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June 1st.
In Nova's previous life, this day had been Children's Day.
The Norlandia Alliance had no such holiday, but he could not help feeling that the Starter Pokémon he was about to receive might as well be his own Children's Day gift.
If he had been handed a Mudkip during his school days back then, would he not have been beside himself with excitement? And the Mudkip about to become his partner would be a real, living creature. In his past life, even a large Mudkip plushie would have been something he treasured.
The staff member sent to receive Nova had arrived with a small misunderstanding already in place.
He was a tall boy with glasses, probably only a few years older than Nova. He had the look of someone who had recently finished university and been taken on as a new recruit at the Pokémon Factory. This intern bio-engineer, whose name was Zander, had assumed that anyone personally referred by Gym Leader Kim would be a ten-year-old child just starting their journey. To make a good first impression, he had stopped at the small shop outside the factory on his way out and bought a box of sweets.
What he found instead was a sixteen-year-old who looked perfectly comfortable in his own skin. Zander stood there holding his box of sweets with no clear idea of what to do with them, unable to give them away without the whole situation becoming awkward, and equally unable to just stuff them back into his pocket.
Nova, for his part, was genuinely puzzled. Why was this staff member clutching a box of sweets while coming out to meet him? He quietly wondered whether the man had low blood sugar.
"Oh, so you're Nova. I wasn't expecting... Anyway. I'm Zander Miller, intern bio-engineer here at the Nivan City Pokémon Factory. Just call me Zander."
Nova was not about to call a working engineer by a nickname. He went with the sensible option.
"Hello, Engineer Zander. Thank you for taking the time."
Being called "Engineer Zander" clearly caught Zander off guard. He waved his hands and shook his head in a show of modest protest, but the corners of his mouth gave him away entirely.
That exchange, unfortunately, marked the high point of their conversation.
"Um... would you like a sweet?"
"No, thank you."
And that was that.
For the rest of the journey into the facility, Engineer Zander drove a small shuttle bus, the kind typically used at large parks and tourist sites, carrying Nova toward the core area of the Pokémon Factory. Had it been someone like Brittney from the Cornus City Pokémon Factory receiving them, she would no doubt have been giving a cheerful commentary on the facility's history and various departments the whole way, making sure no silence went unfilled. Zander, however, was the kind of person whose natural habitat was a lab report. He even stumbled over his words during those. Asking him to double as a tour guide was not a reasonable expectation.
Nova did not mind. He was here to choose a Pokémon. Conversation was optional. A comfortable, unspoken agreement settled between them in the small shuttle: neither of them needed to make an effort to fill the quiet, and neither of them expected anything from the other. It was the kind of mutual understanding that happens naturally between two people who both just want to get on with things. Like walking into a shop, finding what you came for, paying, and leaving. Clean and efficient.
Nova did find himself wondering, briefly, whether things would have gone differently for Zander if Aresdra had come along. He decided the answer was almost certainly yes, and that it was probably for the best that she had not. Four years of university with limited contact with other people had a way of making certain social situations more complicated than they needed to be. Zander looked like exactly that kind of person, and Aresdra had a particular talent for making those situations significantly worse.
Skipping the general tour of the facility, Zander led Nova straight to the observation window of the factory's nursery.
Every June, a new batch of Pokémon entered the nursery at the breeding factory, ready for the next generation of young Trainers beginning their journeys across the Norlandia Alliance. The Pokémon were not actually born in June, however. Their real hatching dates fell in mid-May. After roughly ten days of growth and the most fragile stage of early life behind them, they were moved into the nursery. From there, they would be sent out in batches to the children who had selected Water-type Starters in the second half of the year.
Nova had timed his visit to June 1st on purpose. The nursery would be full. The selection would be at its widest. The best individuals would still be here.
The nursery was a large, carefully designed space built entirely around the needs of Mudkip. Half of it was a shallow pool, and the other half was a gently sloping sandy area kept warm and damp by a network of humidifiers and heating pipes running beneath the surface. The pool was shallow enough that even the smallest Mudkip could wade in without going under. The whole setup followed the natural amphibious habits of the species closely.
In truth, the ideal environment for Mudkip would be something closer to a soft muddy wetland or shallow marsh. But this was still a facility where Trainers came to visit and make their choices, and there was a certain practical limit to how much authenticity was worth pursuing when presentation also mattered. The shoal-like environment was a reasonable compromise.
Scattered throughout the pool and sandy area were small pieces of play equipment: slides that led into the water, low platforms for jumping, and a few simple structures to climb and explore. The recently hatched Mudkip scrambled and splashed through all of it without a care, completely unaware that on the other side of the observation glass, a very interested pair of eyes was already watching them closely.
"That one looks good. And that one too, actually..."
The one thing that fell short of his hopes was that, after scanning the entire group, Nova could not find a single Mudkip with a Gold Talent. That was not surprising, really. Gold Talents were genuinely rare, and even when you found one, there was a strong chance it came with serious complications, just as his Meowscarada had, or as Aresdra's Torchic still did. Nova had the Cultivation System on his side, and he had been lucky enough to find ways to work around those issues, but that did not mean every difficult Pokémon would suit him. There was no system in the world that could account for every possible problem a Gold Talent might bring with it.
For the purposes of this selection, a Purple Talent was more than acceptable. It met the threshold the Cultivation System needed to function properly, and beyond that, the more distinctive the individual, the better. Unusual traits gave the Cultivation System the most room to work with.
With that approach in mind, Nova stood at the observation window for two full hours.
There were well over two thousand Mudkip in that nursery. They moved constantly, chasing each other across the sand and splashing in and out of the pool. Every time Nova opened a scan across the group, a dense flood of information crashed into his head all at once. He had to work through it slowly, narrowing down the range of Purple Talent individuals first, then carefully reviewing each one in turn while managing the mental strain of the data overload.
After filtering through those whose talent rating looked promising but whose actual traits were fairly ordinary, one small Mudkip gradually caught his attention. It was sitting quietly by the edge of the pool, gazing at its own reflection in the water with what appeared to be great concentration.
When Nova brought his scan to bear on it, he lost his composure entirely.
Its first trait was listed as "Philosopher."