Because the eggs had not yet hatched, Nova's scanner could only pull up the most basic information. All he could see was the image of a Pokémon Egg — no name, no species, nothing to indicate what was sleeping inside. The eggs kept their secrets for now.
What the scanner could still detect, however, was the colour of each egg's potential rating. And that was more than enough.
Every egg in Charlie's private collection had clearly been selected with care — all of them rated at the purple tier or above. But Nova's attention had already fixed itself on the two eggs with golden nameplates.
Gold. He had never seen that colour before, not once in all his time using the scanner. And here were two of them, sitting in the same room.
Champion-level talent. Both of them.
The first sat alone on the fifth shelf — the highest shelf on the banyan tree cabinet. Nothing else shared that space with it. The egg itself was entirely pink, its surface marked with deep rose-coloured patterns that curved like the petals of a flower. Looking at it gave no clear hint about what Pokémon was inside.
The second gold-rated egg sat at the far edge of the third shelf. Its shell was a soft, pale green, marked clearly with a large black pawprint. That pattern was distinctive enough to give Nova a reasonable guess about the species.
Charlie quietly observed as Nova's gaze moved between the third shelf and the fifth. He said nothing outwardly, but inwardly, a thought settled into place: Just as I suspected.
From the moment Nova had insisted on choosing the egg himself, Charlie had suspected the young trainer had some way of reading Pokémon potential directly. It wasn't unheard of. Trainers with unusual abilities appeared from time to time — they always had.
Some could split boulders with a single strike through sheer Fighting-type aura. Others perceived things beyond ordinary sight using Ghost-type energy. Some could communicate with Pokémon through something close to telepathy. Charlie himself, after long years of training within the Viridian Realm — a dense, ancient secret location unlike anything in the ordinary world — had absorbed a portion of its natural energy. He had come to call it Viridian Power, and with it he could tend to a Pokémon's injuries in ways that went beyond standard medicine.
So the idea of a new trainer who could sense potential in an unhatched egg wasn't particularly startling to him. He already knew several breeders with similar abilities, each to a different degree.
What did give him a slight pang was the direction of Nova's gaze.
The pink egg on the fifth shelf was something Charlie had carried back personally from the Viridian Realm after one of his most demanding expeditions. Afterward, he had sought out a highly respected breeding master at the Forbidden City and asked for a full assessment. The master had spent nearly two hours with the egg before delivering his verdict: with proper nurturing, this egg had the potential to produce a true Champion-class Pokémon.
Charlie had been saving it for Thelma. He had planned to wait until she was older, until her battle experience and breeding instincts had matured enough to do it justice, and then pass it to her as the foundation of her future team.
But a promise was a promise. If Nova wanted it, Charlie would not go back on his word — even if the thought stung a little.
Nova, however, was thinking it through more carefully than his expression suggested.
He actually preferred the green egg on the third shelf.
The fact that the pink egg sat alone at the very top said everything about how much Charlie valued it. And while the promise had been made and would be kept without question, walking in and immediately taking someone's most treasured possession felt needlessly inconsiderate. That wasn't the kind of person Nova wanted to be.
There was also a practical matter to weigh. Nova still couldn't identify the species inside the pink egg from its appearance alone. The green egg, with that clear pawprint on the shell, had already given him a working theory.
Beyond that, Nova understood something the scanner's colour alone couldn't fully capture: within the same rarity tier, there were still real differences. His own Nidorino sat in the same general range as an Elite Four-level Pokémon, and yet the gap between them in raw power was obvious. Two gold-rated eggs didn't have to be equal just because they shared the same nameplate colour.
The fact that Charlie had placed the green egg on the third shelf — among other strong eggs, but not given its own space at the top — implied that in Charlie's estimation, it ranked below the pink one. Which was interesting, because Nova's scanner was showing him something rather different.
He decided to ask directly.
"Mr. Charlie, could you tell me a little about where these two eggs came from?"
Charlie answered without hesitation. He described the pink egg first, and as he spoke, his account gained real weight — the Viridian Realm expedition, the conditions that had made it gruelling, the circumstances that had led to finding the egg. It was clear the egg's origins were as unusual as its potential rating suggested.
For the green one, he kept it brief. It had come from the Glory Breeding House in the Brittany League — one of the most celebrated breeding establishments in the world — awarded as first prize at an international Pokémon performance competition.
Nova kept his expression politely interested while his thoughts moved quickly.
A Pokémon Egg as first prize at a performance competition.
He nearly reached for his phone to look up flights to the Paris League.
More importantly, though, Charlie's account confirmed exactly what Nova had already begun to suspect.
A performance competition, however prestigious, would not offer a prize that its organisers believed to hold truly extraordinary rarity. The Glory Breeding House, the judges, Charlie himself, every breeder who had handled the egg since — they had all assessed it as a high-tier, Champion-potential egg. Excellent. Rare. Worth celebrating.
None of them had seen the golden nameplate.
Nova's mind was made up.
Without him, this egg would eventually go to one of Charlie's family members, or a trusted relative, or perhaps Thelma herself one day. It would be raised with care and reasonable expectations, and it would almost certainly grow into a remarkable Pokémon — a genuine Champion by any ordinary measure.
But it would never be recognised for what it truly was.
Only Nova knew. Only Nova would raise it from the very beginning with that understanding — treating it not as a strong Pokémon that might reach Champion level, but as something rarer still, something that had simply been waiting for the right person to notice.
There was something quietly meaningful about that.
"I've made up my mind," Nova said. "I'd like the green egg — the one on the far right of the third shelf."
Charlie looked genuinely surprised. He hadn't expected that.
Passing over the pink egg — with its story, its expert endorsement, its shelf all to itself — in favour of a competition prize that most people considered the lesser of the two.
"Are you sure about this?"
"Yes." Nova met his gaze steadily. "There's something in that egg that I don't think others have noticed. Charlie, I'd really like to choose it."
Charlie studied him for a moment, then smiled. It was a calm, settled smile — the kind that came from watching something fall into place just right.
He walked to a storage shelf near the entrance and came back with something that looked like a compact glass dome. It was a portable incubation pod, purpose-built for keeping a Pokémon Egg stable and warm outside of a nursery environment.
He placed it in Nova's hands. "Go on, then. Go and meet your new partner."
Nova took the incubator and walked toward the banyan tree cabinet at an even pace, keeping his face composed.
His heart was moving considerably faster than his feet.
He lifted the green egg carefully with both hands and lowered it into the pod. Through the curved glass, he watched it settle into the soft warmth inside, barely stirring. Just resting quietly.
There's a life in there, he thought. Not here yet, but on the way.
It was a strange feeling — small and still, but somehow larger than the moment around it.
By the time Nova stepped out of the Luma Gym, the city had gone dark and quiet around him. He checked his phone.
Ninety-nine missed calls. The counter had stopped trying to keep up.
He had silenced his phone before heading to Purple Lychee Mountain to deal with the poachers earlier in the day, and between everything that had happened since, he had simply never turned the sound back on. Goldenlight City had a way of pulling you from one thing to the next without pause.
Nova found an empty bench in a nearby park, set the incubator gently beside him, and opened the video call app.
The silver-haired girl answered before the second ring had even finished.
"Nova!" Her voice came through sharp and immediate. "How dare you not call me back all day!"