Live Wire

[Live Wire]

Dr. Matthews: How did you know what to do?

Theo: I didn't. I knew Annihilape's capabilities, and I knew what we had available and I knew how those things fit together tactically. But I've never planned a battle against something that could kill us before. The knowledge was there. I just had to trust it was right even though I couldn't remember where it came from or whether it had ever worked before.

---

Miyato came back with Ryuu at his side.

Not behind him. Not trailing at the old distance. Beside him, close enough that the space between them was a choice, and when Miyato stopped at the edge of the group Ryuu stopped too, which was not a thing Ryuu had done unprompted since Miyato received him three months ago.

Miyato looked at Theo.

"We've come to an understanding," he said. "A temporary one. Until we're out of this."

Theo looked at Ryuu.

Ryuu looked at the northern treeline with the attention of a Pokémon that had decided the situation was worth engaging with.

He updated Miyato on the plan quietly. Miyato listened. His jaw moved once but he didn't interrupt, and when Theo finished he nodded with the expression of someone who had understood and was choosing not to say everything he thought about it.

Victoria had been a ranger for six years and had planned operations under pressure before. She had coordinated responses to wild Pokémon incidents, route emergencies, and trainer rescues. She had worked with less.

She had not worked with a fourteen-year-old who had one badge and the tactical knowledge of someone three tiers above him and a red-haired boy from a lineage she had recognized from the moment she saw the cape, but had decided was not her business.

"Positions," she said.

Everyone moved.

The Drowzee spread to the perimeter as they had rehearsed, the ones who could withstand the proximity going to the closer positions, the rest to the outer ring. The Hypno took its place at the centre of the clearing, pendulum still, eyes closed, something that had committed to what came next. Staraptor dropped from the high root and landed at the front, wings settling, its eyes already on the northern treeline. Victoria moved to the front and center.

Gallade was far behind.

"When you're ready," she said.

The Hypno's eyes closed.

The barrier came down.

Victoria hit the beacon with her functional thumb. She heard Theo's click. She heard Miyato's. Three signals going out simultaneously into the open air, three confirmation lights blinking, three calls for support moving toward the ranger station.

The air in the clearing changed immediately.

Theo felt it the moment the barrier dropped.

Not physically. The air didn't shift, the temperature didn't change, but something in the pressure of the clearing released, and the forest came back in around them with the sounds and the weight he'd been tracking for days. His hand was on Zeus's Pokéball. Jupiter was on his shoulder, absolutely still, watching and waiting.

He knew what was coming.

Knowing didn't make him less afraid.

It just meant he understood exactly what they were about to face.

Then it appeared.

Not through the trees. It was simply there, at the northern edge of the clearing, arrived before anything that size should have been able to arrive.

Victoria had seen it from a distance before Gallade went down and had carried the image of it through everything since.

Seeing it again was different from remembering it.

It was enormous. Not Gyarados enormous, not a scale that removed it from the immediate world, but enormous in the way of something that occupied more space than its physical dimensions accounted for. The aura of it was ghastly in the old sense of the word, a presence that registered on the part of the nervous system that existed before language. The air around it pressed against the chest from the inside.

It opened its mouth.

The scream that came out was not a battle cry. It was the sound of something that had been in full rage for days and had found a target and intended to finish what it had been building toward since the barrier came down. Every Pokémon in the clearing responded before any of them had really thought about it. The Drowzee on the inner ring pressed back a fraction. Kiri made a sound against Miyato's neck. Zeus's ears went flat and came back up.

Miyato looked at Theo.

Theo was looking at the Annihilape.

The Hypno's communication moved through the clearing without sound, direction distributed through the psychic link to every Pokémon that could receive it, positions and angles arriving behind eyes rather than in ears. Victoria felt it land and watched her people respond.

"Ryuu."

Haze came off Ryuu in a slow rolling wave that crossed the clearing and washed over everything in it. The stat changes on the field cleared to nothing; the battlefield leveled before the engagement had properly started. Kiri followed without being told, Smokescreen crossing to the right, a second to the left, overlapping layers building until the Annihilape's sightlines were compromised and the clearing had become a different kind of space.

The Annihilape looked at the smoke and moved.

Staraptor was already crossing when the Annihilape committed, the Hypno's information keeping it ahead of the engagement, and Intimidate rolled out from the approach, and Annihilape's attack rose in response, Defiant converting the debuff the moment it landed. Then Ryuu pushed Haze again, and the boost vanished the moment it arrived.

Victoria watched the Annihilape process this.

The half-second of stillness. Something that hadn't been expected.

Staraptor kept moving. Not attacking. Drawing it. The Protect came up when Annihilape committed, and the blow deflected off the barrier. Staraptor banked sideways and the smoke covered while it repositioned, and the Hypno distributed the new position through the link before the Annihilape had finished tracking where Staraptor had gone.

Miyato watched from the far edge of the clearing with Kiri on his shoulder and Ryuu beside him and his jaw set. He was reading the Annihilape the way he had been reading it since it appeared. Looking for the thing that would make the plan not work. Finding several candidates and filing them in order of likelihood.

The Phantom Force started.

Victoria had been watching for it. The moment the Annihilape began to phase she called it through the Hypno's link and the Drowzee on the inner ring moved together. Not one at a time. All eleven of them, Disable coming off the coven simultaneously in a directed barrage at the fading form.

Disable did not work on opponents too strong for it.

However, there were eleven Drowzee.

The Disable held.

Annihilape came back into the visible world with the move locked out and what it did with that information was not adapt. It went further. The rage that had been past full for days found another gear.

Outrage.

Victoria braced.

The Dragon energy came off it in a wave that the smoke did nothing to slow. Outrage didn't need a target. It filled the space it found. Staraptor was already moving, reading the Hypno's directions and staying ahead of where the attack landed, and the Outrage swept through space twice. On the third pass, the Annihilape stopped swinging at where Staraptor had been and looked for where it was instead, but it couldn't find it in the smoke.


But Staraptor could not dodge everything.

The grab happened fast, faster than anything that size should have moved, and the slam into the ground sent debris flying through the air. Staraptor hit the earth and Victoria's chest pulled tight, the dread of watching something you'd raised go down hard.

Annihilape stood over it with Drain Punch, loading in its fist and the clearing understood what that meant before anyone could do anything.

Victoria looked at the Hypno.

The pendulum moved once. Side to side.

Not yet.

She raised Staraptor's Pokéball.

Then Mr Glutton moved.

He was the oldest Drowzee in the coven and the slowest, but the Grass Knot came from him at a speed that almost didn't matter. Annihilape's fist was descending when the move caught low and precise, binding the leg in the fraction of a second before the Drain Punch completed.

One half second.

The angle was everything. The leg gave and Annihilape went sideways, and the Drain Punch hit the ground instead of Staraptor. The earth took the impact and a section of the clearing floor did not survive the trade.

Staraptor wrenched free.

It got into the air and Victoria watched it and knew from the way the wings were working that it was done. Running on what was left. She looked at the Hypno.

The pendulum was still moving. Gallade behind the Haze line still preparing.

Not yet.

The Annihilape was on one knee, the momentum of the trip still resolving, and it was the stillest it had been since the barrier came down. Zeus and Jupiter had been holding at the far edge of the clearing, and this was what Theo had told them to wait for.

Two Thunder Waves crossed the clearing simultaneously.

They found the Annihilape on one knee, and the paralysis from both sources arrived at the same moment and settled into it before it could generate the movement needed to shake either off.

And then it pushed through it.

The Thunder Wave slowed it. It did not stop it. It crossed the remaining distance with its legs fighting its own nervous system and Rage Fist loading heavier than it had been at any point in the battle and the clearing understood what was coming.

Staraptor came off the root.
She had nothing left. Victoria had known that since the slam, and Staraptor knew it too.

Not struggling for lift this time. Wings tucked, body angled, diving directly at the Annihilape with everything she had left in her. It looked like Brave Bird. It looked like a decision.

Annihilape met the charge without moving. The Rage Fist came up and connected with Staraptor mid-dive, full force, every hit from the entire battle sitting in that one weapon.

Victoria had the Pokéball raised before the impact was completed.

The beam caught Staraptor before she hit the ground.

The clearing went very still.

Annihilape's ghostly aura raged wildly as Victoria recalled her partner. The paralysis still working in it. Rage Fist heavier than at the start of the fight, the compounding damage from every hit it had absorbed since this began sitting in that one weapon. It looked at the rest of the clearing.

At Zeus and Jupiter.

At Miyato and Kiri and Ryuu.

At the Drowzee on the inner ring.

At Theo.

Theo's hand was on his Pokéball.

Victoria said nothing.

Annihilape took one step.

"Attack!" Victoria called. "Everyone, now!"

The Drowzee on the inner ring hesitated.

One full second, twelve sets of eyes flickering between Victoria and the Annihilape, the plan running in all of them and the problem with this instruction running louder. Rage Fist. Every hit makes the next one worse. They had built the entire plan around not feeding it.

The Annihilape took another step.

"Now!" Victoria said.

They moved.

Twelve Drowzee, Confusion coming off the coven in a directed wave that hit the Annihilape from every angle simultaneously. The psychic energy from twelve working in concert was not nothing. Against a weaker opponent, it would have been significant.
The Annihilape walked through it. The Confusion wave crested and broke and Annihilape came out the other side still standing, Rage Fist heavier than it had been at any point in the battle.


Zeus stepped forward.

Jupiter stepped forward.

Miyato's hand found his Pokéball, fingers unsteady. He put the command through anyway. Kiri dropped from his shoulder, hit the ground, and looked up at the Annihilape without moving back.

Ryuu was already moving.

No instruction. No command. He moved to the front line beside Zeus and Jupiter and Kiri and stood there with the full committed attention he had withheld from everything since Miyato received him and had decided to partake for now.

Theo looked at Victoria.

Victoria was looking at the Hypno.

The pendulum had stopped.

The eyes were bright and steady and the communication that came through the psychic connection was not words. Just readiness, full, something that had built everything it had into one moment and was telling her the moment was here.

The Annihilape took one more step.

"Now," she said.

The Hypno did something.

She had built the plan around a capability that no Hypno on record could demonstrate. She had done this because the tactical logic was sound and because she had looked at this particular Hypno and formed an assessment that it was not like Hypno on record.

She was still surprised when it worked.

Gallade and Hypno appeared behind the Annihilape.

Not traversed. Not ran. There. Somewhere else and then here, in the space between moments.

Annihilape's reflexes were extraordinary.

It turned.

The paralysis from the Thunder Wave chose that moment to fire.

The window was small. Gallade had it and used it and Psycho Cut came off its hand with everything Sharpness did to slicing moves and everything that stacking behind the Haze line had built into it, Focus Energy and Swords Dance maxed and finding an Annihilape that had turned toward it but had not finished turning.

The super-effective hit connected.

Underneath the impact was a sharp, clean crack. Distinct from everything else the battle had produced. The sound that meant one thing and meant it clearly.

Victoria had been a ranger for six years. She had seen significant damage in battles that had gone beyond training. She had not seen a hit move something the size of Annihilape the way this one did.

The Psycho Cut carried Annihilape across the clearing and into the tree line with a force the strength differential between Gallade and an Elite rank Pokemon should not have permitted. Annihilape hit the trees. One of them did not stay standing.

The clearing was silent.

Then Miyato made a sound somewhere behind her.

Then someone else.

The recognition beginning to come through in stages —

The scream came from the trees before anyone had finished feeling relief.

A different scream.

Not the scream of something that had found a target. The scream of something that had absorbed a critical hit at full power, in a fight that had been feeding its Rage Fist since it began, and was still here. Still here and worse than before. The sound of something that had been pushed past what should have been its limit and had found that its limit was further out than anyone had accounted for.

Annihilape came out of the trees.

It came out faster than it went in.

The Disable had run its course while it was in the trees.

It was there, and then it wasn't.

Gallade had half a second to register what was happening and did not have half a second to respond to it.

The Rage Fist carried every hit from every Pokemon across the entire battle, the Confusion waves, the Psycho Cut, Grass Knot, Staraptor, all of it . in one weapon, and it found Gallade before Gallade could clear the space.

Gallade went down and formed a crater in the floor below as rocks and dust kicked up across the clearing

Victoria's hand was already on the Pokéball. She recalled it. No words. Just the motion of someone who understood that the calculation had just changed and was already looking for the next calculation.

The clearing understood what had just happened before anyone said it.

Then the Annihilape's aura unfurled.

Not a move. Not a status condition. Just the presence of it, fully unchecked now, broadcasting outward from something that had been fed and sustained and refused for days and had finally reached the other side of refusal.

The wrongness that had been in the air since it first appeared found a new register.

Every Pokémon in the clearing felt it simultaneously.

The Drowzee stopped moving. All twelve. They didn't run, didn't scatter. Just pressed back, eyes wide, the psychic link flooding with something that was not a plan.

Kiri made a sound as it stepped back to Miayato.

Ryuu's tail went still.

Zeus's ears were flat against his head.

Jupiter had moved back to Theo without noticing and was pressed against him.

Theo's hands were not still.

He was running exits and finding none.

He had built everything around Gallade. Every piece of the setup; the paralysis, Haze, Disable and Teleport, had been to create a window for Gallade. The window had worked. The hit had landed. The hit had even been a critical.

And it had gotten up.

No version of his knowledge bridged this gap. He knew type matchups and move mechanics and ability interactions and strategic frameworks and none of it answered what happened when everything correct had been done and the thing in front of you had simply decided that what was correct was not enough.

He looked at Annihilape standing in the clearing where Gallade had been.

Knowledge failed here. Strategy failed here. He understood now, with complete clarity, that understanding what something was capable of and having the tools to match it were two different things, and he had only ever had one of those.

The Hypno stepped forward.

Not fast. Not with any particular ceremony. One step, pendulum still, eyes open and bright. The communication that came through the link arrived in Victoria and Theo at the same moment.

Go. Take the trainers and the coven and go. I will buy what time I can.

"Wait--!" Victoria said.

The Hypno's eyes held hers for a moment
It teleported.

Not to escape. To the far side of the clearing, between the Annihilape and the tree line where the coven was. Placing itself. The Psychic came off it immediately, not the stacked precision of the battle plan, just the Hypno giving everything it had right now, full and immediate, psychic force finding the Annihilape with everything in it.

The Annihilape took it and came through it.

The Hypno teleported again. Repositioned. Refused to stand still, refused to give it a fixed target. Psychic again. The attack found the Annihilape mid-step and pushed it back and the Hypno was already somewhere else.

It was working.

For four exchanges, it was working.

On the fifth, the Annihilape had tracked the intervals.
The grip closed around Hypno's neck before the teleport could complete.

The Hypno couldn't move.

The clearing held. Nobody had anything left. The Drowzee were pressed against the perimeter. Theo and Miyato stood with their Pokémon in total stillness. The Annihilape stood in the center of what remained and the wrongness in the air had nowhere left to go.

Then a voice cut through the tree line.

"Air Slash!"

The compressed blade came off a Pidgeot's wings fast and clean and hit before anyone in the clearing had processed where the voice had come from. The Annihilape flinched. One sharp involuntary jerk, the grip opening for just a second.

Hypno dropped free and teleported.

Gone before it hit the ground.

A Ranger came through the canopy on his Pidgeot, already calling his next move, and behind him two Rangers broke through the tree line. One of them was on a Fearow, moving fast, and as the Fearow banked hard, the ranger stood in the saddle and jumped off.

The Fearow spun into Drill Peck.

The attack caught Annihilape square and the rotational force carried it backward, the great body tumbling across the clearing floor and into the root system at the far edge. Trees shuddered with the impact.

