You look too normal. These days I don't trust anyone who looks like they have nothing to hide."
One craftsman did offer a suggestion that was at least logically sound: bring the container back to Harmony City. Within city limits, finding someone to open almost anything was not difficult.
Nova thought about this for approximately three seconds before picturing Taylor's safe. One tonne of reinforced steel. Over a hundred kilometres of desert between it and the city. Nidoking was the only member of his team with any realistic chance of lifting it, and asking Nidoking to carry a one-tonne safe across a hundred kilometres of open desert was a request that would be met with a very flat, very final refusal. He had learned where that line was.
He walked home with nothing to show for the morning.
Sprigatito was cheerful. As long as she was with Nova, the day was going well as far as she was concerned.
Growlithe was equally content. Running errands around the city had been exactly the kind of moderate activity its current energy levels appreciated.
Nidoking had spent the morning lying on the lawn in the backyard, free of any training requirements, with lunch delivered on schedule. From its perspective, the day had been ideal.
Corviknight had passed the time drifting around the property, occasionally discouraging wild Pokémon from wandering too close to the garden. Light work. No complaints.
All the frustration in the household was Nova's, and he still had to make lunch.
He sat down, ran out of better ideas, and called a number he had been hoping to avoid.
Mort picked up after a few rings, voice thick with sleep and clearly in the middle of nothing productive. Nova had a strong suspicion about how the man had spent his previous night and chose not to raise it. He had an actual problem to solve.
He explained the situation: a container he couldn't move and couldn't open, no locksmith willing to make the trip, and no realistic way to bring the container to the city.
Mort was quiet for a moment. Then, with the particular energy of someone sharing information they find personally entertaining:
"Why are you looking for a human locksmith? Just apply to the League directly. There are Pokémon for this."
Nova paused. "I've never heard of that."
"Of course you haven't." Mort sounded pleased. "The regular League won't lend you Pokémon — everyone knows that. But what about Pokémon that are already serving time? The ones sitting in Pokémon Prison?"
He left it there, letting Nova fill in the rest.
Nova had not, in fact, heard of this.
The old man had a way of dropping information like that — casually, as an aside, as if everyone already knew — and somehow it was always something that completely reframed the situation.