Join my p@treon for more chapters
[email protected]/Tempest_29
The sofa turned out to be no better. After only a short nap, Meowscarada reached out one large paw across the mattress and found nothing but empty sheets, which was more than enough to put it in a foul mood.
Its expression made its feelings clear enough without a single word: it had said all along that evolving would only cause trouble, and here was the proof. Not only could Nova no longer carry it around all day the way he used to, now he was even sneaking off to avoid sleeping next to it. That was simply too much to accept.
Meowscarada threw off its blanket and padded across the room, startling Archie awake in his dog bed along the way. It found Nova curled up on the sofa exactly where he thought he'd been hiding, and, echoing how Nova had carried it earlier that day, it swept him up in its arms and carried him straight back toward the bed.
"H-hey! No! Meowscarada, put me down! Don't mess around, or Aresdra's going to have words with you! Come on, Meow, be reasonable!"
Neither struggling nor sweet talk did him any good.
It was easy to forget just what a base Physical Attack stat of 110 actually meant in practice. A punch from Meowscarada carried more force than a fully grown Machoke could manage, closer to what a Machamp could throw. Against that kind of strength, an ordinary trainer's grip didn't stand a chance.
Nova landed on the bed a moment later, and the large cat settled down contentedly right beside him, clearly pleased with itself.
He tried to wriggle free, but Meowscarada looped a length of vine from Grass Knot around him before he could get anywhere, pinning him neatly in place.
Its message was clear enough without needing words: stop squirming and go to sleep already.
Easy for it to say. Nova grumbled under his breath and gave the vines one more halfhearted tug, but between Meowscarada's strength and its sheer stubbornness, there was no real hope of escape. He looked around at his other partners, silently pleading for backup.
None of them so much as opened an eye. Even back when Meowscarada had still been a Sprigatito, it had already run the team as its own personal territory, propped up by Nova's constant fussing and quick to lash out at anyone who challenged it. The only one who had ever dared to push back was Nidoking, and Nidoking wasn't here tonight to save him.
Nova had, in fairness, brought this entirely on himself. The rest of the team pretended to be fast asleep and left him to face the music alone.
Meowscarada, for its part, settled in for a thoroughly satisfying night's rest curled up right beside him. Nova had a much rougher time of it, pinned in place and barely able to shift position, let alone actually fall asleep.
By the time morning came, Nova showed up in front of Gilbert with dark circles under both eyes. Gilbert studied him for a long moment with an expression somewhere between mild disdain and the particular bewildered respect that older trainers sometimes reserve for the young. Eventually, he offered only one remark, entirely out of nowhere.
"You young people certainly have stamina."
Nova was too irritated to even answer properly. If it weren't for the promised reward waiting for him today, he might have said something he'd regret.
As it turned out, though, Gilbert seemed in no hurry to mention any reward at all. Instead, he spent the morning walking Nova through the Layered Peaks Gym's various holdings around the city: five-star hotels, ore smelting plants, breeding facilities reserved for Gym trainers, hospitals, shopping centers, office towers, even public restrooms at local tourist spots. The Gym apparently held a stake in nearly everything.
Nova couldn't help wondering whether this was really still a Gym or something closer to a business empire. Even so, this tour only covered the Gym's holdings within Sand River City. Whatever lay at the true heart of its wealth remained hidden somewhere deep within the Cengluan Mountain Range.
Nova took it all in without much enthusiasm, his mood not far from how he'd felt complaining about Gilbert the day before. Why show him all of this if none of it was actually his to have? It felt like being shown a feast through a window.
Then Gilbert said something that changed everything, something that made all of that wealth suddenly feel within reach, as if all it would take was a single nod from Nova to claim it.
"Having seen this much, you understand something of what the Layered Peaks Gym has built," Gilbert said. "None of this is my doing alone. It's the result of eight generations of Gym Leaders before me, each one adding to what came before. I've spent my own decades here doing my best to carry that forward, and I'd say I've done well enough. But I've already passed sixty years old, and in this life I've fought my share of battles across the Norlandia Alliance and beyond. Honor, standing, wealth, none of that is lacking. What I don't have is a successor, someone to carry the Layered Peaks Gym forward after I'm gone. If I fail in that, I won't be able to face my own teacher when my time comes. So here is your reward, Nova: the future of this Gym itself. Become my disciple, and one day you will stand as its ninth Gym Leader."
Gilbert spoke with real feeling, and despite himself, Nova was moved. It wasn't the promise of wealth that struck him so much as the plain sincerity in Gilbert's voice, the genuine pride this Ground-type Elite Four member carried for the Gym he'd spent his life building.
Still, Nova wasn't naive enough to take this entirely at face value. It seemed strange that someone as accomplished as Gilbert, running a Gym this large, hadn't found a single worthy successor in over thirty years. Was there something he wasn't saying?
Gilbert only let out a heavy sigh at the question.
It wasn't that he'd never had disciples before. Some twenty years earlier, still in his prime, he had taken on a group of promising young trainers, much as his own teacher had once done with him, hoping to raise a new generation to match the legendary pair known as "Armed Mountain" and "Withered Earth."
But none of those students seemed to understand how to carry themselves, and none of them ended up staying the course. Gilbert had pushed them hard, perhaps too hard, reasoning that he and his fellow disciple had endured just as much in their own youth. What he'd forgotten was that his own teacher had once trained over a hundred students, and in the end, only he and Mort had remained standing.
People remembered the achievements of "Armed Mountain" and "Withered Earth" and rarely stopped to think about how many other hopeful trainers had fallen away along the way. Gilbert, it seemed, hadn't inherited quite the same luck. Not one of his own students had managed to endure the brutal training regimen of the Layered Peaks Gym.
Gilbert had chalked it up to a simple lack of talent and effort on their part. For the twenty years since, he'd kept searching for a trainer worth cultivating, without success.
The Gym's VIP challenge track existed precisely to filter out promising young trainers worth his attention. It had never once produced the genius he was hoping for. Instead, it had produced Nova, an unexpected dark horse rising out of the qualifiers, and that alone was enough to leave Gilbert thoroughly satisfied.