Everyone in the clearing was already staring.

Annihilape came back to its feet.

The scream it released was not a retreat. It was a declaration. It turned toward the rangers, Rage Fist loading, the full weight of everything it had absorbed across this battle sitting in that weapon, and it stepped forward.

The paralysis from the Thunder Waves fired.

Half a second. Its legs fighting its own nervous system.

"Hurricanes!" The lead Ranger called. "Both of you! Now!"

Two Pidgeots released simultaneously.

The wind that came off them was like a weather event. The Hurricanes hit the clearing from both angles and merged into something that nobody standing in it had words for. Theo's arm came up across his face before he knew he was doing it. Miyato turned his shoulder into it and bent forward. The Drowzee pressed against the earth. Even Victoria, on the ground with her arm already compromised, had to drive her functional hand into the soil.

The Annihilape went back.

Not stumbling. Flying. Both Hurricanes found it at the same moment and the combined force carried it into the tree line with a crack that reached the far edge of the clearing.

The wind died.

The clearing was still.

Then Annihilape came back out of the trees.

Slower. The legs carrying it differently. The presence still wrong, the rage still broadcasting, but the body had finally found the floor of what it could absorb.

It screamed once more.

The rangers tensed. Yusuke's Pidgeot's wings were already rising.

Annihilape's legs gave.

One knee. The other. Then the great body fell, and the presence diminished as it landed, the ghastly quality of the air around it reducing by degrees as the rage that had sustained it for days finally ran out of body to sustain.

Victoria threw the Ranger Ball.

It hit. Caught. The sequence completed, and the ball went still and the clearing was very still around it.

Then Victoria sat down because her arm had been in severe pain for the last three hours and the decisions she had been making about not addressing that were no longer holding.

One of the Rangers landed beside her. His Pidgeot folded its wings.

He looked at the Ranger Ball. At the Hypno and the Drowzee. At Staraptor's Pokéball on Victoria's belt. At Theo and Miyato.

"Victoria," he said. "What exactly happened here?"

"I'll brief you, Yusuke," she said. "Get me something for this arm first."

Yusuke was already signaling the other rangers.

Theo looked at the Ranger Ball in Victoria's hand.

"We almost had it," he said. Honest, not wounded.

Victoria looked at it too. "You almost had it," she agreed. She said it the way she said things that were simply true. "The plan was good. Execution was good. Annihilape just had more in it than any of us budgeted for." She glanced at him sideways. "Don't take it personally. There are things in the world that don't go down because you're clever at them. Sometimes you just need more firepower."

"The Hypno and Gallade—"

"Did what they could. So did you." She turned the ball over in her functional hand. "The abilities. The Phantom Force call. The Thunder Wave timing. That was good work. "A pause. "None of us died. That's a result, with what was in this clearing."

Theo said nothing.

"Where does a fourteen-year-old with one badge get that depth of knowledge?" she said.

He looked at his boots. "I don't know."

Victoria looked at him for a moment.

"Not my business," she said. "The more I know, the more I write in the report, and the report is already going to be a bother."

Miyato made a sound from behind them that might have been a laugh.

Victoria looked over her shoulder at him.

"Dragon Clan," she said.

Miyato went very still.

"The cape," Victoria said pleasantly. "I grew up in Mahogany Town. Spare me." She looked back at the tree line. "Not my business. Not going in the report. What is going in the report is that two trainers contributed significantly to the resolution of a serious wildlife incident and conducted themselves with more sense than most of the adults I work with." She paused. "You can quote me on that."

Theo looked at his boots.

"You're very direct," he said.

"Complaining about it?" Victoria said.

"No," he said.

"Good."

Yusuke crouched beside her and looked at her arm and his expression did something she appreciated him not saying out loud.

"The short version," she said, "is that there's an Annihilape in that ball that has been in a full rage state for days. My Pokémon needs medical attention immediately, and these two," she looked at Theo and Miyato, "need to be escorted back to the outpost and their sponsors contacted."

Yusuke looked at Theo.

Theo looked back.

Yusuke looked at Miyato.

Miyato was standing with Kiri on his shoulder and Ryuu beside him, very still, with the expression of someone who had spent everything they had and was running the calculation of what remained.

Yusuke looked at Victoria.

"You're going to need to brief me in detail," he said.

"I know," she said. "Arm first."

---

Miyato sat down.

Not gradually. He was standing and then he was on the floor of the clearing with his back against the great tree's root and his legs out in front of him and Kiri in his lap and the expression of someone whose body had made a decision without consulting him.

He was shaking. Not the fear-shaking from earlier. Something with a different quality, the full-body tremor of something that had been held under pressure for a long time and released.

His mouth was doing something that wasn't quite a smile and wasn't quite anything else.

"We did that," he said. To Kiri. To no one in particular. "We actually did that."

Theo looked at him.

Something happened that he had not expected.

It started in his chest and came up through him and arrived on his face before he had decided what to do with it. Not the controlled version. Not the corner of the mouth movement he had learned to manage. The real kind, coming out of him the way things came out when they had been kept somewhere too long. It lasted longer than he expected and had more in it than he could account for. When it finished, he was standing in the clearing with Miyato looking up at him from the floor. Zeus pressed against his left leg. Jupiter on his shoulder with the smug satisfaction of a Pokémon that had never doubted the outcome.

Miyato's not-quite-a-smile resolved into the real thing.

"Yeah," he said.

Theo looked at the clearing. At the great tree and the coven. At Victoria, being helped up by Yusuke.

His chest had a quality to it he recognised.

Not the anxiety from the dock. Not the noise he had been managing. The other thing. The thing that had been in the gym when it was right, at the table with the pancakes and the people who had made room without discussing it.

Not being alone in a thing.

He looked at Jupiter.

Jupiter looked back with the complete confidence of something that had never doubted the outcome.

Zeus pressed against his leg once.

Theo put his hand on Zeus's back and stood in the clearing, letting himself feel it.

All of it.

 

[Live Wire]

Dr. Matthews: What does safety feel like after a situation like that?

Theo: Strange. We reached the ranger outpost and I should have relaxed but I didn't for hours. My jaw stayed tight, my hand kept going to my Poké Balls even though nothing was wrong. It's like my body didn't believe we'd made it. I know what adrenaline does physiologically. I know the stress response cycle. Knowing didn't make it stop faster.

---

The ranger outpost was a single-storey building at the northern end of a cleared section off the maintained path, stone-and-wood construction with the look of something built to outlast the people who used it rather than impress them. A common room with a long table and mismatched chairs. A small kitchen area behind a counter. A corridor running to the back with bunk rooms for travellers, two beds each, wool blankets folded at the foot. A duty room where the on-call ranger was working through paperwork. A medical room where Victoria had been since they arrived.

Theo stood in the common room with his bag on the floor and Zeus, Jupiter and Kiri in various stages of introduction to the new space.

Jupiter located the kitchen area within forty seconds of entry, moved behind the counter, opened a lower cabinet, assessed the contents and closed it again with the expression of a Pokémon that had conducted a survey and formed preliminary conclusions. He then went back to Theo's side and looked at him.

"I know," Theo said.

Zeus had gone to the corridor and was moving along it methodically, nose working, the same perimeter assessment he had done on the route applied to the enclosed space with the same unhurried thoroughness.

Kiri was on Miyato's shoulder investigating the noticeboard with both fins extended toward the paper.

The on-duty ranger whose name was Pemba had been doing outpost overnight shifts for three years and had seen travellers arrive in various states, and had thought he had a comprehensive picture of what an eventful evening looked like.

He reconsidered this while watching a fifteen-year-old with a Horsea on his shoulder go through the outpost kitchen's supplies with the focused efficiency of someone conducting a professional assessment.

"You don't have to," Pemba said.

"I want to," Miyato said. He had found the dried goods shelf and was making decisions. "The rations you have here are —" He stopped. "They're functional," he said, charitably.

Pemba looked at the rations.

"Right," he said.

What came out of the outpost kitchen twenty minutes later used the same ingredients that Pemba had been preparing in various functional combinations for three years and produced results he had not previously associated with those ingredients. Miyato moved through the process with the particular ease he had when he was doing what he was best at.

The on-duty ranger ate his portion in silence.

Jupiter had positioned himself at the end of the table earliest and had communicated his requirements through his attention toward the section of the counter where the pancake mix lived. Miyato had found it and obliged without being asked, which Jupiter accepted with the grace of someone whose expectations had been confirmed rather than exceeded.

Zeus ate his dinner with the methodical quiet he brought to everything.

Kiri ate from Miyato's plate since she had decided this was the arrangement.

Ryuu accepted a small amount of food when Miyato put it on the floor near the door. He did not acknowledge him but the bowl was empty when Miyato checked it.

Miyato noted this and said nothing.

They were still at the table when Miyato set his cup down and looked at the surface of it for a moment.
"I should tell you something," he said.

Theo looked at him.

"I'm scared of bugs," Miyato said.

Theo waited.

Miyato turned his cup around in his hands. "That's — I mean, that's true. That's a real thing. But it wasn't — I didn't tell you because of that. I told you because —" He stopped. His jaw moved. "I should have told you earlier. About the clan."

Theo said nothing.

"The Dragon Clan of Blackthorn," Miyato said. He was looking at his cup. "The cape. The Dratini as a starter. I was — I wasn't trying to deceive you, I just —" He stopped again. "I'm not exactly what the name suggests and I didn't want to —" He looked up. "I'm sorry."

Theo looked at him.

"I know," he said.

Miyato went still.

"The cape and hair," Theo said.

"How long?"

"Since you said your name."

Miyato looked at him for a moment.

"And you didn't say anything," he said.

"You were getting to it," Theo said.

Miyato pressed his hands flat on the table. He looked at the cup again.

"I'm related to Lance," he said.

"I assumed," Theo said. "How?"

Miyato was quiet for a moment. "He's family," he said. It wasn't an evasion exactly. More like the boundary of what he was prepared to say right now.

Theo accepted it without pushing.

"I didn't know that this journey would be — I didn't know it would go like today went," Miyato said quietly. "I wasn't ready for it."

He said it the way people said things that were true and had other things behind them that they weren't saying. Theo heard the other things without being able to name them. He didn't try.

"No one is ready for an Annihilape in a forest" Theo said.

Miyato's mouth moved. Not quite a smile. Something adjacent.

"No," he agreed.

---

Theo's phone rang while Miyato was in the corridor bathroom.

He answered it and all four of them were already there.

"Theo." That was Kadan. Immediately. The tone of someone who had been waiting to ask and was not going to delay. "Are you injured?"

"No," Theo said.

"Your team," Kadan said.

"Fine.."

"And the situation is resolved."

"The Annihilape is captured. Victoria the ranger caught it."

"— THEO!" That was Kalea, who had apparently been exercising restraint and had run out of it. "Surge called us and said your beacon went off and we had no idea what was happening and I have been —"

"I'm fine," Theo said.

"You went OFF ROUTE. In unmanaged territory. With a wild Annihilape—"

"It's resolved," Theo said. "I'll tell you everything."

He told them everything.

He did not abbreviate it or manage it the way he would have managed it with strangers. He told them about the Gyarados, the kids, getting separated, the circles, the beacon failing, the Hypno and the coven, Victoria, the barrier, the plan. He told them about Miyato and what Miyato had contributed without going into who Miyato was.

The silence when he finished had the quality of four people processing simultaneously.

"The Gallade behind the haze line," Kadan said. His voice had a quality Theo hadn't heard from him directed at himself before. "The Swords Dance maintaining through the haze effect because of the positioning."

"Victoria planned it," Theo said.

"You gave her the pieces," Kadan said. "The abilities read. The Phantom Force identification. The Rage Fist warning. Without those the plan has nothing to build on." A pause. "What I taught you about ability interactions. You applied it under pressure against an Elite rank Pokemon."

Theo said nothing.

"I'm —" Kadan started. Stopped. Started again. "That's good, Theo. That's genuinely good."

Theo looked at the wall.

Dale's voice came in. "You know what they say about trainers whose beacons go off on day two of their first circuit."

"What," Theo said.

"They're electrically charged." A beat. "Get it. Because—"

"Dale," Kalea said.

"I'm just saying the journey has started."

Kalea said. "Who is this Miyato?"

"Someone I met on the route," Theo said. "He helped."

"He," Kalea said. "Is he—"

"Kalea," Kadan said.

"I'm just asking."

Theo looked at the ceiling.

"He's good at cooking," Theo said. "That's what I know."

---

He was at the table with the dimensional bag open when Miyato came back and stopped in the doorway.

Theo had the egg out.

It sat in his hands in the outpost light with the same warmth it always had, the iridescent markings catching the generator light differently than they caught daylight, and Miyato looked at it from the doorway with an expression Theo hadn't seen from him before.

"Can I?" Miyato said.

Theo held it out.

Miyato came to the table, sat and took the egg carefully in both hands and held it. He was quiet for a moment. His eyes were focused but in a way where he wasn't paying attention to something that wasn't sound or sight.

"Dragon energy," he said.

Theo looked at the egg.

"Dragon Clan," Miyato said. "We're sensitive to it. There's a signature—" He turned the egg slightly. "It's not a standard signature. It's not any dragon type I've encountered." He looked up at Theo. "What is it?"

"I don't know," Theo said. He meant it.

Miyato looked at the egg again.

"It's strong," he said. "For an egg." He turned it once more. "And it's mixed with something else. Something I can't identify either."

They both looked at it.

The egg was warm, and the markings caught the light and offered nothing further on the subject.

Theo took it back and settled it in the bag's compartment and closed the seal.

Neither of them said anything about it for a while.

Later, Theo was reading the PokéNav's route notes for the next section when Miyato came out of the bunk room and set something on the table with the quiet efficiency of someone completing a routine.

Several things.

A surprising number of things, given the size of the bag they had come out of. Small containers, a few larger ones, arranged in a specific order. Miyato sat down and began working through them with the focused calm he brought to cooking, which was to say the particular ease of someone doing something they were good at.

He was aware Theo was looking.

He did not look back for a moment.

"What?" he said.

"Nothing," Theo said.

"It's a routine," Miyato said. His ears had gone pink. "Dragon Clan culture places emphasis on—" He stopped. "I've had it since I was twelve," he said, which was more honest. "It's just a routine."

Theo looked at the array of products.

"What's the order for?" he said.

Miyato looked at him. "The order?"

"You laid them out in a specific sequence."

Miyato's expression did something. The pink was still there but underneath it something else, someone discovering that a person they'd assumed wasn't paying attention had been paying attention the whole time.

"There's an application order," he said. "You have to layer them correctly or they don't work." He looked at the products. "Most people ask what they are."

"I can see what they are," Theo replied.

He started explaining.

The conversation went on for a while. Theo asked questions that were curious and real. Miyato answered them, his ears pink for approximately the first four minutes, then not. By the time they moved on to something else the table had the comfortable quality of people who had found an unexpected shared rhythm.

Later that night, Theo pulled out the Pokédex Oak had sent. He'd been meaning to properly explore it since receiving it, but between training and the journey north, he hadn't had the chance.

The device was sleek. Deeper red than standard issue, with Oak's signature on the back. He opened it, started browsing through the database.

The information was... extensive.

He pulled up Electrike. Not just basic stats and typing, complete movepool breakdowns. Every move and TM compatibility. Habitat data across multiple regions. Breeding groups. Ability development timelines.

He switched to Dratini. Same thing. Migration patterns for wild populations. Historical data going back decades. Cross-references with other Dragon-types.

"Is that—" Miyato's voice cracked. "Is that an Oak Dex?"

Theo looked up. Miyato was staring at the device in his hands like Theo was casually holding a legendary Pokémon.

