Mort had no words to throw back at Gilbert. There truly had been a string of unfortunate misunderstandings back then, but looking at it now, he had to admit his choices had been willful and more than a little childish.
That was also why, as the years passed, he had slowly let himself go to rot. He couldn't bear to face his own memories, so he buried himself in drink and reckless nights out, trying to numb himself with wine and noise instead of thinking about what his life might have looked like if he hadn't made that one impulsive decision.
Most of his resentment toward Gilbert had grown out of that very thing.
He didn't hate Gilbert for taking his life away from him. He hated his younger self for handing such a brilliant life over to the junior brother trailing behind him.
Watching from the sidelines, Nova was stunned by the raw feeling in Gilbert's words. The reasoning that followed was so airtight that Nova nearly cheered out loud. Gilbert's way with words was sharp enough that he could have talked his way into leading the entire Alliance, if he'd ever wanted to.
In the end, things took a turn Nova hadn't expected at all.
The two old men grabbed each other by the shoulders and wept like children. The whole scene was almost unbearably sentimental. Nova had to cover Meowscarada's eyes with one hand. Whatever this was, it wasn't fit for a Pokémon to witness.
By the time it was over, his so-called master had been talked completely senseless by his own junior brother's speech.
Nova wondered just what kind of theatrical, overwrought performance he had just sat through.
But it was settled now. Mort had decided to return to his roots and officially rejoin the Layered Peaks Gym. His run-down excuse for a Gym would be shutting its doors as of today.
That didn't mean Nova was free, though. His affiliation had simply shifted over to the Layered Peaks Gym.
Mort would remain his nominal master for now, but once Nova earned the title of Ground-type Master in a future Master Tournament and claimed a title of his own, his path to eventually succeeding Gilbert would be locked in.
That, of course, was easier said than done. Gilbert himself currently held the top spot for Ground-types across the region, which meant that in the next Master Tournament, Nova would have to beat Gilbert directly to earn the title of Ground-type Master.
Fair enough, Nova thought. A new leader has to dethrone the old one before anybody takes the position seriously.
Naturally, the person most confident that Nova could pull this off wasn't Nova himself, but his so-called master, Mort. Once Mort heard about the earlier duel between Nova and Gilbert, his reasoning was simple: if Nova could already scrape out a win now, then by the time the next tournament rolled around, with how fast his strength was growing, beating Gilbert outright would practically be a formality.
Sure enough, by the next day, every major outlet across the Norlandia Alliance was scrambling to report on Mort's return to the Layered Peaks Gym.
Because of how the Alliance's Master Tournament system worked, only the single strongest Trainer of a given specialty during any era could hold that Master title. For thirty straight years, while Gilbert dominated, not one new Ground-type Master had emerged.
That made titled Masters incredibly rare and valuable within the Alliance.
Even a well-established Gym with deep roots would consider having two Master-ranked Trainers under one roof a rare stroke of fortune.
None of that excitement, however, had anything to do with Nova.
Because the master and his martial uncle had just settled a decade-long feud, and once they compared notes over a shared meal, both of them realized just how smug Nova had looked, fanning the flames and enjoying the show from the sidelines the whole time. That, in turn, reminded them both of their own hard, thankless years of training as apprentices.
Without needing to discuss it, they silently agreed not to let Nova have it easy.
So the two old men handed him a task they were certain would be brutal.
They wanted Nova to head deep into the Tamar Desert and bring back promising young Pokémon, or Pokémon eggs, to help strengthen the Layered Peaks Gym.
Since Nova technically still had an independent arrangement with Mort, he could have brushed the request off entirely. But there was a catch: Gilbert's offer was simply too good to pass up. To make sure Nova took the assignment seriously, Gilbert set up a buyback deal at twice the going market rate.
In other words, whatever Nova managed to dig up out in the Tamar Desert, Gilbert would pay him double its market value, no exceptions.
That got Nova's attention fast.
He understood exactly why the two old men wanted to throw their successor into the deep end early, to force him to stand on his own two feet. But his road forward was never going to look like theirs. Thanks to the breeding techniques he'd quietly mastered, Nova didn't need to chase down brutal environments to toughen himself or his Pokémon the way most Trainers did.
Better still, Nova already had a fast way to knock this task out. That would free up plenty of time to put the Layered Peaks Gym's resources to good use, refining the strength of his current team and running focused training for specific traits he wanted to bring out in them.
Noticing how relaxed Nova looked about the whole thing, Gilbert leaned in to pile on the pressure. "Don't get comfortable, kid. Don't think you can scrape together a couple of nobodies and call it done. I'm the Ground-type Elite, and my standards are high. Don't embarrass yourself by bringing back anything with weak potential. I want at least one that could stand shoulder to shoulder with Elite Four material, or this doesn't count.
And don't think about trying to slip something past me, either. The Layered Peaks Gym keeps Breeders on staff who know exactly how to read a Pokémon's or an egg's potential at a glance. You won't be pulling one over on this old man."
Nova nearly laughed out loud at that. No Breeder in any Gym, however sharp their eye, could size up potential faster or more precisely than he could.
He already knew of a spot at the edge of the desert where a whole clutch of Trapinch eggs lay buried, every one of them the offspring of the great Flygon he thought of as royalty out there.
Between that Flygon's excellent bloodline and the unconventional breeding methods Taylor had once taught him, none of those eggs were anything less than promising, and a few were shaping up to be truly exceptional.
Handing this clutch over to the Layered Peaks Gym wouldn't just earn Nova a small fortune. It would also give these little ones, family to Nova's own partner out there, a real chance at a better life. Ending up as Gym assets, raised properly by Trainers within the Dojo, beat scraping by in the desert any day of the week.
Trapinch might be a Ground-type through and through, but hatching still depended on more than just surviving the heat. Being buried under the sand could keep the eggs from losing their vitality, but it was nowhere close to ideal conditions for actually hatching them.
It was a small fortune just waiting for Nova to come collect it.
Nova couldn't help but laugh to himself. Taylor really had turned out to be the most generous man he'd ever robbed blind. Nearly every bit of good fortune in Nova's life so far could be traced back to that one source. If the opportunity ever came up again, he decided, he'd happily track down another Team Origin executive to shake down. Catch just one, and you'd be set for life.