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Faced with his master's probing question, Nova could not give him an honest answer.
"I just know it!" Nova said. "It's like I've always had a feel for these things!"
Luckily, Mort only thought his student was being strange as usual and did not push the matter further. Instead, he went on, "Counting Rotom, you now have eight Pokémon with you, don't you?
"Our Norlandia Alliance isn't as strict about the rules as the neighboring Nirvana League. Trainers heading out on a journey are only allowed to carry a team of six Pokémon, and anyone who wants to exceed that number has to apply to the Alliance directly.
"Still, keeping too many Pokémon with you is a real burden. Now that you're an official Trainer of the Layered Peaks Gym, you could leave the ones you're not actively training here at the Gym if you wanted to lighten your load. Gilbert and I would be glad to look after them ourselves, so you wouldn't have to worry about their training or their care."
For most Trainers, this would be a dream offer. But for Nova, accepting it might cause more trouble than it solved. A Trainer only has so much time and attention to give, and simply keeping track of six Pokémon's training schedules is already demanding work. Having a Master-level Trainer from the Alliance personally oversee that training would be an incredible privilege, one that even someone as well-connected as Thelma Tucker likely couldn't expect.
But Nova didn't need any of that, because he had never really designed his own training regimens in the first place. At most, he gathered information and offered suggestions here and there; the actual details always came from his breeding system, so there was no risk of him wearing himself thin. With Rotom's help, he didn't even need to bother looking things up anymore.
Rotom could turn into something like a digital assistant inside a phone, a cook when it powered a microwave, and a cleaning aid when it operated a washing machine. It was, in short, an all-purpose helper for both home and travel.
What pleased Nova even more was that Rotom wasn't just useful around the house. Its aptitude for battle turned out to be surprisingly strong, and combined with a pair of traits suited for combat, it already matched the strength Corviknight had shown back when Nova first caught it as a Corvisquire. If it ever came to a real fight, Little Blue, still unevolved at the time, would likely have been overwhelmed by what Rotom could do once it powered up a battle appliance.
Rotom could speak fluent Pokémon language as well as the common tongues of the region's various Alliances, a gift sharp enough to make it a proper translator in its own right. In its charged, ionic state, it never seemed to tire, no matter how long it worked or fought, and it recovered a portion of its health with every turn it spent inside a battle appliance. Best of all, it handled Pokémon appliances so naturally that its whole fighting ability seemed to grow stronger the moment it took control of one. It already knew Astonish, Thunder Shock, Charge, Electro Ball, Thunder Wave, and Hex, a solid spread of moves for a Pokémon still finding its footing.
Once settled inside a battle appliance, Rotom fought with a strength that could rival some of the most promising young Pokémon Nova had ever seen. Sure, in a simple turn-based game this kind of raw power boost might look excessive or unrealistic, but real battles didn't work like that. It made no sense for a Pokémon built for special attacks to be helpless with physical moves just because of its specialty. Nova's own Nidoking was proof of that: even though its Ability and traits marked it as a special attacker, its size and raw strength meant its physical moves were just as dangerous up close. Nothing about a Pokémon's strength went to waste; every bit of it mattered somewhere. Rotom's gift for handling battle appliances was simply an unusually dramatic example of that idea.
Watching Nova study the floating Rotom so intently, Gilbert could tell he had picked up on something, so he didn't wait around and asked directly what Nova had figured out.
Nova could answer the question itself honestly enough, but explaining how he'd figured it out was another matter, so he fell back on his usual talent for making up a good story.
"I could just feel it," Nova said. "Even though my new partner's a Plasma-type Pokémon, the energy coming off it felt so full and alive that I figured it had to be strong in a fight."
Gilbert nodded at that. "Mort told me before that you had a sharp eye for talent, that you could pick the most promising Nidorino out of an entire group without even trying. I'll admit I doubted him a little. How could someone your age, without any formal training as a Breeder, size up a Pokémon's potential just by looking at it? But now that I've seen it myself, I believe he was right. You really do have an eye for talent that most people simply don't."
He went on, "This particular Rotom, along with the rest of its litter, was specially bred by researchers at the Norlandia Alliance's Academy of Sciences. They were designed from the start to work with the newest model of Pokédex phone. Only major contributors to the Alliance, people who pay enormous sums in taxes every year, are given access to a device like that, so naturally the Alliance wasn't going to pair such advanced hardware with anything less. Along with the Pokédex phone you already received, there's also a set of Pokémon battle appliances made for Rotom to use. They're all in your space backpack, and you're free to take them out whenever you need them."
Once he left Gilbert's office, Nova didn't head back to the training grounds. Instead, he used his new phone to call for a car outside the building and rode straight back to the room the Layered Peaks Gym had set aside for him at the hotel.
Back in his room, he turned the space backpack over in his hands again and again. It was no bigger than a laptop, but with no real background in science, there was no way he could begin to understand how something so advanced actually worked.
"I wonder who came up with this thing," he muttered to himself.
Rotom, tucked away inside the phone, caught the question and assumed its new master wanted an answer. Within moments it had already searched the matter out and was eager to share what it found.
"The space backpack was developed by..." it began.
Nova let it finish the explanation all the way through without interrupting, and once it was done, he found himself smiling.
"Can I give you a nickname?" he asked.
"Of course," Rotom said. "Whatever you decide to call me, I'm sure I'll like it."
"Then from now on," Nova said, "I'll just call you Roto."