"Yeah. Oak sent it after watching my gym battle."

"That's—" Miyato's hands came up toward his face, stopped halfway. "Theo, that's—do you know what that IS?"

"A Pokédex. Oak gives them to starting trainers every year in Kanto. The professors do it in every region."

"No." Miyato sat down on his bed heavily. "No, that's not—that's not a regular Pokédex. That's the Oak Dex. The actual Oak Dex."

Theo looked at the device in his hands. Back to Miyato.

"There's a difference?"

"There's a HUGE difference!" Miyato's voice went up. "Oak gives out regular Pokédexes, yes, but the Oak Dex—the one you're holding—he only gives those to trainers he sees real potential in. Exceptional potential."

Miyato's hands were shaking slightly. "There are maybe thirty of them active worldwide. Maybe. The exact number isn't known because Oak doesn't announce it, but it's rumored he gives them to Champions and some Elite Four members who contribute to research."

Theo looked at the Pokédex again. It looked... normal to him.

"It's got complete data from all regions," Miyato continued, words tumbling out faster. "Not just Kanto. Every region. Full movepools including unreleased combinations. Real-time updates from Oak's research network. It connects directly to his lab. You can query him about Pokemon nobody else has documentation on."

He leaned forward. "I recognized it because I saw Lance's a little while back. Most people wouldn't know what they're looking at, but—Theo, that's not something regular trainers get. That is something potential champions carry."

Miyato paused, then continued. "The most famous Oak Dex holder—he completed the entire Kanto circuit in one year. Destroyed Team Rocket's operations. Won both the rookie tournament and the main tournament in the same season. Then he challenged the Elite Four and the Champion and won. Became Champion himself, though he only held the title for a very short time before—"

"You mean Red," Theo said.

"Yes, Red, no one knows where he is now," Miyato said softly. "He just... disappeared. Some people say he's still training somewhere. Others think he's doing research for Oak. No one's seen him in a while."

Mt. Silver, Theo thought. But he didn't say it out loud. Didn't know how he knew it or why the name of a mountain came to him with such certainty.

Theo looked at the device. The deep red casing. Oak's signature on the back.

He knew what a Pokédex was. Knew Oak was the foremost Pokémon researcher in Kanto, maybe the world. Knew the professors gave them out to catalog Pokémon for research purposes.

But he hadn't known there were two kinds. Hadn't known this one was special.

"I didn't realize," he said.

"Most people wouldn't," Miyato said. He was still staring at it. "Most people have never seen one."

Theo closed the Pokédex carefully. Oak had seen something in him. Something worth giving him a tool that apparently only Champions carried.

He didn't know if he deserved it.

But he'd make sure he earned it.

---

Victoria appeared in the doorway at half past nine.

Her arm was properly bandaged, the ranger station's medical supplies having done what they were there to do. Staraptor was behind her. She looked at the outpost common room with the expression of someone noting that things were as they should be.

"Still awake," she said.

"Yes," Theo said.

"Good." She produced two envelopes from her jacket and held them out. "Contribution to a resolved wildlife incident involving civilian trainers. Standard protocol. Sign the form inside and keep the rest."

Theo took his. Miyato took his.

Victoria looked at Jupiter.

Jupiter had pancake syrup on the side of his face and regarded her with complete dignity.

"Don't spend it all on pancakes," she said.

She looked at the room once more. At Ryuu near the door, still there, not inside but not outside either.

"Good instinct on the Haze sequencing," she said to Miyato. "That was yours."

Miyato's chin came up slightly.

"And you," she said, to Theo. "I've been a ranger for six years. What a bother you were to have in this situation."

Theo looked at her.

"An exceptionally useful bother," she said. "Get some sleep."

She left before it could become anything more than that.

Theo was almost asleep when something awoke him.

Not something. Jupiter.

He opened his eyes. Jupiter was sitting on the floor between the two beds with a paper cup from the outpost kitchen in front of him. The paper cup had been there when they came in. Jupiter had positioned himself in front of it at some point after the lights were lowered and was now looking at it with the most focused attention Theo had seen from him outside of a battle.

His cheeks were not sparking.

That was the thing. Jupiter's natural state involved electricity, the low ambient discharge that had been present since Theo first met him in the gym at three in the morning. Right now there was none. Whatever Jupiter was trying to do with the paper cup it was not electric in nature.

The cup did not move.

Jupiter's eyes tightened incrementally.

The cup remained stationary.

"What are you doing?" Theo said quietly.

Jupiter looked at him. Then back at the cup. Then at Theo again with the expression of a Pokémon, conveying that the situation was under control and did not require commentary.

Theo thought about the coven. About the moment they were leaving, the rangers moving through with their assessments and Victoria being helped to the outpost by Yusuke, and the Hypno standing at the edge of the great tree's root system.

It had not approached Theo.

It had approached Jupiter.

---

The Hypno had come to Jupiter directly, which was unusual enough that Theo had noticed and stayed close. The pendulum had slowed and the meaning had arrived not behind Theo's eyes but with the quality of something directed at Jupiter, not him, and Jupiter had gone still in the specific way he went still when something had his complete attention.

The Hypno had taken Jupiter to the side, literally, two meters from the group, and had done something that Theo could not fully see. Jupiter had sat and the Hypno's pendulum had moved and the communication between them had been directed and private in the way that the Hypno's communication with Theo had never been.

They had been like that for four minutes.

Jupiter had come back like he had been given new information and was in the process of storing it.

He had not told Theo anything about it.

Theo had not asked.

---

He watched Jupiter stare at the paper cup.

The cup sat there.

Jupiter's ears were slightly forward and his expression had the intensity of genuine effort, not the smug confidence he brought to things he already knew how to do. This was different. This was something at the edge of his reach, possibly past the edge, possibly not, and Jupiter was not the kind of Pokémon who accepted "possibly not" without investigation.

The cup moved.

Not much. A fraction of an inch, sideways, and Jupiter exhaled in the way of something that had spent significant effort on a small result and was assessing whether the result justified the effort.

He looked at Theo.

Theo looked at the cup. At Jupiter. At the cup again.

However, he was too tired to think of the implications.

"Okay," he said, very quietly.

Jupiter's cheeks sparked once with the satisfaction of a Pokemon that had been keeping something to itself and had now shown it to the right person at the right time.

He climbed up to his usual position near Theo's shoulder and closed his eyes and the paper cup sat on the floor in the dim room and did not move again.

Theo stared at the ceiling for a while.

Then he went to sleep.

---

Two figures entered Route 6 from the south at the Vermilion gate.

They came on foot. Trainer bags. The clothes of people who had left somewhere difficult and were moving toward somewhere quieter, which was what most people coming through that gate were wearing this season.

The ranger marker logged their entry the way it logged all entries. Two trainers, adult, heading north.

Neither of them looked at the marker as they passed it.

The taller one looked at the route ahead. Not reading a map. Not checking a PokéNav. Just looking north the way someone looked at a direction when the direction was the only information they had.

"Last confirmed here," they said.

"Weeks ago," the other said.

"Still the last confirmed."

The other looked at the route guide board. At the notation about the incident. At the distance marker to Saffron City.

"The circuit goes north from here,"

They started walking.

The route was quiet around them. The maintenance lights at their intervals. The grass dark on either side. The night sounds of things had returned to normal.

They were following a lead.

That was all it was.

But it was the best lead they had, and they were already on the road.

 

[Live Wire]

Dr. Matthews: How do you feel about having someone with you now?

Theo: Better than I expected. Worse in different ways. Miyato asks questions about things I know - Pokemon, battle theory, type matchups - and I can answer them immediately and completely. Then if he asks where I'm from or what my family was like and I have nothing. The gap between what I can explain and what I can't explain about myself gets more obvious when someone's there to notice it.

---

Miyato had been a stuttering mess since before the lights came on.

He dropped the spatula twice. Started explaining something about the dried seasoning stores and abandoned it halfway through. Set a bowl down in the wrong place, moved it, moved it back. Kiri kept watching him from his shoulder with the focused concern of a Pokémon who had taken note of a pattern and was monitoring it.

Even Ryuu, who normally conducted himself with the composed indifference of something with better places to be, turned from the doorway and hissed.

Miyato froze. Looked at Ryuu. Looked at the pan.

"I know," he said.

Ryuu looked at the ceiling.

Theo drank his tea and said nothing. Whatever Miyato was building toward, pressing on it would not help it arrive faster. Zeus ate methodically beside him. Jupiter was working through his pancakes with the focused reverence he brought to them, regardless of context or location.

What came off the stove was still better than anything the outpost had probably produced in years. Pemba came through for his shift handover, looked at the table, looked at Miyato, and left with his portion without comment, which was probably the right call.

Victoria appeared in the common room while they were still eating, arm in a proper sling, moving with the unhurried ease of someone who had decided the arm was not going to change her morning plans. She took in the room in the time it took to cross it, which was about two seconds; decided it was manageable and pulled out a chair.

"I am leaving today," she said, taking Miyato's tea without asking and drinking some.

Miyato blinked at the empty space where his cup had been.

"The Annihilape," she said. "Since you were involved, you should know. Evaluation first. If the rage state was situational, it goes to managed off-route territory. If it's embedded," she tipped her head slightly, " A strong trainer will handle it. Not my call." She put the cup back. "Either way, handled."

"What do you think?" Theo said.

"I think it went into the ball without fighting it." She turned the cup in her hand. "That means something, usually. But I've been wrong before." She said it with the complete equanimity of someone who had factored being wrong into her general worldview long ago. She produced her PokéNav and set it on the table. "Contact. Both of you."

Miyato fumbled his out. Theo took care of the exchange while Miyato was getting his operational. Victoria received both and put hers away and stood.

"What a bother," she said, pleasantly. "All of this over a Gyarados." Staraptor appeared behind her and pressed against her side, and she put her functional hand on its head. "Good luck on the circuit. Try not to end up off route again."

She left before it became a moment.

---

They set off at eight. The route had the feel of somewhere recovering from something; the bird sounds were thinner than they should have been but present, and the grassland was doing its ordinary morning things. Theo set his pace slightly below where he'd pushed on the first day, which was already better than the first day had been, but Miyato had no reference point for what correct pacing felt like and was moving with the energy of someone who had decided to outpace their own anxiety by walking fast enough.

Twenty minutes in, Theo said nothing but shortened his own stride and eventually Miyato matched it without noticing.

They walked. Ryuu moved alongside them closer than the old distance. The cape was still on Miyato, and Theo looked at it once at the first ranger marker.

"The cape," he said.

Miyato looked down at the border stitching.

"If you actually want people not to recognise the clan," Theo said.

Miyato was quiet. Then he took it off, folded it into his bag and kept walking. His posture had changed in a way that was not quite right. Not worse, exactly. Just different in the way someone who has removed something that was part of how they carried themselves and hasn't yet found the replacement.

At the forty-minute mark, MIyato started a sentence.

"If —" He stopped. Kiri adjusted on his shoulder. "The circuit," he said. "I wanted to ask if you were open to travelling together."

His hands had gone to his sides in the way they did when he was managing something and doing a middling job of it.

"I can cook," he said. "Every day. And there's Pokemon grooming that I know how to do properly, and logistically it makes more sense than two people covering the same —"

Theo laughed.

Miyato stopped.

"Yes," Theo said.

"You don't have to —"

"Miyato. Yes."

Miyato looked at the path ahead, and the tension in his shoulders went somewhere else. "Right," he said. Then, very quietly: "Good."

Kiri made a sound, and Miyato's hand came up to hold her without the rest of him acknowledging it.

Ryuu made his position clear before noon.

He had been watching Zeus since breakfast with the interest of someone who has decided on a course of action and is simply waiting for the correct moment. At some point in the mid-morning stretch he moved from beside Miyato, slithered across the path directly to Zeus, stopped two feet from him, and hissed.

Not aggression. The syntax of a challenge, delivered plainly.

Zeus looked at him. Then at Theo.

"Here?" Theo said.

Ryuu moved to the flat section without being asked. He positioned himself and faced Zeus across the open grass and the attention in his eyes had shifted from the watching he'd been doing all morning to something else entirely. He was in it now.

Zeus looked at him.

His ears came forward once and stayed there. He read the stance, the forward lean, the way Ryuu's whole body was pointed like something about to be released. The ear didn't move again. He already knew what was coming.

"Twister," Miyato said immediately. "Open with Twister, keep your distance—"

Ryuu drove forward.

Low and committed, all momentum, and Zeus broke right before Ryuu had covered the ground between them, Quick Attack carrying him sideways fast enough that the first lunge found nothing. Ryuu corrected without breaking pace, turning on his own axis and firing Dragon Breath at close range, a thick billow of dark force that Zeus ducked under by dropping flat, the breath passing over him, and Zeus came up on the other side already repositioning.

"Thunder Fang," Theo said. "Cut behind."

Zeus closed from the rear and the crackling bite found Ryuu at the base of the neck before Ryuu had tracked the new angle. Not a clean hit, Ryuu turned into it and took it on the side of his neck rather than centre but Ryuu registered it and turned on Zeus immediately and fired Dragon Breath again.

Zeus rolled under it.

The breath passed over him for the second time, and Theo was already reading the pattern. Ryuu was choosing close-range Dragon Breath every time he had range available. Not out of ignorance. Out of preference, the preference of something that had always won by pressing forward and had no interest in changing that.

"Twister! He doesn't have an effective reach if you stay back—"

Ryuu launched into Slam.

The full-body commit went forward hard and Zeus sidestepped it clean, the move carrying Ryuu two steps past where Zeus had been. Zeus pivoted and fired a Shock Wave into Ryuu's exposed side as he passed. the electric pulse connected before Ryuu had straightened and Ryuu took it without having braced, stepping sideways from the impact.

He turned back.

His eyes hadn't changed. He looked at Zeus the way something looks at a problem it has decided is worth solving regardless of the cost

Theo watched him and understood something. Miyato was right about the range. Ryuu's Twister spread wider than Zeus could cleanly sidestep through and the Dragon Breath at distance left no window to close in before the next one fired. At range this was a different fight. Ryuu wasn't giving him that fight and wasn't going to.

"Charge Beam," Theo said. "Hold where you are."

Zeus fired and Ryuu sent Dragon Breath to meet it and both moves crossed toward each other and collided in the air between them with a sharp crack and a wash of outward pressure. Both cancelled and the dissipation pushed heat in both directions and neither moved. The Charge Beam boost had settled into Zeus regardless of the cancel. It was doing its work.

"Ryuu—" Miyato again, and Ryuu was already moving.

He came in from a new angle this time, cutting wide before closing, and Zeus read the arc and broke to create the perpendicular but Ryuu had anticipated that and the Dragon Breath fired from just feet away on the new angle and Zeus couldn't fully clear it. The breath caught Zeus across the chest and drove him back before he found his footing.

He stood. Shook himself once.

The fur across his chest was darker where the breath had found him. Theo noted it and kept it. Zeus was favoring the right side slightly now, the stride not quite what it had been.

"Thunder Fang," Theo said. "Come in low."

Zeus closed and the crackling bite found Ryuu's flank this time. real contact with real damage and Ryuu pulled against it and broke the grip by force and answered immediately with Dragon Breath at almost no distance at all, point-blank, but Zeus was already clearing the area and the breath clipped his rear leg rather than hitting the center.

Zeus's ear moved once. He was recalculating. Ryuu was faster than he'd been giving credit for and the close-range exchanges were narrower than they should have been.

Theo felt it too.

"Charge Beam," he said. "Second one."

Zeus fired and Ryuu sent Dragon Breath again and the beams met in the air. This time the first boost was behind the Charge Beam and the Dragon Breath folded slightly before they cancelled, the point where they met had shifted toward Ryuu before the whole thing came apart. Not through. Not yet. But moving.

