Gardevoir lost and ended up in Akiyama's arms again.
Takeru walked over and, without ceremony, slid the bracelet onto Akiyama's wrist.
"If she evolves into Gallade, she'll shine even brighter."
"Not happening." Akiyama shook his head.
Partly that was pure selfishness on his part. And anyway, Gardevoir was a girl. Gallade wasn't on the table.
Takeru chuckled, went back to his post, and settled in to watch Kadabra's turn.
Akiyama looked down at the band on his wrist.
Open lattice-work, and the pattern on each side was different. One side was Dark. One side was Water.
At the center sat a small round stone shot through with color, and inside it, a rainbow helix.
A Key Stone.
He looked up. Takeru wasn't even watching him.
Like the thing had always belonged to Akiyama in the first place. Like nothing had happened at all.
The lattice was beautiful, and it was covered in the marks of hand tools—hammered out a fraction at a time.
At the tips of the pattern, the black and white blended into each other.
There was no question who'd worn it. Takeru had made it and carried it, and then never found an Urshifu stone.
Good thing it doesn't exist. Otherwise what would be left for Pallet Town?
No. Wait.
In this world he honestly couldn't rule it out.
He glanced at Urshifu, who had just punched Kadabra clean across the room, then back down at the Key Stone.
Terrifying.
......
Dusk.
Nanami was, once again, incapable of standing, and Akiyama hauled her back to the Pokémon Center.
She got through her door and went down with a thud.
He moved to help her up. She was already dragging herself back to her feet on shaking arms.
He genuinely could not work out what this near-self-harm was in service of.
Unless she just liked it.
Before she got the door closed, he said, "I'm leaving tomorrow…"
The door paused. Then it clicked shut, tight.
Akiyama went to his own room, ate, washed up, and dropped onto the bed.
Out cold.
......
Knocking woke him the next morning.
"Who is it?" He rubbed his eyes and went to answer.
Nanami stood there with her arms crossed, face flat as ever.
"What's up?" It surprised him a little.
"You're going today?"
"Yeah. Booked the ticket last night, leaving around noon. Train stops at Sector Thirteen." No reason to hide it.
Sector Thirteen was the transfer point on the way to Bedrock City. The rail line stopped there. Past it was undeveloped wilderness—wild Pokémon territory, where the cost of laying and maintaining track was more than anyone wanted to pay.
"You want me to check how much Gardevoir actually improved?" Nanami got it out after a long silence.
Akiyama blinked, then grinned. "Sure."
Behind him, Gardevoir was already fired up.
She'd been wanting to hit that Gyarados for weeks.
Neither of them needed convincing.
They took it out to the battlefield behind the Pokémon Center.
"Gyarados!" Nanami hurled a Poké Ball. Gyarados unfurled onto the field and the ball snapped back into her palm.
"Gardevoir." Akiyama said it quietly.
She walked out with her usual grace and looked straight up into that horrifying face without a flicker of fear.
"Gyarados—Hyper Beam! Say hello!" Nanami thrust her hand out and closed it into a fist.
Gyarados used the move he knew better than any other. The charge took a fraction of a second, and then a torrent of dead silent light tore across the field.
"Slip it. Get in close." Akiyama gave the order without hurrying, and Gardevoir dropped her arms behind her and ran.
Gyarados swung the beam to track her, and the ground behind her opened up in a line of craters.
Then she was simply gone—accelerating past the point where the eye could follow, so fast it read as Teleport, and yet nothing like it.
An instant later she was inside his guard.
"Thunder Punch!" Akiyama's hand snapped shut.
Lightning wrapped her fist, and she drove it up into Gyarados's jaw.
"Rrraaagh!"
He howled.
"Hurricane," Nanami said, cool as anything.
Gyarados threw up a screaming wind, and Gardevoir was blown back, staggering to keep her feet in it.
"Gyarados, Aqua Tail!" Nanami picked the faster move, the one easier to land.
Water sheathed his tail, and it came down from above, cutting through the gale toward the small figure at the center of it.
Gardevoir crossed her arms above her head and caught it, knees bending, back bowing, the dirt splitting under her feet.
"RRAAGH!" Gyarados roared at the sky, venting every day he'd spent not being allowed to fight.
The noise grew, and more and more Trainers filtered out to the little battlefield.
"That's a Gyarados and a Gardevoir—you don't see either one every day!"
"Both raised really well, too."
"Hold on. Is something off about that Gardevoir?"
"Look at her horn."
Akiyama ignored all of it. "Our turn. Focus Blast!"
"Garde!"
Everything she had rose at once and compressed into a dense sphere of energy that shrieked across the field.
"Gyarados! Wrap yourself in water!" There was a small tremor in Nanami's voice, and cold sweat down her back.
Too many people. Way too many.
Her social anxiety was not a bit.
Water surged up and sealed around him, and the Focus Blast slammed into it and burst, leaving a wide dark puddle in the dirt.
"Whoa, that's a good read."
"You can do that?"
"Why not just tell it to dodge?"
The murmuring reached her ears, and her fists tightened without permission.
And in the gap while the water fell away, Gardevoir arrived at Gyarados's side.
She leapt.
Triple Axel.
Two kicks landed clean, and Gyarados squeezed one eye shut against the pain.
He might have sensed something wrong with his Trainer, because he moved on his own.
Ice Fang!
"Down!" Akiyama called.
Gardevoir held the third kick, let gravity take her back to the ground, and Ice Fang closed on empty air, scattering a little frost.
Gyarados dropped his head and breathed fire.
Flamethrower!
"Straight through it. Show him what a real combo looks like!" Akiyama committed.
Gardevoir charged into the Flamethrower.
Both fists came up—Thunder Punch and Fire Punch at once.
Then she went to work, hammering blow after blow into that enormous body, cycling between three different elemental punches without ever breaking rhythm.
The Trainers watching couldn't track it. One of them dropped his Poké Ball in the dirt.
"Was that—was that Bullet Punch?"
"Whose Bullet Punch looks like that?"
"Is that seriously a Gardevoir?"
Nanami, locked up and drowning in strangers, never got the chance to respond. Gyarados wailed and came down with a crash that shook the fence line.
Only then did Gardevoir stop. She sprang backward, turning in midair, the hem of her white dress opening like a half moon.
She landed light on her feet, and there was something genuinely striking about her.
In Akiyama's vision, the progress bar dropped to 34.
Nanami forced her shaking hands steady long enough to recall Gyarados.
Then she fled, and Akiyama hurried after her.
She didn't stop running until she was back on her own floor.
Behind them, the crowd was still standing there, half-stunned by what they'd just watched Gardevoir do.
~~
Get early access to 20+ advanced chapters on Patreon!
patreon.com/PokemonStoryWeaver
~~~