Nova spotted a mission on the board that had been posted several years ago and remained unclaimed to this day.
The request was simple enough: travel to Sand Village, north of Forest City, and drive off a colony of unusually aggressive Trapinch that had settled near the village and were posing a serious threat to the people living there.
The strangest part was the reward — just 100 League Coins.
What could 100 League Coins actually buy? It would not even cover a single meal for Nova's Nidoking, let alone the cost of dealing with a colony of Trapinch described in the briefing as dangerously hostile.
Most people would assume the low payout was the reason the request had sat untouched for years.
But something about it did not sit right with Nova.
Professional Trainers came in all kinds. Most took bounty jobs to cover their living costs, but there were always a few — Trainers from wealthier backgrounds who had never had to worry about money — who took jobs for reasons that had nothing to do with the reward. Some were driven by a sense of justice, others wanted the gratitude of the people they helped, and some simply wanted a tough challenge to push their Pokémon partners.
Given enough time, one of those idealists would surely take any job, no matter how small the pay. A request should not sit on a board for years without anyone touching it unless something else was keeping people away.
And one line in the briefing had caught Nova's eye.
It described the Trapinch colony as unnaturally hostile — so hostile, in fact, that they had reportedly begun attacking humans.
In the wild, Pokémon rarely targeted people. Only a small number of particularly fierce species were known to go after travelers, and even then only when hungry. Trapinch were not among them. They were small Pokémon, and a full-grown human was far too large to be practical prey for them.
Something unnatural had to be behind this behavior.
Nova's thoughts immediately went to the illegal lab he had just shut down in Lune Town — the one producing what were known as malicious drugs. These were dangerous compounds that forced a Pokémon into a berserk, frenzied state by burning through their life force and potential in exchange for raw aggression.
Taylor had crossed the entire Tamar Desert to reach Forest City. Nova doubted the man had made that journey for no reason. Someone with Taylor's reputation as a criminal would need to make an impact, and what better way to test a new batch of malicious drugs than on a convenient wild Pokémon colony?
The more Nova turned it over in his mind, the more the pieces seemed to fit. He pulled the request off the board and walked over to the service window.
If his hunch turned out to be right, it could be a major lead. If not, he would only lose a day of travel — a small price for a potentially worthwhile gamble.
The clerk on duty was a man in his fifties named Brant .
It was a shame, Nova thought, that not every Pokémon Center could be staffed by a Nurse Joy. Having a warm, cheerful Joy attend to you was always a pleasant experience.
With no other customers around, Brant had settled into a recliner chair, his round belly propped up and serving as a convenient phone stand while he rewatched footage from the previous year's Norlandia Alliance Tournament. His youngest son had qualified for the competition and fought his way into the top sixty-four, and the proud father replayed those particular matches every chance he got.
Noticing Nova approach, he reluctantly set his phone down, made his way back to the window, and looked at the mission form with a slight frown. "You want to take this one?"
Nova figured that anyone willing to work for a hundred League Coins would seem a little odd from the outside — yet from the clerk's point of view, a long-standing problem finally being dealt with should have been welcome news.
Brant shook his head slowly, his round eyes going wide. Clearly there was more to this job than the form let on.
"You're not from around here, are you?"
"That's right," Nova said. "I'm a Trainer from Harmony City."
Brant muttered under his breath. "Harmony City all the way to Forest City? Don't you folks have your own desert to deal with?"
Still, he did his job properly. "Since you're new here, there's something you should know first. Take a seat — let me explain."
Nova sat down without argument, giving the man his full attention. He was more focused than he had ever been during any school lesson.
"Sand Village was a lively place twenty years ago," Uncle Brant began. "The medicinal herbs and desert berries grown there sold well, and the residents made a decent living.
But over the last decade, the sandstorms pushed the desert roughly ten kilometers closer every year. Without the parasol tree forest at the center of town, Forest City itself might have been buried. Out in the village, the farmland turned to dunes, crops failed season after season, and the Norlandia Alliance eventually marked the village for abandonment. Most of the residents packed their things and left.
A few, though, could not bring themselves to go. They had lived there their whole lives, and leaving felt like giving up a part of themselves — so they stayed, even as things kept getting worse.
Then, about three years ago, the Trapinch colony showed up — the very same one listed in your request.
For reasons no one could explain, they were aggressive. Dangerously so. They started going after people. A young girl from one of the families was bitten badly and did not survive her injuries.
That loss was the final push for most of the remaining villagers. They left after that. All except the girl's father. He had nothing left but grief and a handful of savings, and he used every last bit of it to post that bounty — 100 League Coins, everything he had. The Alliance could not turn down a lawful request, so the notice went up on the board."
None of that was especially strange on the surface, yet Nova could tell from the way Brant was speaking that the real point of the story had not arrived yet.
"The first Trainer to take the job was a good kid — bright, selfless, the type who genuinely wanted to help people without worrying about the reward." Brant's expression grew heavier. "A good kid… It's a shame what happened to him."