"He's building off of it," Miyato said quietly. He was talking to Ryuu. "Every time you feed him a target, he— Ryuu, please, Twister from back there and you reset everything he just—"

Ryuu dashed in .

He came in low under Zeus and got inside the escape window, and the coiling grip established before Zeus had time to avoid it, closing around Zeus's midsection with the full commitment of something that had been trying to do exactly this since the first exchange and had finally found the moment. The constriction began and Zeus was held.

Theo had the Ice Fang call ready.

He didn't use it.

He wanted to know something first. Ryuu had been ahead of everything Miyato asked from the start, doing the opposite of every instruction not out of malice but out of a complete and total certainty that he already knew better. And Miyato was right, the range work would have changed this battle. Zeus was too quick for Ryuu to reliably pin down, the Wrap had been luck as much as timing, and Miyato had seen that from the start. Theo wanted to know whether there was a wall Ryuu would hit that made him reconsider. Whether pressure and accumulated damage would make him take the advice that was actually correct.

Worth finding out.

"Bite," Theo said instead. "Break the grip."

Zeus bit into the coil itself before Theo had finished saying it.

Not a response to the command; the command had barely reached him. Zeus had already decided to find his own way out, teeth finding the tightest point of the hold and grinding in, trying to create leverage before anything else arrived. He'd felt the grip and made a calculation and acted on it without being told to and Theo felt something that wasn't quite surprise.

"Ice Fang," Theo said. "Same point. Dead on."

The cold came up the way it always came, reached for rather than made and Zeus had almost no room to aim it. The Wrap had him mostly locked, his head the only part of him with any real movement, and he drove the Ice Fang into the nearest point of the coil and let the frost spread from there outward through the grip. Ryuu felt it find him and the hold loosened and Zeus pushed his way out through the loosening and put distance between them fast.

Both of them reset.

Zeus's chest still showed the Dragon Breath from earlier. The stride was compensating slightly. He'd been in the hold long enough for it to register. He was still reading correctly, but the exchanges had stacked on him and his positioning was more deliberate now,each step placed more deliberately than before

Ryuu had taken Thunder Fang, Shock Wave, Charge Beam, and the Ice Fang through the grip. His scales showed it.

"Ryuu," Miyato said. He wasn't frustrated anymore. Something else had taken over. "I know you're not listening. But he's stacking that beam. The next one's going to come through. If you'd just—"

Ryuu used Twister.

Not from the range Miyato had been asking for. From too close, from the wrong position, not aimed with patience but fired with everything behind it, a grinding rotating column of wind that Zeus ran through the near edge of rather than around; the rotation catching him and pulling him sideways a step before he recovered. Not a full hit but solid enough.

Miyato's hands came down from where they'd been at his jacket pockets.

Then Ryuu was coming forward again and Theo saw where the battle was going.

"Thunder Wave," he said. "Low and wide."

Zeus fired flat along the grass and the arc spread outward and found Ryuu mid-stance before he'd released the Dragon Breath he was preparing, the paralysis settling into him and locking his nervous system. Ryuu went rigid.

Theo had known Shed Skin before he ever met Ryuu. He knew the ability. Watching it was different, the translucent layer peeling from the base of Ryuu's tail forward in a single unhurried motion, impossibly thin, carrying the paralysis out of him as it went, dissolving against the grass before it had fully separated. Ryuu stood clean on the other side of it and shook himself once.

He looked at Zeus.

There was more in his eyes than there had been at the start.

"Charge Beam," Theo said.

Zeus fired and Ryuu sent Dragon Breath to meet it and the two beams crossed toward each other, and this time the third Charge Beam had two boosts sitting behind it and when the Dragon Breath found it the breath didn't fold. The beam held and then moved forward and the Dragon Breath gave way along its own line and the Charge Beam came through and hit Ryuu in the chest.

Ryuu went tumbling backwards.

He caught himself.

He looked at the space where the beams had met and something settled in him, not resignation, just the acknowledgment of a new fact.

Miyato didn't say anything.

"Bite," Theo said. "Keep him moving. Don't let him reset."

Zeus kept breaking angles, teeth finding the rear as Ryuu passed and releasing and repositioning before Ryuu had turned. Dragon Breath fired and Zeus was already somewhere else and the breath hit grass. Ryuu launched into Slam and Zeus went under it the same way he'd gone under all of them, measured, every time, the footwork that Ryuu had been running into all afternoon without finding a consistent answer for.

Zeus landed from the dodge and looked at Theo.

One beat.

"Ice Fang," Theo said. "Drive through."

Zeus came in on the angle the Slam had left open, the one Ryuu kept creating every time he committed fully forward, the opening that had been there all battle and Ice Fang found Ryuu's side clean. The cold went through and the shiver it produced was visible all the way down and Ryuu went down on a slump

He stayed there.

His head was up.

Zeus stood where the Ice Fang had ended. His breathing was visible. He didn't press forward.

Theo said "enough," and it was over.

Miyato came to the edge of where the battle had been and stopped some feet short of Ryuu. He waited. Ryuu's head turned toward him and neither of them said anything.

Theo stood back with Zeus at his left and let the moment be what it was. What he'd watched was a Dratini absorb twenty exchanges of accumulated damage and keep pressing forward on pure decision. He'd also watched a Dratini with the kit to win a different version of this fight — the Twister, the Dragon Breath at range, the spread that Zeus couldn't fully avoid — spend all of it on the version of the fight he preferred instead.

The gap wasn't in the ability.

"Good battle," Miyato said quietly.

Miyato came toward Ryuu slowly. Crouched. Put his hand against Ryuu's side and Ryuu's head turned and looked at the hand and then at Miyato and then at the grass in front of him.

He didn't move away.

"You were supposed to stay back," Miyato said.

Ryuu looked at the grass.

"You're a Dragon type," Miyato said. "You have range. You have Twister. There was no reason to —"

Ryuu made a short sound.

Miyato stopped.

After a moment, he just kept his hand where it was and didn't say anything else and Ryuu allowed it and the field was quiet around them.

---

The trainer battles came through the afternoon, spread across the midsection of the route the way they always were on routes people traveled regularly. Three of them approached. Miyato sent Kiri for two and won one and lost one and Kiri took both outcomes with equal equanimity, returning to his shoulder each time having clearly enjoyed herself regardless of the result.

The third was a Gliscor.

Theo sent Zeus. Saw the Ground typing. Knew the electric moves were useless before the battle started. Worked around it with Bite and tried twice for Ice Fang under pressure and the Gliscor was faster than Zeus could account for and Acrobatics accumulated and Zeus went down.

He didn't talk about it until they were walking again, twenty minutes later, with the camp site ahead.

"Ground types," Miyato said.

"The Ice Fang," Theo said. "It almost landed both times."

"He was fast."

"He was." Theo looked at Zeus walking beside him. "The gap between almost and actually is where we are right now."

Miyato was quiet for a moment. "Kiri loses to things she shouldn't and wins against things I don't expect her to win against," he said. "I'm not sure how to account for that."

"She's reading the other Pokémon," Theo said.

Miyato looked at Kiri on his shoulder. Kiri looked back at him.

"Is that what she's doing?" he said.

They made camp at the flat section past the next ranger marker. Both of them put up tents.

Theo's was better than day one. Meaningfully. The lean was minor, the corners were close to level, it went up in a reasonable amount of time and stayed where he put it.

He stood back and looked at it. The relief was quiet and entirely his.

Miyato's tent held a structural philosophy that was difficult to identify. It stood, which was the charitable description. One side had decided on its angle that the other side had not been informed of, and both had committed to their respective positions.

"You can —" Theo started.

"It's fine," Miyato said.

He went inside with Kiri, and Ryuu followed, and that was that.

They ate Miyato's food, much better than anything the route should have produced from trail supplies, and the fire settled into its ordinary rhythm and the route was quiet around them in the way it was quiet when it was genuinely recovering rather than pretending to.

"The storm," Miyato said, after a while. His eyes were on the fire and he had the tone of someone who had been thinking about something and had decided to say it. "A few weeks ago. It was everywhere in the news. The energy readings from it apparently registered all the way in Blackthorn, which doesn't happen with ordinary storms."

"I was there," Theo said.

Miyato turned to look at him. "You were actually there? The Zapdos event?"

"Standing on the dock when it started," Theo said. "I didn't know what was happening at first, just that the sky had gone wrong and the harbour was empty and the storm was coming in from the water at a scale that didn't feel like weather anymore. Then Zapdos came through the cloud cover and everything got louder and brighter than it had any right to be." He looked at the fire. "Surge got his team out. The gym Pokemon. Everyone who was there did what they could but Zapdos at full force above a harbour is not something you counter, it's something you manage until it leaves."

"I heard Lance appeared," Miyato said.

"He did," Theo confirmed. "He came in on his Dragonite and the whole dynamic of the situation changed in about thirty seconds. That's the most honest way I can put it. Before he arrived it was controlled chaos. After he arrived it was something being handled by someone who knew how to handle it." He paused. "I was on the dock for most of it. Got close enough to understand exactly how outclassed everything around me was."

Miyato was quiet for a moment, turning this over. "That must have been terrifying," he said, not in the way people said things to fill silence but like he actually meant it.

"It was," Theo said. Then, because it was also true, "It was also something I'm glad I saw."

The fire shifted between them and Theo looked at it and then at Miyato.

"What's it like?" he said. "The Dragon Clan. Actually, like, day to day."

Something happened to Miyato's posture. Not much. Barely visible in the firelight. But the chin came up a degree and the quality of his voice shifted in the way it shifted when he was about to say something he considered legitimate.

"The records go back further than anyone knows," he said. "The Elders say the Clan was in Blackthorn before the city was. Before the routes." He looked at the fire and the chin was still up. "Every major Dragon type in Kanto, we have some relationship to. The knowledge is passed down. Training methods, bond techniques, lineage histories going back centuries." He paused. "There are things in the library that aren't in any League archive. First-generation records." He said it the way someone said things they believed deeply and had not been given many opportunities to say to someone who wasn't already inside the world those things came from. "Day to day it means something different than it sounds from the outside. It's early mornings with the dragons before anything else. It's sitting with the Elders learning things that aren't written down anywhere. It's understanding that the bond between a Dragon type and its trainer is—" He stopped. The chin came back down about halfway. "Different," he said, more quietly. "From what most trainers experience."

Theo looked at him. "Better?"

Miyato thought about Ryuu. "More demanding," he said. "And potentially more than that. But that part you have to earn."

Miyato stopped.

"Lance is my uncle," he said.

He said it the way someone said something they had decided to say and then had to live with having said. The chin came down. He looked at the fire. "That's why I understand it so deeply. Not because I'm particularly suited to it. Because I've watched it my whole life from a distance that had never quite closed.

Theo looked at him.

Miyato's chin had come up with the mention of Lance, the automatic pride of it surfacing before he could decide whether to show it. "Don't look at me like that," he said. "I know I don't exactly match the family profile at the moment."

"I wasn't thinking that," Theo said.

"You were a little."

"A little," Theo said

"Fair," Miyato said, without any particular heat behind it as he threw a stick into the fire.

The fire settled, and neither of them said anything for a moment, and it was the comfortable kind of nothing that had started to develop between them over the course of the route.

 

[Live Wire]

Dr. Matthews: What does it feel like when someone knows you but you don't know them?

Theo: Professor Oak sent me a Pokédex. He knows I exist - knows my name, knows my badge progress, knows enough about me to provide equipment and funding. I know who he is the way I know everything - perfect recall of his research, his position, his reputation. But I've never met him. Never heard his voice. The relationship only goes one direction and that feels backwards.

---

"Smokescreen," Miyato said.

The cloud spread wide before the opposing trainer had finished calling Poison Sting, the needles came through firing blind, most of them finding nothing, one catching Kiri's side before she had fully cleared the range. She took it and held her position. The smoke had settled thick around Nidoran now and it was shaking its head trying to find her.

"Dragon Breath," Miyato said. "Through it."

Kiri fired through the smoke and the breath found Nidoran while it was still clearing the cloud from its eyes. It staggered and fired Poison Sting at where the breath had come from, which was where Kiri had been half a second ago.

"Smokescreen—"

"Fury Attack, push through—"

The second smoke layer was building when Nidoran came forward without waiting for visibility, the multi-hit move firing into the cloud. The first strike found Kiri before the smoke had fully settled. The second landed before she had processed the first.

"Move—" Miyato started.

Kiri was already sideways. The third strike hit smoke and nothing. Miyato caught up to what she was doing and redirected.

"Dragon Breath!"

The breath fired point-blank while Nidoran was still coming out of the Fury Attack's forward lean, too committed to its direction to stop, and the hit landed with Nidoran's own momentum behind it. It staggered back and sat down from the force of it.

"Bubble," Miyato said.

The water move crossed fast from close range and Nidoran couldn't answer it and sat down again and didn't get back up.

The trainer recalled Nidoran and looked at Miyato.

"Good battle," she said. They shook hands, exchanged prize money, and she headed south.

Miyato stood in the path, looking at where the battle had been. Kiri climbed back up his arm to his shoulder and made the sound she made when she was pleased with herself.

"Easy and Clean," Theo said.

Miyato turned to look at him. His ears were slightly pink, and his hands were still not entirely right at his sides, but the feeling behind it had shifted.

"Good use of the smoke," Theo said.

Miyato looked at the path ahead. "The clan," he said. "Every youth has to watch the sparring sessions. From a young age. Not optional." He adjusted the strap of his bag. "Hours of it. Watching how battles move, how positioning works, and what happens when you commit too early. You absorb it even when you don't know you're absorbing it." He paused. "I've never actually done much of it myself. But I knew what the smoke was supposed to do."

Theo looked at Kiri, who was conducting a self-satisfied assessment of the route ahead and Ryuu.

Ryuu had been walking closest to the bag all morning.

Not beside Miyato. Beside the bag, specifically, in the position Zeus usually occupied on Theo's left, close enough that his scales occasionally brushed the canvas when Theo adjusted the strap. He hadn't been asked to be there. He had simply moved to that position at some point in the early morning and stayed. Once, during a rest stop, Theo had set the bag down on a flat rock, and Ryuu had moved to it immediately and pressed his nose against the section of canvas above the egg's compartment and held very still for a moment with his eyes closed and then moved away without acknowledging what he had done.

The egg had been shaking more than usual that morning. Small movements, more frequent than the baseline Nurse Joy had described, the shell shifting in its compartment in a way that was less like something testing the walls and more like something that had made up its mind about something and was working toward it.

Theo had felt it twice through the bag strap, and each time Ryuu had looked up at him before looking away.

"When we get to the Pokémon Center," Miyato said, "you should have the egg looked at. Properly. Just to be certain."

"It should be fine, right?" Theo said.

"Probably," Miyato said. "But the Pokémon Center will have diagnostic equipment that the dimensional bag's compartment doesn't have."

"When we get there," he agreed.

---

The route in its final stretch was the route at its most ordinary, the grassland doing what grassland did, the ranger markers at their intervals; nothing was wrong in the air. Ryuu moved beside Miyato in the way he had been moving since the outpost. not quite walking with them, not quite separate from them, occupying a position that was its own thing.

Miyato had attempted a short training session with Ryuu at the morning rest stop. He had called five commands. Ryuu had responded to one of them, which was Dragon Breath, and had done so in a direction and with a timing that was technically Dragon Breath but bore a different relationship to what Miyato had intended than the word listening usually implied. The other four commands Ryuu had received and processed and set aside in favour of what he had independently assessed as the correct action, which in three out of four cases was also correct, just not Miyato's correct.

