Nova had received over a hundred messages from Thelma. In a row.
The eldest Thelma had previously accused him of avoiding her on purpose. That accusation hadn't been entirely wrong, but it had also lacked proof — which had given Nova just enough room to deny it. This time, she had him. He had been in Purple Gold City for two days. Thelma had also been in Purple Gold City. And he had left the moment she wasn't looking.
From Nova's perspective, this was genuinely bad luck. Thelma was the kind of person who went wherever she felt like going, on no particular schedule, answering to no one. How was he supposed to have known she was there?
But the result was the same regardless of the reason. When Thelma was in Goldenlight City, Nova had been away. When she was in Purple Gold City, Nova had rushed back to Goldenlight City. The pattern, from the outside, looked deliberate.
"And you still say you're not avoiding me?"
Her revenge was swift and proportional. She leaked his return itinerary to several Pokémon trainer forums, and a group of bored Trainers with nothing better to do had organized themselves into a welcoming committee. Nova had already seen them from the air and taken the long way around.
That part didn't worry him much. Pranks were pranks.
What did worry him was the question of what Thelma had been doing in Purple Gold City in the first place.
He thought about the large-scale event currently underway in the capital. Then he broke into a cold sweat.
Surely not. Surely someone with her battle instincts and competitive edge wouldn't also have a serious interest in the Alliance's idol group auditions. But if she did — if Thelma actually passed the selection and ended up on the same team as Aresdra — Nova was going to have a very complicated life.
Would he even be able to attend their performances? Every interaction would be a social trap waiting to spring. He could already picture it.
At the thought of Aresdra and Thelma becoming close friends and comparing notes, Nova felt the summer heat of the south doing absolutely nothing to warm him.
Not that there was anything he could do about it. Some things were simply out of a person's hands — like weather, or other people's decisions. He couldn't stop Thelma from auditioning, and he had no intention of stopping Aresdra. Both of them were genuinely exceptional — one a battle prodigy, the other a natural performer with real talent for singing and dance. There was no realistic scenario in which either of them failed the selection. Nova had accepted this.
He let it go and turned his attention to why he had actually come to Goldenlight City.
Aresdra now had the Psyduck, which covered her. But the house was another matter. If he and Aresdra were both going to be away for an extended period, he couldn't just leave Purrloin alone to manage things. Some form of reliable protection was needed.
Nova's plan was to bring a few Paras home. They were one of the very few Grass-type Pokémon that carried the Damp ability, which was exactly what he needed. Grass-types in general were well-suited to long periods without supervision — they could use Ingrain and sustain themselves without much intervention. Paras in particular preferred cool, shaded environments over direct sunlight, which made them better suited to a home setting than most.
As it happened, Nova's backyard was practically ideal. Sprigatito had been practicing Grassy Terrain out there on a regular basis, and the bushes had responded by growing thick and lush — exactly the kind of sheltered, moist environment that Paras found comfortable. A regular supply of berries left in the garden, and they would be completely self-sufficient.
Since Damp was a Hidden Ability for the Paras line, finding one in the wild by chance was inefficient at best. Nova decided to go directly to a specialist.
For Grass-type Pokémon, that meant Luma Gym and Charlie. They were already acquainted, which meant Nova wouldn't have to worry about being overcharged, and Charlie Tucker's operation maintained large populations of Paras and Oddish as part of its core business. In fact, one of the Gym's major ventures was a Paras ranch that Charlie ran himself.
The reason was practical. The small mushrooms growing on a Paras's back — known in medicinal circles as Cordyceps — were a remarkably effective restorative when properly prepared. Dried, ground into powder, and combined with the right herbs, the resulting medicine could accelerate recovery in ways that had made it genuinely valuable in clinical use. Nova recognized the name from his past life, where Cordyceps had been a real and moderately well-regarded medicinal fungus — though one that had also attracted a great deal of enthusiastic exaggeration from people trying to sell it.
In his previous life, someone who claimed Cordyceps could run faster than a champion sprinter or grow taller than a professional basketball player would have been laughed out of the room — or sued. The more dramatic promises made by certain supplement brands had always been more creative than accurate.
But in this world, once you attached the word "Pokémon" to something, the rules changed. The medicinal properties of Paras mushroom powder were not exaggerated. They were observable, documented, and very real. A properly prepared dose could do things that would have seemed impossible back in Nova's old world.
Pokémon really were something else.
Charlie's Paras ranch, as a result, was essentially a guaranteed income stream. The medicine produced there moved faster than it could be restocked, and the market showed no sign of shrinking.
Which was exactly why Nova felt awkward bringing up his request.
Asking Charlie Tucker to sell him a few Paras with the Damp ability was roughly equivalent to walking into a dairy farm and asking the owner if any of his cows were for sale. It was the kind of question that required a very good temper to receive graciously.
He offered to pay above market rate. He made it clear he understood this was an unusual ask.
Charlie Tucker told him not to worry about it. For four or five Paras with Damp, he said, there would be no charge.
Nova immediately felt guilty. He had already accepted more than enough generosity from Charlie over the years. Taking something else for free wasn't something he could do easily.
As it turned out, he had misread the situation.
The reason Damp was inconvenient on a Paras ranch had nothing to do with battle effectiveness or rarity for its own sake. The problem was environmental. A Paras with Damp generated a persistent field of moisture around itself — not just keeping its own mushrooms too damp to dry, but spreading that effect to the surrounding Paras as well. Wet Cordyceps couldn't be processed properly. The powder's quality dropped. The ranch's yield took a measurable hit.
A Paras with the Damp ability, on a farm built around harvesting Cordyceps, was the agricultural equivalent of a problem that kept getting worse the longer it stayed.
Charlie wasn't being generous. He was solving a logistics issue.