Miyato had stood at the end of it with his hands on his hips.

"He responded to Dragon Breath," Theo had said.

"He did Dragon Breath at a target I wasn't pointing at," Miyato had said.

Theo had made a note: Ryuu is not disobedient in the way a Pokemon that doesn't care is disobedient. He's disobedient in the way of something that has a different read on the situation and acts on it. There's a gap between what Miyato calls and what Ryuu does but the gap isn't random. It has logic. He had underlined the last sentence and moved on.

Jupiter tried the paper cup exercise twice during a rest stop later and the cup moved both times, fractionally, and he sat back and looked at it with the expression of someone who had confirmed a hypothesis and was now considering the implications.

Theo wrote: consistent twice. Not reliable yet. But consistent.

He stared at the entry for a moment and then something arrived.

He had been thinking about the psychic potential since the Hypno identified it, had been contextualising it as unusual, as something specific to Jupiter's personality or the fairy energy affinity or some combination of both. He had been thinking about it in relation to Kantonian Raichu, which was what he had spent six weeks surrounded by at Surge's gym, Surge's own Raichu in the exhibition and the gym Raichus on the training floor and the general assumption baked into that environment that Raichu meant Kantonian Raichu.

He had not thought about Alolan Raichu.

Alolan Raichu. Electric and Psychic type. The variant developed differently due to Alola's environmental energy and, if the research notes he had somewhere in his knowledge were accurate, its diet and, specifically its consumption of sweet foods endemic to the islands. The psychic typing was not foreign to the evolutionary line in Alola. It was native to it. And if Jupiter was an Alolan-strain Pikachu, if the street Pokemon who had been breaking into an Alolan restaurant every night, for the Alolan fluffy pancakes specifically, if that preference was not just personality but origin...

Theo looked at Jupiter walking ahead of them and felt extremely stupid.

The pancakes. The latent psychic potential. The fact that the Hypno had sensed something that wasn't standard for the species and had immediately known what to do with it. All of it pointed in the same direction and Theo had not connected it because he had spent six weeks watching Kantonian Raichus at Surge's gym and had given himself tunnel vision without noticing.

He laughed.

Not the managed version. Just a short, genuine, directed entirely at himself.

Miyato looked at him.

"Nothing," Theo said. Then: "I missed something obvious."

He made a new note, longer this time, writing quickly, the training adjustment taking shape as he wrote it. More intense psychic work. Not electricity, not fairy type, psychic specifically sustained focus exercises, the kind the Hypno had started in the coven clearing but pointed in a more deliberate direction. He would need help with that. Sabrina was the obvious resource but even before the gym meeting there might be other psychics in Saffron, the city being what it was, and he noted that down too.

He looked at Zeus.

Zeus had been growing since they left Vermilion. Not dramatically, a fraction more height, the reaction time in route battles faster than the badge challenge by a margin that was now consistent enough to log. Theo had been watching it without concluding but the conclusion was arriving on its own. The pace of it was not slowing.

He wrote in the notebook: movepool. Ice Fang and Fire Fang still developing. Everything else the same as Vermilion. Saffron has resources, find out what's available.

He underlined it and added below: Sabrina or city psychics for Jupiter. Sooner rather than later.

Then he closed the notebook.

Then he looked at Jupiter who was walking ahead completely unbothered by any of this, cheeks sparking at the low ambient rate he always maintained, and thought about Alolan pancakes and Alolan Raichu and felt stupid again in the warm way of someone whose mistake had been completely understandable and also completely avoidable.

---

They saw Saffron before they reached it.

The scale of it was visible from the last elevated section of the route, the city stretching across the plain, and Theo stopped walking.

He did not intend to stop. His feet simply stopped and his eyes went to the city and what happened to his face happened before he could manage it.

Miyato walked three more paces and noticed the absence of footsteps beside him and turned around.

He looked at Theo.

Theo was looking at Saffron with both eyes wide and the expression of someone for whom a word like city had just been replaced by the actual thing, which was considerably larger than the word.

The Silph Co. building rose above everything else on the skyline, enormous and glass-faced, catching the afternoon light in a way that made it seem like a different category of structure from everything around it. The rest of the city spread outward from it in every direction, dense and layered, the streets visible from here as a grid of movement and colour that didn't stop.

"You're —" Miyato started.

Theo closed his mouth. Rearranged his expression into something closer to his normal register. Looked at Miyato.

"I'm fine," he said.

"You were gobsmacked," Miyato said.

"I was taking it in."

"You were gobsmacked," Miyato said again. "I've never seen you look like that about anything." He was looking at Theo with the attention of someone revising a model they had built. "I thought you were just — I thought that was how you were about everything."

Theo looked at the city again.

"I'm reserved," he said. "It doesn't mean nothing's happening," he thought about his therapist. About the sessions that had been asking him this exact question in various forms for weeks, about the distinction between managing something and not feeling it. "There's usually quite a lot happening. I just don't always —" He stopped. "I don't always show it."

Miyato was quiet for a moment. Then he looked at the city too.

"I've never been anywhere this big," he said.

Theo looked at him.

"Blackthorn," Miyato said. "My whole life. I've never been out of Blackthorn before this circuit." He said it plainly, without the chin going up. Just a fact.

"Vermilion," Theo said.

Miyato looked at him. "That's where you're from."

"That's where I started and stayed," Theo said, which was true in the way things could be true without being complete.

They looked at each other.

"Neither of us," Miyato said.

"Neither of us," Theo agreed.

Miyato started laughing first. It came out of him the way his anxiety usually came out of him, before he had decided to let it, and Theo's followed a beat later, and they stood at the edge of the route in front of Saffron City and laughed at themselves like people who had been pretending to know what they were doing and had just admitted simultaneously that they didn't.

Three trainers walking south past them glanced over and smiled and one of them said something to the others that made all three of them laugh too and kept walking.

The Pokémon Center was larger than any facility Theo had seen outside of a city. Two floors, a proper waiting area, a cafeteria, and and rooms for trainers to stay. Nurse Joy took the egg without comment and ran the diagnostics while Theo and Miyato waited in the consultation area.

The egg was healthy. The shaking was slightly more frequent than her baseline data for its stage, not alarming, she said, simply progressing. She handed it back and the egg sat in Theo's hands and shook once, a small deliberate movement, and both of them looked at it.

"It's doing something in there," Miyato said.

"Yes," Theo said.

He put it back in the compartment and sealed it.

The cafeteria had the institutional warmth of places that fed a lot of people efficiently and had been doing it long enough to have found their rhythm. Trays and the specific smell of hot food and the low noise of other trainers at other tables with their own conversations.

Theo and Miyato were halfway through their food when the chair across from them was occupied.

There was no approach. No footsteps. Just the chair empty and then the chair occupied, as though the interval between had been removed.

The woman sitting across from them had dark eyes and the particular quality of stillness that came from someone who did not need to perform attention because their attention was simply always fully present. She looked at Theo. She looked at Miyato.

"I know who both of you are," she said. "My name is Sabrina."

Miyato's fork stopped moving.

"I know of you through Anabel," she said to Theo. "And I know of you too," she looked at Miyato, "by other means."

Miyato's mouth opened. Closed. "I — you're — yes," he said. "Yes, I know who you are, obviously, the gym — the — I'm Miyato." He stopped. His ears had gone pink. "You already said you knew that. Sorry."

Sabrina looked at him without impatience. She simply waited until he had finished.

"I want you both to come to the gym," she said. "One week from today. I'll see both your challenges."

Theo looked at her.

"I don't normally make exceptions to the badge requirement," she said. "I'm making them now because I see something in both of you that I find worth the exception." She didn't elaborate on what. "One week."

She was gone.

The chair was empty.

The cafeteria continued around them with the complete indifference of a space that had seen stranger things than a psychic gym leader teleporting in and out over lunch.

Miyato looked at the space where she had been. Then at Theo.

"Did she just —"

"Yes," Theo said.

Miyato looked at his food.

"Right," he said.

The noticeboard was on the cafeteria wall and Theo noticed it on the way back from returning their trays.

A tournament at the old Fighting gym. All rookie trainers. Starting tomorrow morning, registration opens in person until then.

He read it twice. "Some of these trainers could have a lot of badges already," he complained. "That's a significant gap from zero."

Miyato looked at him.

"The circuit started two months ago," he said.

"Everyone on the circuit started at the same time," Miyato said, with the patient quality of someone explaining something that had an obvious logic to it. "Badge zero to three means everyone is two months in at most. The gap between one badge and three badges over two months is not the same as three years of training."

Theo processed this.

He laughed, once, at himself, the short, genuine kind. "A couple of weeks ago, he had not known what a circuit was. He had learned this world from scratch and was apparently still catching up to the obvious parts.

Miyato looked at him for a moment and then let it go in the way he was learning to let things go, which was without comment but not without noticing.

"Tomorrow morning then," Theo said. "Registration and then the tournament."

"And after," Miyato said, "we should actually see the city properly."

"Agreed."

They looked at the noticeboard a moment longer. Miyato's hands had gone to his sides in the way they went when something was running underneath his composure. He was reading the tournament details again with the expression of someone who had decided to do something and was in the process of committing to that decision in real time, which was different from having committed to it.

His fingers flexed once at his sides and he turned away from the board.

"Tomorrow," he said.

---

The room was quiet in the way rooms were quiet after full days.

Theo was on the bed with his notebook open and not writing in it. Zeus was at the foot of the bed. Jupiter had located the optimal position relative to the window and was in it. Kiri was somewhere on Miyato's side of the room making a small sound at intervals. Ryuu was at the door.

Theo had been looking at a blank page for several minutes.

"Grass Knot," he said.

Miyato looked up from his bag.

"At the start," Theo said. "If we'd opened with Grass Knot to limit its movement and Whirlwind to keep it from repositioning while Gallade stacked, we might have controlled the space better and lasted longer."

Miyato thought about it. "The forest floor was too uneven. Grass Knot works best on open ground. In the trees, with that much undergrowth, it might not have established cleanly." He paused. "Maybe. If it landed right."

"And Helping Hand for Gallade's Psycho Cut," Theo said. "Boost the output while he was building Swords Dance."

"Who runs it?" Miyato said. "We were using everything to keep Phantom Force locked down. Victoria's Staraptor was managing position. Kiri and Ryuu were on smoke duty." He exhaled. "There was no one left to run support."

"All-out offense from the start, then," Theo said. "Hit it hard before Rage Fist could build."

Miyato was quiet.

"Rage Fist gets stronger with every hit the user takes," Theo said. "So all-out offense feeds it. Every hit we land in that scenario is power we're handing back to it. By the time Gallade was ready to close it—"

"The Rage Fist would have been at a level none of us could absorb," Miyato said.

"Yes."

The same wall. They kept running into the same wall. The strategy had been right in principle, suppress, control, let Gallade build to the threshold. It had just required a Hypno coven and Victoria's Gallade and a combination of resources neither of them had brought. Their contribution had been real. It had not been enough on its own.

Theo looked at the blank page.

He had known every relevant fact about what they were fighting before they were fighting it. The Rage Fist accumulates under sustained combat. Vital Spirit locking out sleep options. The Phantom Force window and how to close it. All of it had built the plan and the plan had been correct and he had still stood in that forest watching the Annihilape come apart with Ghost energy and the only clear thought in his head in those final seconds had been that none of what he knew was going to matter if the Gallade didn't close it in time. The knowledge had drawn the map. He hadn't had the strength to walk it.

"We would have lost anyway," Miyato said. Not as a complaint. Just naming it.

Miyato's chin was down. He was looking at the floor between the two beds and something in his face was still processing what they'd been through in a way the days after hadn't fully resolved. He hadn't said the word freeze. He hadn't named what happened at the battle line when his thumb had been on the recall button and his body had chosen something else. He didn't need to. It was present in how he sat.

They drew blanks for a while longer and eventually stopped trying.

"Victoria's report said it came from deep off-route," Miyato said after a while. "Further in than the Pokémon that normally end up near the boundary. Probably enraged before it ever crossed onto the route. Whatever set it off started out there, not here." He paused. "The rangers have been doing better work lately keeping things back. It still happens though."

"What do you mean, keeping things back?" Theo said.

Miyato looked at him.

The look lasted a moment longer than it should have. Not suspicious exactly, more the expression of someone who had just heard a question they did not have a framework for receiving. The look of someone trying to work out whether the other person was serious.

"The wild encroachment," Miyato said slowly.

"I'm not—" Theo started. Then: "I was pretty sheltered growing up."

Miyato held the look for a beat beyond what the answer covered. Sheltered did not explain not knowing. This was not a recent development or a regional detail. This was the condition of the world for the last several years. You couldn't have it as background noise unless something had specifically prevented it from reaching you.

He didn't press it.

"Do you remember the Groudon and Kyogre battle?" Miyato said.

"Yes," Theo said.

Miyato nodded and kept going.

"The land expanded. The sea rose. Earthquakes went through every continent when the land mass shifted, not one event, weeks of them, the ground changing shape across the whole planet. Cities that were on stable ground found out the ground was not stable. Coastlines were destroyed by the tsunamis and then redrawn again when the land settled into its new shape. The world map had to be redrawn after it was done." He stopped. "Some things that were land became sea. Some things that were sea became land. Whole cities are gone. Not damaged. Gone. The damage from that battle has not been fully repaired and it has been years."

Theo said nothing.

"That's the baseline," Miyato said. "That's what the world is built on now." His voice had changed slightly on the last sentence. Not dramatic. Just the quiet register of someone stating a fact they had grown up inside.

"And the Pokemon territory expansion," Theo said.

"Yes." Miyato sat forward slightly. "Pokemon already occupied most of the planet before the battle. After it they had even more space. In the areas where human settlements had been destroyed and not rebuilt, and there are a lot of those, there was nothing to mark a boundary. Pokemon expanded into it." He paused. "Do you know what Alpha Pokemon are?"

"Yes," Theo said.

"Would be strange if you didn't," Miyato said. "They've been across every news channel for the last couple years." Something more careful came into his face. "Before the expansion, they were almost mythological. Extremely rare. Most trainers had never seen one and most researchers weren't certain the accounts were reliable." He looked at his hands. "The Blackthorn Elders knew. They had records going back centuries of Alphas in the deep wilds around the mountain, the territory nobody travels into. I grew up hearing those accounts and most people outside the clan thought they were folklore." He shook his head once. "After the battle they emerged everywhere the expanded land had pushed into. Territory with no settlements, no boundaries, nothing maintaining any constraint on what a Pokemon could become. Now they're not rare at all. They're just the reason nobody goes into the Wilds."

His jaw was tight.

"The Wilds," he said. "That's what the territory is called where they dominate. And it's not just the Alphas themselves. The Pokémon that live near them long enough start to change. More aggressive. More territorial. Less like the Pokemon near the routes." He looked at Theo. "The routes exist in the space between human settlements and the Wilds. They have been getting smaller since the battle. The Alphas clash with each other over territory and every time they push outward something gets displaced and moves toward the routes and the routes compress further." He stopped. "Routes that used to take days. Some of them are a few hours now. Some are gone."

"Can they be reasoned with?" Theo said.

Miyato's expression answered before he did.

"No," he said. "It's been tried. It doesn't work the way it works with wild Pokémon near human areas who have been around people long enough to understand what conflict with humans costs. Alphas don't have that understanding, and they don't want it." He leaned back against the headboard. "You can push the boundary back. You can't hold it permanently. When one is brought down, another rises eventually. The rangers are fighting a managed retreat and most of them know it."

The room held that for a moment.

"Does it get worse closer to Saffron?" Theo said.

"It varies from route to route," Miyato said. "Some have been hit harder than others. I don't know the specifics of every one between here and Celadon." He turned Kiri's Pokéball in his hand. "Kanto has better ranger coverage than most regions. The League funds it. That doesn't mean nothing comes through. It means less comes through and slower."

Theo looked at the ceiling.

"It sounds extremely risky," he said. "Sending young trainers out on routes in the middle of all of this."

Miyato laughed.

It wasn't a dismissive laugh. It had something in it that was genuine and slightly dark and a little tired around the edges.

"The regions need strong trainers and they need them fast," he said. "Rangers can't hold the boundaries alone. The gym system exists to produce people who can handle what's out there, and you can't wait until someone is already strong to start them. you give them the routes early and build them on the road." He looked at Theo. "The League protects the official routes as well as it can. Maintained paths, rangers on rotation, boundaries monitored. The best conditions they can provide." He paused. "It's not just trainers either. The League has been pushing for years for every civilian to be able to defend themselves. Not at a circuit level. Just enough. Because the world outside the city limits is not the same as it was."

Theo looked at Zeus at the foot of his bed.

He thought about the routes ahead of them. The maintained corridors between cities. The Wilds on either side pressing in at the rate they had been pressing since a battle between ancient things had redrawn the planet. He thought about the Annihilape in the forest and what it had taken to survive it.

He thought about eight badges.

"One at a time," Miyato said, as if following the thought without being told it.

Theo looked at him.

Miyato had picked up his bag and was unpacking the evening routine with the methodical precision he brought to it every night. The anxiety that had been in his face when he talked about the Alphas had settled back under the surface where it lived.

"That's the only way to think about it," Miyato said. "Otherwise it's too much."

---

Theo took Zeus and Jupiter and went to look at the rest of the center. He came back twenty minutes later with a bag from the food stall on the lower floor."

Theo knocked and opened the door when Miyato said, "Come in."

He stopped.

Miyato was sitting on his bed with a face mask on. The full routine. His skincare products arranged on the nightstand in their specific order, a white mask covering most of his face, a small towel on his shoulder.

Zeus, who had followed Theo, went very still.

His nose was working. His ears were forward. His eyes were fixed on the thing sitting on Miyato's bed that was wearing Miyato's clothes and had Miyato's posture but whose face had become something else entirely.

Jupiter appeared at Theo's shoulder and took one look and shifted into a defensive crouch.

Kiri, who was sitting on Miyato's pillow and had been watching the routine with the contentment of a Pokemon who was very used to this, made a sound that was clearly laughing. Her whole body moved with it.

Ryuu, from his position in the corner, looked at Miyato and then at Zeus and Jupiter and made a short sharp sound through his nose that was not nothing.

"It's a face mask," Miyato said.

Zeus took another moment to accept this.

Jupiter straightened slowly with the expression of a Pokemon deciding whether to acknowledge that anything had happened. He decided not to and went to investigate the nightstand instead.

Miyato's face, beneath the mask, had gone pink in the specific way it went pink when he was embarrassed and could not do anything about the colour because the mask was already on.

"It's a routine," he said, with the dignity he could manage in the circumstances.

"I know," Theo said.

"You don't have to look at me like that."

"I'm not looking at you like anything," Theo said.

Ryuu snorted again. It was the second reaction from Ryuu in two days that nobody had asked for. Miyato looked at him.

"Don't," Miyato said.

Ryuu looked at the wall.

 

[Live Wire]

Dr Matthews: What do you do when someone challenges who you are?

Theo: A trainer at the tournament looked at what I was carrying and decided he knew my whole story. He was wrong about what it meant.

Dr Matthews: What was he wrong about?

Theo: What I built. These past months. He didn't know about those.

Dr Matthews: And the part he wasn't wrong about?

Theo: ...

Dr Matthews: Take your time.

Theo: The knowledge. I can't source it. Can't tell anyone where it came from. When someone asks, I have nothing. "I've always known" is what someone lying would say.

---

The next morning, Miyato came out of the room in a new outfit he had apparently acquired somewhere, which meant he had gone out the previous evening after Theo had assumed he was doing his routine, and the outfit was good in the way his cooking was good, put together with an understanding of what worked that sat underneath the anxiety and the stuttering and operated independently of both.

He had the hat on. Different hat from the day before, better matched to the outfit, but covering the red hair completely. And sunglasses. Pushed up on the brim of the hat for now, not on his face yet but present.

He looked at Theo.

"Ready," he said.

Theo looked at the hat. At the sunglasses. At the outfit that had the quality of something worn with real intention underneath something worn to be less visible.

Registration wasn't until nine, and they were up at six and Miyato looked at the time on the PokéNav and looked at Theo across the shared room and said they had three hours.

The Pokémon Center rented bikes from a rack at the side entrance. Basic frames, well-used, nothing fast, the kind of bike that said we will get you there and not much else. They took two and pushed out into the Saffron morning, and the city was already doing what cities did at six in the morning, which was the version of itself that most people didn't see.

The Silph Co. building caught the early light on its upper floors and the glass of it sent that light in four directions at once. They stopped the bikes in front of it without agreeing to stop and looked up at it from the street and the scale of it from directly below was different from the scale of it on the skyline. It occupied the air above them the way structures usually didn't. The lobby visible through the ground floor glass was already staffed and lit.

"Vermilion doesn't have anything like this," Theo said.

"No," Miyato agreed.

Theo looked at the building. Vermilion was a working port city. The smell of it was salt and machinery and the sea, the streets following the logic of a harbour rather than a grid, the gym at the centre of things the way gyms usually were in smaller cities. Everything organic and slightly worn and built for use rather than impression. Saffron was deliberate in a way Vermilion wasn't. Wide streets, organized, glass-fronted, and expensive, the League infrastructure visible in how the whole city was laid out, the Silph building and the gym and the government buildings arranged around each other with the intention of people who had decided where power should live.

Miyato had stopped looking at the building and was looking at the space between it and everything else around it, the way a person looks when they're placing something they didn't expect to feel.

"Blackthorn is nothing like this," he said.

Theo looked at him.

"It's older than anything in this city," Miyato said. "Stone buildings that have been there for centuries. Cold even in summer because of the altitude. The clan's presence gives the air there weight to it. Dragon energy runs through everything, the stone, the mountain. You feel it before you see it." His chin had come up incrementally. "It has nothing in common with this place except that they're both cities. Everything else is different."

"Which do you prefer?" Theo said.

Miyato was quiet for a moment. Then he said, honestly, "I don't know yet. I've only ever had one to compare."

They rode further. Miyato was different on the bike than he was in rooms. Less contained. His hands on the handlebars were easy and he took the corners without slowing and looked at things directly instead of clocking the angles first. Theo noted this and didn't say anything about it.

Past the psychic gym at a distance, the building was simpler than Theo had expected, the simplicity somehow more unsettling than ostentation would have been.

Past a market district waking up, the smell of food from stalls that were just opening, and Miyato slowed the bike and looked and Theo slowed beside him and they looked for a moment and kept riding.

They didn't see the full city. The slice of it they covered was enough to understand that the full city would take considerably longer and somewhere around eight, they turned the bikes back toward the Pokémon Center.

---

The old gym was on the east side of the city, stone construction, older than everything around it, the street quieter on that side. They heard it before they saw it, the low collective noise of a lot of people in a contained space, the particular energy of an event that had filled beyond what the organizers had probably anticipated.

The queue at registration stretched back from the entrance, and they joined it. Miyato was scanning without looking like he was scanning. Two fixed cameras on the exterior of the building, one above the door and one mounted on the far corner. He noted them and did not look at them again.

Inside the main hall the Karate Master had clearly organised everything himself. Traditional fighting equipment pushed to the walls, a battle area marked out in the centre of the floor with clean tape lines, a corridor off to the left where they could see two healing machines and a row of chairs. The place had the feel of somewhere that had always been used for the same purpose and had been cleared out for this one specifically.

A noticeboard near the entrance had the bracket posted. Theo found their positions, noted who they had been paired with in the first round, and was reviewing it when he heard the announcer doing a preliminary address to the hall and learned from that address that they were looking at a one hundred and twenty-eight trainer bracket, single elimination, seven rounds, every match one versus one, matches called when the result was obvious enough to spare unnecessary injury. The hall produced a sound at the number that suggested several people had not expected competition at that scale.

He was still looking at the bracket when someone appeared at his shoulder.

The Pokédex was in his hand. He had taken it out to cross-reference his assigned opponent against his notes and had not put it away yet when the trainer appeared from the lobby crowd and looked at it.

The trainer was roughly Theo's age, maybe a year older. The clothes scratched a familiar itch he could not narrow down. Something about them felt familiar, but the feeling slipped away whenever he tried to grab hold of it. He had the expression of someone who had formed a conclusion very quickly and was confident enough in it not to second-guess it.

"That's an Oak Pokédex," he said.

Theo looked at him.

"Professor Oak gives those to specific trainers." The trainer's voice had an edge to it that had been there before he started speaking. "Selectively. Which means someone decided you were worth investing in before you'd done anything to prove it. And now you're standing in a bracket with trainers who built everything themselves."

"The Pokédex doesn't battle for me," Theo said.

"No, but it means someone made calls on your behalf. Opened doors. Told Oak you were worth it before you'd earned worth." He stepped slightly closer. "You know what I did to get here? Two months on the road. No sponsor. No equipment drops. No one's name is smoothing anything. Badge by badge by myself." His jaw was set. "And you walk in here with that and expect to stand in the same field."

"You don't know what I've done," Theo said. Something had shifted in his own voice and he was aware of it.

"I know what you were handed," the trainer said. "I know what that device costs in terms of who has to vouch for you." His thumb released the belt clip

"You don't know anything about me." Theo had stepped forward without deciding to and the distance between them had changed. His jaw was tight and the thing he usually kept under was closer to the surface than he was comfortable with. "You saw a device and built a whole story. You don't know what it took to get here or what I left behind to do it."

"Spare me," the trainer said. "Sponsored trainers always have a version of the story where they deserve everything they were given."

"Hey —" Miyato had appeared between them. His hands were up at chest height in the way of someone physically inserting themselves into a gap. "Okay, I think — this isn't — we're all here for the same thing so maybe we could just — the matches are going to start and —" He was looking between them with the expression of someone who very much wanted this to be over. "Can we just — sorry, I just think — can we not do this right now."

Neither of them moved.

Then something changed in the air of the lobby.

A man in a white gi had materialised nearby. Not walking over from somewhere. Simply present in the way of people who moved quietly and occupied space without requiring it. He was not large. He did not say anything. He looked like someone who had been practising martial arts in this building since before they were born and had precise views on the appropriate conduct of guests within it.

The trainer looked at him.

Looked at Theo.

Walked away through the crowd without another word.

Theo stepped back. His jaw was unclenched by degrees. Miyato's hands came down to his sides, and he exhaled through his nose. The practitioner looked at them for one more moment, then moved on, somewhere else.

Miyato looked at Theo.

"That was —" he started.

"I know," Theo said.

Miyato watched him go and was quiet for a moment before he said anything.

"He's not entirely wrong about the advantage," he said. "But he's wrong about what it means." He was still looking at where the trainer had been. "My clan gave me everything I started with. Ryuu. The training knowledge. Centuries of accumulated understanding about dragon types that no textbook has." He looked at Theo. "It still had to become mine. What you're given is just what you start with. The work after that belongs to you."

Theo looked at the Pokédex in his hand and put it in the bag and kept it there.

---

They watched the first round of the bracket section adjacent to theirs while waiting for their own matches. Miyato had found a position at the back of the viewing area with a sightline to the battle floor that kept both cameras behind him.

The announcer called John's name.

The figure that came to the battle area was wearing the full traditional bug catcher outfit. Green, slightly oversized, the net over one shoulder, the hat with the single upturned brim.

Theo blinked.

John.

The trainer from the lobby.

The name connected a second later than it should have. He hadn't actually known the guy's name when they argued. Just another angry trainer in a crowded registration hall.

Theo stared for a moment.

That was it.

The outfit.

It had been bothering him since the confrontation, without him understanding why. The green clothes, the net, the hat. Not just familiar. A bug catcher.

The realisation felt obvious now that he was looking directly at it. During the argument, he'd been too focused on the trainer himself to process what he was wearing.

The lobby around them produced a particular kind of noise at the sight of it, the quiet laugh of people who had made an assessment and found it comfortable.

John did not look at the crowd. He looked at the battle area.

His opponent sent a Machop. John sent Beedrill.

The Beedrill hit the field and the nature of the assessment shifted. It moved with the speed of something that had been waiting to move and the Poison Jab came before the Machop had settled and hit with the force of a Pokemon that had been trained past what the first impression of its trainer suggested. Twineedle followed and the Machop was working backwards from the moment the match started, and the announcer called it when the outcome was clear enough, which was quickly.

John recalled Beedrill and turned from the battle area and his eyes crossed the viewing section and found Theo and Miyato in the back and held there for a moment.

He snorted and walked out.

Miyato was quiet for a moment beside Theo, still looking at where John had gone.

"That Beedrill," he said.

"Yes," Theo said.

"I've never seen a Beedrill move like that." Miyato's hands had found the front pocket of his jacket again. "Bug types develop fast. It's one of the things the clan teaches, bug types mature quicker than almost anything else on the growth curve. They hit their ceiling early." He looked at Theo. "Which means John probably gets less dangerous the longer the circuit goes, not more."

"Maybe," Theo said.

Miyato looked at him. "You don't think so."

"I think bug trainers who know what they're doing understand that ceiling better than anyone," Theo said. "They work within it differently. Beedrill specifically, it's one of the most underestimated fully evolved Pokémon on the circuit. People see the typing and the fragility and stop looking." He watched the doorway John had walked through. "He hasn't stopped looking. You can tell from how he commands it."

Miyato was quiet for a moment and then said, honestly: "I don't want to face it."

"Neither do I," Theo said.

That sat between them for a moment without either of them doing anything about it.

"You got angry," Miyato said.

Theo looked at him.

"Back there. I've never seen you get angry." Miyato was choosing the words carefully in the way he did when he thought the words mattered. "You're always— you manage things. You always manage things. But that got past it."

Theo looked at the floor. The heat from the confrontation was still in him, sitting lower now but present. "He was speaking from complete ignorance," he said. "About what I built. About what it costs to get here. He looked at a device and decided he knew my whole story." The heat came back up slightly. "He has no idea what I went through to be standing in this building."

Miyato said nothing.

"He talks about scratch," Theo said. "About building from scratch. Like I was handed something and walked through a door." He stopped. Something else was in it now, underneath the anger, something that had less heat and more weight. "I've been doing this for six weeks," he said. "A while ago I didn't — I couldn't —"

He stopped again.

The past months were true. The dock, the gym, Anabel's training, the badge challenge, and the route were all true and his.

But the words were still sitting.

He pressed against the edge of why and it was right there, close enough to name, and he stopped. He knew what it was. Finishing the thought wasn't going to help anything and John was already through the door anyway.

Miyato was watching him.

Miyato's hands came out of his jacket pockets. He fell into step beside Theo without saying anything about it.

That says the same thing more than in Miyato's actual voice.

Theo looked at him.

He didn't say anything. There wasn't anything to say that would have been accurate without explaining more than he was prepared to explain.

He picked up his bag.

"We should find our matches," he said.

---

Miyato's hands were not entirely right when he walked to the battle area for Round 1. His posture was doing the managed thing, the jaw slightly too set, the breathing deliberate. He was looking at the camera position and then making himself not look at it and then looking at it again.

His opponent sent Geodude and Kiri came out of his ball at the same time.

He heard his opponent curse under his breath, no doubt about the horrible matchup.

"Bubble—"

"Get out of there—"

Both trainers called simultaneously but Geodude was too slow and the water move was already crossing, four-times-effective damage hitting before the Rock-type could clear range. Sturdy kept it standing. and its trainer immediately called "Rollout!" while Geodude was still processing the first hit.

The rolling attack came faster than Miyato expected, catching Kiri's left side while she was resetting from Bubble, but she fired again mid-recovery, the second water move landing on Geodude while it was still in Rollout momentum, and this time Sturdy had nothing left to give.

Quick. Clean. Miyato looked at Kiri for a moment after the match was called and Kiri looked outright jubilant.

---

Jupiter arrived at the battle area already with opinions. He looked at the Krabby across the floor and took a slow inventory of it: the shell, the claws, the way it was positioned and his cheeks sparked once. He had already decided how this was going to go.

"Fake Out," Theo said.

Jupiter crossed the space before Krabby had settled, speed carrying him in with no wind-up, and the flinch hit clean before Krabby's trainer had finished giving the first command. Krabby locked in place, unable to act, and the trainer's call landed on a Pokémon that couldn't execute it.

Theo read the matchup as it stood. Krabby was a close-range fighter; Vice Grip, Metal Claw, the physical toolkit of something built to grab and hold. Jupiter wanted range. The Charge Beam stacking wanted range. The whole strategy wanted Krabby kept at a distance it didn't want to be at.

"Charge Beam," Theo said. "Hold where you are."

The beam fired before Krabby's trainer had given the response call and it hit before Krabby had fully processed the flinch ending. Krabby took it and came forward instinctively and the boost settled into Jupiter alongside the damage. The trainer called "Bubble Beam, push him back" and the pressurised water crossed the space and Jupiter sidestepped it clean without losing his position, the water going past him and hitting the back wall.

"Metal Claw. Close it—"

Krabby came in hard and low, one claw leading, and Theo waited a beat.

"Iron Tail."

Jupiter's tail swung and the Steel-type strike met Metal Claw mid-approach, and both connected in the same moment, Jupiter taking the claw across his left side and Krabby taking the tail between the eyes. Krabby slid back a step. Jupiter rolled with the claw hit and reset his position.

The trainer's expression shifted. He called off the direct approach.

"Bubble, stay there—"

Krabby fired from just feet away, and it caught Jupiter across the chest before he had fully reset.

"Back off," Theo said. "Charge Beam."

Jupiter put distance between himself and Krabby and the second beam fired and Krabby's trainer called "Metal Claw, interrupt it—" but Krabby was closing from a standing start and the beam was already mid-flight and it hit before the claw arrived. The second boost stacked on the first. The output in Jupiter's system was different now.

Krabby landed Metal Claw half a second after the Charge Beam hit. It was a real strike, full contact, and Jupiter took it properly, stepping sideways from the force, and the trainer read that as an opening.

"Vice Grip, lock it down—"

Krabby went for the grab, claws open, and Jupiter was already moving, Quick Attack carrying him sideways before the grip could establish, and the Vice Grip closed on empty air. Krabby's momentum carried it through and Jupiter was behind it.

"Disarming Voice," Theo said.

The Fairy sound saturated the space from behind Krabby and it hit and hit fully and Krabby staggered forward from the impact and its trainer made a sound. He'd expected Jupiter to go for another Charge Beam. He'd been managing the range game. He hadn't planned for Jupiter to close behind the Vice Grip attempt.

"Mud Shot, pin it—"

Krabby fired from the new position, the ground move angled to cut off Jupiter's range management and force him into a fixed spot where the close game was unavoidable. Jupiter saw it coming and dropped flat and the shot went over him and he came back up in the same motion.

Theo saw the trainer open his mouth and didn't wait.

"Third Charge Beam," Theo said.

What came out of Jupiter was not the same move it had been at the start of the battle. Two accumulated boosts had built something in him and the output sat in a category that Krabby at close range had no practical answer to. It hit and Krabby sat down and did not get up.

Jupiter walked back to Theo's side with the expression of a Pokemon for whom this had been something to do rather than something to endure. His cheeks sparked at the low ambient rate of a Pokemon satisfied with the result and with no need to discuss it further.

The other trainer recalled Krabby and looked at Jupiter once before looking away.

---

The corridor between rounds had people managing their energy between efforts. Trainers in chairs with their Pokémon in their laps or beside them. The healing machines cycling through quietly. The bracket board visible through the doorway to the main hall.

Miyato sat in one of the chairs and looked at the Pokéball on his belt.

He took it out and held it for a moment and then released Ryuu in the small open section of corridor between the chairs and the wall.

Ryuu materialised and took in the corridor with the unhurried assessment he brought to new spaces and then looked at Miyato.

"The next round," Miyato said, keeping his voice level. "If you want to participate. It would be your choice."

Ryuu looked at the wall.

Then at the bracket board visible through the doorway.

Then at the bracket board through the doorway. His eyes stayed there a moment longer than the walls had held them.

Miyato watched him do this. His jaw moved once. He recalled Ryuu without comment and sat back in the chair with a long exhale

Theo was watching Jupiter from the chair beside him.

Jupiter had a pancake. The origin of this was unclear at there had not been a pancake in the corridor when they sat down. There was no food stall visible from where they were sitting. Still, Jupiter had a pancake and had placed it on the floor in front of him and was now sitting approximately thirty centimetres from it and looking at it with the concentrated attention he normally reserved for battles and payback.

Nothing was happening to the pancake.

Jupiter's brow furrowed fractionally.

Still nothing.

His cheeks were not sparking. Whatever he was using it was not electricity and it was not working at the level required to move a pancake, which was heavier than a paper cup and considerably more motivating.

The pancake sat on the floor and was a pancake.

Jupiter looked at it for another long moment and then picked it up with his hands and ate it with the composure of a Pokemon who had always intended to do it that way and whose other approach had simply been a preliminary assessment.

Miyato watched this.

"Is he trying to move it?" he said.

"Yes," Theo said.

"With his mind."

"Probably."

Miyato looked at Jupiter, who was finishing the pancake with dignity.

"Why does he have a pancake?" Miyato said.

"I genuinely don't know," Theo said.

---

He looked at Kiri before the match started and Kiri looked at the Jigglypuff and Miyato made the call before releasing her. Dragon Breath would do nothing to a Fairy type and he was not going to waste her energy or her time on a move that couldn't land.

He understood the math before the match began. Sing had accuracy that could be played around with; smoke could pull it down, give Kiri the margins she needed. Disarming Voice was different. Disarming Voice was a sound move, and sound didn't care about visual cover. It would find Kiri through anything Miyato put between them. Every time the Jigglypuff trainer called it, it was going to land. The question was whether Kiri could put enough Bubble damage together to win the exchange before the Disarming Voice damage won it first.

"Smokescreen."

Kiri laid the cover fast and the cloud spread between them before Jigglypuff had settled. The Jigglypuff trainer immediately called Sing. The sleep move went out into the smoke and found nothing. The smoke drop had done its job.

"Bubble—"

Kiri's water move landed through the smoke on Jigglypuff and Jigglypuff took it and answered with Disarming Voice before the Bubble had finished dissipating. The Fairy sound cut through the cloud the way sound always cut through visual cover, completely and without caring what was in the way, and it found Kiri regardless of the smoke Miyato had built. She took it and slid back.

"Smokescreen, keep it up—"

"Disarming Voice—"

A second smoke layer built and the trainer didn't bother with Sing this time, switching straight to Disarming Voice, and it found Kiri through the fresh smoke the same way it had found her through the first layer. Kiri fired Bubble through the impact and both moves crossed through the smoke simultaneously, both landing, both doing damage.

Miyato was doing the math and he didn't like it. The smoke was managing Sing. It was doing nothing about Disarming Voice. Kiri was going to take every Disarming Voice the trainer called. He could slow it, extend the match, keep Kiri landing Bubble through the exchanges, but the Fairy damage was stacking and he couldn't stop it, only manage around it.

"Bubble—"

"Disarming Voice, keep the pressure—"

Another exchange, water and sound crossing in both directions, and Kiri took the hit and fired back and her standing after the second Disarming Voice was less certain than it had been after the first. The damage was accumulating in her. Miyato could see it in how she held herself after each hit, the recovery slightly slower, the reset taking a breath longer than before.

Miyato doesn't need to know the trainer saw it, just that the Body Slam came.

"Body Slam, take it to her—"

Jigglypuff launched itself across the floor and Kiri had nowhere to go, the attack coming too fast and too committed to sidestep, and the full weight of it hit her and she went down hard and lay there.

Miyato's hand went toward the Pokéball.

Jigglypuff was already drawing breath for Disarming Voice. The trainer was calling it before the Body Slam had fully resolved, the finishing move, the one that never missed, the one that didn't need accuracy to be a problem.

Miyato looked at Kiri on the floor.

"Kiri."

He said just her name. Nothing else. No command attached to it because he didn't have a command for this. Just her name, the way he said it when she was on his shoulder and the world was fine, and it came out different now because the world was not fine and she was on the floor and Jigglypuff was drawing a breath that was going to end the match.

Kiri looked up at him.

Something passed between them that was not a plan.

Jigglypuff opened its mouth.

What came off Kiri was Bubble found at a pressure it had never found before, concentrated and forced through a gear that hadn't existed in any training session or any match before this one. It crossed the floor before Disarming Voice had fully formed and hit Jigglypuff with force that sat in a completely different category from anything Kiri had produced. Jigglypuff sat down hard. The half-formed Disarming Voice dissolved before it left the Jigglypuff's mouth.

The hall went quiet.

Miyato heard it go quiet before he understood why. The sound of a crowd pulling in its breath at once, something he'd never heard as a unified thing before, and underneath it nothing, no Disarming Voice forming, no follow-up call from the other trainer and then he understood.

Kiri was still standing.

She was staring at the space where Jigglypuff had been. Then at her own fins. The look on her face was one he didn't have a word for and he didn't try to find one.

The announcer said something. Miyato heard the word before he fully processed it. Bubble Beam.

Miyato recalled Kiri and stood at the battle line with the Pokéball in his hand and something in his chest that was large and didn't have a shape yet. He exhaled once through his nose. Then again.

His hands were not entirely steady when he walked back.

---

Zeus against Ponyta.

The Ponyta moved before Zeus had finished reading it, speed coming off it like heat off a road, and Zeus's first Bite found air as Ponyta was somewhere else before the attack arrived, the opponent's trainer saying nothing because the horse was already doing what it had been trained to do.

Ponyta was faster than anything Zeus had faced on the route. Bite needed proximity. Quick Attack needed proximity. Every physical move Zeus had needed him to close distance that Ponyta was not going to let him close.

"Charge Beam," Theo said. "Don't chase it. Range."

"Dodge and Ember!"

Zeus stopped trying to close and fired Charge Beam from where he was and hit Ponyta across the field before Ponyta had finished repositioning. The special attack boost settled into Zeus alongside the damage as Ponyta fired back.

"Charge Beam—"

"Flame Charge, keep speed—"

Both Pokémon moved, and Ponyta's fire-enhanced strike landed while Zeus was loading the second beam, both taking damage simultaneously, and Ponyta's speed boost stacked at the same moment Zeus's special attack boost did. The horse was faster now, but Zeus wasn't trying to match it, he was building something different.

Zeus felt different in the way Pokémon felt different when something was accumulating in them, the output changing in quality not just quantity.

"Fire Spin, close—"

"Hold position—"

Ponyta came in fast, fire already building for the trapping move, and Zeus held while Theo counted down the distance in his head. The moment Ponyta fully committed. too close to redirect, too fast to stop,

"Bite, now!"

Dark-type jaws finding the flank at the moment of closest approach, and Fire Spin went partial because the grip interrupted its establishment mid-formation. Ponyta's speed advantage stopped mattering when something was holding your flank.

The trainer made a sound.

"Break free," he said. "Ember."

Ponyta fought the grip and Zeus held it and the fire came from close range and Zeus took the Ember and did not release and Theo looked at the distance between them which was zero and said:

"Shock Wave."

Shock Wave never missed. At the range of zero it had nowhere to miss to, and the two Charge Beam boosts sitting in Zeus's system meant what came out of him was not what would have come out at the start of the battle. It hit Ponyta at point blank with the accumulated output of everything Zeus had been building since the first Charge Beam landed and Ponyta went from fighting the Bite to sitting down, and the transition between those two states was fast.

Zeus released the Bite.

He looked at the space Ponyta had occupied. His coat was singed in two places and he was breathing harder than the start of the fight and none of that was in his expression.

Theo looked at him. At the coat with the Ember marks. The way Zeus had held the Bite through the fire and waited and built something methodically across exchanges until it was enough.

John's voice was in there somewhere underneath it, you didn't earn that and Theo let it sit without answering it.

Zeus pressed briefly against his hand.

"Good," Theo said. "That's good."

---

"Five rounds left," he said.

"Yes," Theo said. He looked at John's section of the bracket. "He's going to keep winning."

Miyato's hands went back into his jacket pockets. "I don't want to face that Beedrill."

"Neither do I," Theo said. "So let's not lose before we have to."

Miyato adjusted the hat brim without touching it. The hall beyond the corridor was louder than round one, the crowd noise thicker, a different density to it. More people. Miyato had clocked the extra cameras when they'd passed the doorway and hadn't said anything but his posture had done the thing it did.

"The crowd's bigger," Miyato said.

"It'll keep getting bigger," Theo said. "Every round the bracket shrinks and whoever's still in it gets more visible."

Miyato's hands went deeper into his jacket pockets.

"Don't think about the final rounds," Theo said. "Think about round three."

"I am thinking about round three."

"You're thinking about the cameras in round three."

Miyato said nothing, which was its own answer.

Theo looked at him. "Kiri learned Bubble Beam mid-match," he said. "In the middle of a fight. Under pressure, one knee down, your trainer telling her she was okay." He waited for Miyato to look at him. "You know why she found it then and not in any training session?"

Miyato was quiet.

"Because she knew you believed she could," Theo said. "That's not a small thing. That's the whole thing."

Miyato looked at the Pokéball on his belt. His thumb moved across its surface. "I didn't say anything to her," he said. "I just said bubble. I didn't even know what I was asking for."

"She knew anyway," Theo said. "That's the point."

Miyato exhaled slowly. "You're not nervous at all."

"I didn't say that."

Miyato looked at him with the expression of someone recalibrating. Theo's hands were still. His posture was the same it always was. But Miyato had been next to him for a week now and he could see it, the thing pressing underneath the stillness, being held there by something practiced and deliberate.

"Okay," Miyato said, quieter.

"Five rounds," Theo said. "One at a time." He looked at the bracket. "Starting with whoever's standing between you and John's section."

Miyato followed his gaze to the bracket board.

"And the cameras," Miyato said.

"The cameras aren't battling you," Theo said. "Your opponent is."

Miyato looked at the board for another moment. Then something in his shoulders settled, fractionally, the way things settled when a decision had been made without quite being said out loud.

"One at a time," he said.

"One at a time," Theo said.

 

[Live Wire]

Dr. Matthews: John's words keep coming up. What is it about them that stays?

Theo: He said I hadn't earned what I have. The anger part I dealt with. What stayed is the part where he talked about building everything himself from nothing. Because I can account for every day of the last few weeks. I can't account for anything before that. He was talking about a version of me I can't reach.

Dr. Matthews: Does that version have to exist for the weeks to count?

Theo: No. It still sat longer than it should have.

---

The tournament hall at late morning had a different quality from early morning. The crowd had thickened. The noise had layered. The bracket board had fewer names on it than it started with and the ones remaining had a different weight now that the field had been reduced. The commentator had been going since Round 3 began, his voice carrying from the main area into the corridor and back, and the quality of his delivery, cheerful and precise, without particular interest in softening anything, had already generated a small following near the doorway of trainers who seemed to be watching him as much as the battles.

Theo watched the tall girl with the Sneasel finish her match from the back of the viewing area. She had sent Sneasel and said three things for the entire battle, none of which Theo could hear from the distance, and Sneasel had needed nothing more than that. Dark and Ice type working fast and clean under a trainer who understood both of those qualities and had let them run. The commentator said:

"Sneasel barely worked up a sweat here; that trainer has clearly done something right with that Pokémon." She recalled Sneasel without looking at the crowd and walked off the floor.

Miyato was beside Theo with his hands in his jacket pocket, his hat adjusted correctly, and his eyes moving across the room in the way they moved when he was cataloging things he needed to track.

"She's going to be deep in the bracket," Theo said.

"Yes," Miyato said. He was already looking at the board.

The commentator announced the next match.

"Round three continues; John versus Yato."

Theo heard the name and looked at Miyato.

The hat. The sunglasses pushed up on the brim. The new outfit selected with enough care that it read as deliberate without reading as a costume. And now an alias with just enough distance from his actual name to provide cover without being obviously fabricated. Theo had been adding these things up since the morning, and the sum of them was a person working very hard to be someone else for the duration of this tournament.

He was still looking when Miyato noticed.

Miyato's ears went immediately pink. He turned back to the battle area.

"Don't," he said.

"I didn't say anything," Theo said.

"You were about to."

Theo looked at the floor for a moment. "You know, if anyone recognizes the hair, the hat doesn't help much."

"I know," Miyato said.

"And the alias only works if the commentator doesn't describe you while you're on the floor."

"I know," Miyato said again.

"I'm just saying the effort is —"

"Extensive. I know." Miyato's jaw was set, and his ears were still pink, and he was very deliberately not looking at Theo. "Can we not do this right now?"

Theo let it go. Whatever Miyato was protecting, it was more than just the clan heritage, and pushing on it in the corridor before a match was not the time.

They walked to the line, and Theo looked at John's section of the bracket visible on the far board and said,

"He's going to come with Beedrill. It's going to be fast, faster than anything Kiri's faced."

"I know," Miyato said. His voice had dropped to something that was trying to sound prepared and wasn't entirely convincing.

"You need to keep Kiri at range and not let the match become physical," Theo said. "Smokescreen to compromise its targeting and Bubble Beam for pressure. Don't let it close the distance."

Miyato's hands were at his sides and his fingers were doing the thing they did. "I'll try my best," he said.

"That's something," Theo smiled.

Miyato looked at him sideways. His chin was not up. The pride that usually surfaced when something mattered wasn't there. What was there was quieter and less certain.

They reached the line and Miyato stepped toward the battle area and Theo stopped at the edge of the floor where trainers weren't allowed past.

Miyato looked back at him.

"Good luck," Theo said.

Miyato held his gaze for a moment. His jaw was set and his hands weren't right. He nodded once and turned back to the battle area.

Theo watched him go.

The referee looked between them and said, "Trainers, release your Pokémon."

John reached for his belt without looking away from the field. His thumb rolled across the ball's surface once before releasing it, the small habit of someone who had done this enough times for it to have settled into him, and Beedrill came out and hit the air with the immediate restless energy of something that had been in its ball for too long and was ready to go. It hovered at John's side of the line, and its stingers moved in the small continuous adjustment of something that was always calibrating.

Miyato's hand went to Kiri's ball.

Ryuu's ball opened first.

He came out fast and positioned himself at the line before Miyato had processed that he was out, facing Beedrill across the field with the focused attention of something that had been watching from the corridor and the gallery and the chairs for two rounds and had made a decision about it.

Miyato stared at him. "Ryuu," he said. "I didn't — you don't have to."

Ryuu just looked at the field.

"He's faster than Jupiter," Miyato said, quieter. "You know that. You watched the matches. Closing the distance isn't going to work against something that fast." He was trying to keep his voice level and not entirely managing it. "If you go in, you have to listen to me. Twister from range. Stay back. Please." The please came out differently from the rest of it.

Ryuu watched Beedrill come onto the field across from him.

John looked at Ryuu. He looked at Miyato. He assembled the picture in about four seconds.

"Did that Pokémon come out by itself to the line?" Not loud. Just carrying. "Either it's remarkable or you've completely lost control of it."

"Interesting situation here!" the commentator said. Yato's Dratini appears to have nominated itself and John's Beedrill is already on the field. We're underway!"

Ryuu went forward before the referee had finished speaking.

Not impulsive. Considered. The specific forward movement of something that had watched Beedrill for two full rounds from the gallery and had drawn its own conclusions and was acting on them. Ryuu moved like he'd already decided how this was going to go, and the battle itself was just the confirmation of that.

"Twister!" Miyato called immediately. "Ryuu— from right there— you have the range—"

Ryuu closed the distance.

Beedrill was gone before Ryuu arrived. Twineedle came from the left, both stingers hitting Ryuu before he'd finished correcting from the empty first charge, and Ryuu pulled through the impact and Dragon Breath fired from close, a dark column of force but Beedrill was already somewhere else and it found nothing.

"Twister, Ryuu—"

Pin Missile from above. Four projectiles hitting while Ryuu was still recovering the Dragon Breath's extension, Beedrill loading and releasing before Ryuu's read had caught up to where it was coming from. Ryuu shook it and drove forward and Twineedle found him again from a new angle.

Miyato's voice had gone higher than he intended. "Ryuu, please—"

"Dratini still hasn't found anything and Beedrill's barely working for it!" the commentator said. "The trainer's calling Twister but we're not seeing it executed. Tough situation for Yato here!"

Ryuu stopped.

Not from damage. From a different calculation, some interior assessment of the approach that had been accumulating since the start. He pulled back several feet and his body changed configuration, and Twister came off him, rotating Dragon-type force spreading outward from his position.

It was poorly aimed. The angle was off and the range was short and the Twister caught the edge of Beedrill's wake rather than finding its body, and what it produced was not damage but a brief disruption of Beedrill's movement, a half-second of turbulence that Beedrill adjusted through without difficulty.

Ryuu watched where it had landed.

Then he went forward again.

"Spoiled kids are never good at anything," John said into the space between moves, his voice carrying without any effort. "Someone hands you a rare Dragon type and you can't get it to do a single thing you ask."

Not at Miyato. Just into the air. Said the way things were said when the saying of them wasn't the point, when the preparation was the point, when you had made up your mind before the bell and the bell had confirmed what you already knew.

Twineedle. Pin Missile. Poison Jab. Beedrill working with the clean efficiency of something that had been trained specifically for opponents who kept closing no matter what it cost them, the kind of training that was not a tournament habit but a prepared one, assembled for this. Ryuu took each hit and Dragon Breath tracked Beedrill and found air every time while the hits accumulated without ceremony.

Miyato had stopped calling moves.

He was watching Ryuu take hits and watching himself not be able to stop it and his hands were at his sides and the thing in his chest that had been building since Ryuu came out of the ball uninvited was the specific thing that didn't have a clean name, the thing between helplessness and shame that came when something was going wrong and the best you could offer wasn't being heard.

The hall had gone quieter than it had been.

Beedrill came in with a Poison Jab to Ryuu's face that was different from the others, the full force behind it rather than the measured accuracy of everything that had come before, the hit of something that had been holding back without announcing it and had decided to stop holding back. Ryuu's head went sideways from the impact and he went down half-limp, one side not answering the way it had been answering, the whole front of him settling against the floor.

The hall went quiet.

Not the gradual quiet of a match winding down. The sudden kind.

Beedrill hovered. It was still. The aggression that had driven the last several minutes of exchanges had dropped out of its posture and it was simply present in the air over Ryuu the way something was present when it had finished the job and was waiting for the acknowledgment of that fact.

Miyato's thumb found the button.

It was right there. The button was under his thumb and the recall light was one press away and Ryuu was on the floor and the match was over and his thumb just had to press down.

His thumb did not press down.

The referee's arm began to rise. The referee looked at Yato; at the figure in the hat and the sunglasses standing at the line, waiting for the trainer to do the obvious thing and end it rather than making the call themselves.

However.

Ryuu fired Dragon Breath.

From where he was. From the half-limp position.

The dark force came off him from the floor, and it was perfect because he had been watching Beedrill hover in the same position since he went down.

Beedrill recoiled from the hit.

For one full second, nothing happened. The hall came back to itself in the way a room came back to itself when something unexpected had occurred and it needed a moment to recategorize what it was watching.

Then Beedrill's posture changed.

The stillness left it, and something else arrived in its place. It had judged a contest finished, had shown the space of acknowledgment that the finished opponent deserved, and had been answered with a hit. The anger of something that had offered mercy and found it misused.

The stinger loaded and came down and the sound underneath the impact was a sharp clean crack that sat apart from everything else in the room, the register of something landing harder than the exchange warranted, and Ryuu's body took it and went still.

John recalled Beedrill.

Not after a pause. Immediately. The ball came out and the red light went out before the referee had processed what had happened and Beedrill was in the ball and John stood at his line with his expression unchanged and his thumb flat against the button.

Miyato looked at Ryuu on the floor.

Then his thumb pressed down and the recall light went out and Ryuu was in the ball and Miyato's hand was shaking visibly and he was still looking at the space where Ryuu had been.

"Winner: John!" the referee called.

The hall sound came back in gradually.

John looked at the ball in his hand for a moment. Then at the line where Miyato was standing.

"Hope that Dragon heals up well," he said. "Rare Pokemon deserve better trainers."

Not loud. Not at the crowd. Just carrying.

He turned from the floor.

The commentator said nothing for a moment, which was its own kind of commentary.

Theo looked at the viewing area. Nobody was laughing at the bug-catcher outfit anymore. The hat and the net had stopped being funny somewhere in the middle of the last two minutes and the crowd near the doorway had gone to a different kind of quiet, the kind that came when something had been more than people bargained for.

---

Miyato sat in one of the corridor chairs with Kiri on his arm and looked at the floor.

Theo sat beside him. He said something. He watched it land nowhere because Miyato was not where words could currently reach him.

He tried again a minute later and the result was the same.

He stopped trying and sat there.

The healing machines cycled. Down the corridor, two trainers were having a loud argument about who was stronger. A Hondour near the entrance had its chin on someone's boot.

They sat in the corridor as the healing machines cycled and Miyato looked at the floor with the expression of someone who had gone somewhere internal and was not finding good company there.

After a while, he said, "I froze."

Theo looked at him.

"At the line." Miyato's hands were in his lap and still. "Ryuu was down and the referee—I just—I stood there. I couldn't even recall him." His jaw moved. "He got hurt even more because I froze."

"You were trying to process something that happened too fast."

"I froze," Miyato said again, quietly and without argument. He was not looking for contradiction. He was just saying what was true.

Theo let it sit.

After a moment, Miyato said, "And then he threw that last attack."

"Yes,"

"After the match was called." Miyato's voice had changed in quality. "After it was already over." His hands came up from his lap and pressed against his knees. "What was the point? He'd already lost. What was he trying to prove?"

Theo was quiet for a moment. "That's the pride of a Dragon," he said.

Miyato looked at him. Something behind his eyes was not entirely steady.

"Pride," he said.

"He had nothing left and he fired anyway," Theo said. "That's —"

"That's him throwing his health away for nothing!" Miyato's voice had gone to a register Theo hadn't heard from him before, the heat of someone whose worry had found an exit in the form of anger. "He was already down! The match was done! And he fires because of what? Pride?" He stopped himself. His jaw was tight. "Pride doesn't mean anything if it means throwing yourself at something that's already beaten you just to say you did."

The corridor was quiet around them.

Miyato looked at the floor again.

His hands pressed flat against his knees and stayed there.

---

The girl across the battle area had watched the board since the first round. Her Tangela came out and settled into the field with the unhurried quality of something that owned the space it stood in, the vines spreading outward in every direction before the match had properly started, establishing the ground it intended to occupy.

Theo read it in the first two seconds. The spread wasn't aggression. It was preparation. She was going to use Leech Seed and she was setting up the anchor for it before either side had moved.

"Quick Attack—"

"Leech Seed—"

Both called simultaneously. Zeus was already moving when the seed launched, Quick Attack carrying him past the establishing vines, and Theo thought for one second that he'd beaten it — and then the seed changed direction mid-flight, tracking, and the attachment settled into Zeus's coat while he was still closing the distance. Fire Fang landed super effective and clean and Tangela absorbed it and the Leech Seed started pulling before Zeus had cleared the follow-through.

"It's Leech Seed from Tangela!" the commentator said. "Smart play from Rika — that'll drain the Electrike steadily regardless of what else happens on this field. Theo's situation just got complicated!"

Theo was already recalculating. Fire Fang was landing but Leech Seed was pulling whatever it cost back toward Tangela continuously, and the hit needed to outpace the recovery or it was just paying for Tangela's health while Zeus's condition dropped.

The vines snapped at Zeus's back leg during the reset and he cleared them by the margin of his speed and nothing more.

"Bind," Rika called.

"Through it," Theo said.

The vines came for Zeus's flank and Zeus didn't stop. He drove straight through the Bind attempt, Fire Fang loading while vines were still wrapping, and the move landed on Tangela while the partial Bind was still established. Both Pokémon took damage in the same exchange. Zeus broke free and Rika had already called the Poison Powder before Bind had fully released the cloud spreading across the field.

Zeus cleared most of it.

Not all of it.

The poison settled into him alongside the Leech Seed and Theo's jaw went tight.

"Zeus is taking sustained damage on two fronts now!" the commentator said. "Poison and Leech Seed simultaneously, Rika has built a very difficult situation for the Electrike. The hits are landing but Mega Drain can get it right back. Something needs to change here or this match runs the wrong direction!"

Zeus landed another Fire Fang and Tangela fired Mega Drain back immediately, the recovery cutting into the damage Zeus had just done. Vine Whip crossed the field and caught Zeus across the shoulder and Zeus took it and reset and Theo looked at what he had.

The hits were real. Fire Fang was landing super effective every time. But Leech Seed was pulling. Mega Drain was recovering. The poison was ticking. Two damage sources on Zeus and one effective recovery channel on Tangela and the math of continuing to fight straight through had an end that wasn't the one he wanted.

He needed to change the output. Not the approach, not the targeting. The output itself had to reach a level where Mega Drain's recovery couldn't keep up with the damage faster than the passive sources were pulling Zeus down.

He thought about the early days in the gym. The notebook. The move lists he had catalogued and set aside when other things became more immediate. There was something on those lists that hadn't been touched in six weeks.

"Fall back," Theo said. "Get distance. Howl."

Zeus broke off and put space between himself and Tangela and Vine Whip came after him and nearly caught his flank. Zeus sat low, and Howl came off him, the sound carrying, the first Attack boost settling into his system.

"Vine Whip, don't let it sit still!" Rika called.

The vines came and Zeus moved through them and took a hit on the shoulder as Theo said: "Again."

"Haven't seen an Electrike use Howl in a while!" the commentator said. "The trainer's stacking an Attack boost, an interesting call under this kind of sustained pressure. The Electrike is taking passive damage every second it spends doing this. Let's see if there's a plan here!"

Second Howl. The vine caught Zeus mid-stance and he took it and didn't move from the spot and the second boost settled in on top of the first. His coat was marked from the Vine Whips and the poison was ticking steady and the Leech Seed was still pulling and his breathing had changed from what it had been at the start. But two stages of Attack were sitting in him now, waiting, and Tangela was about to find out what Fire Fang felt like when it arrived with that behind it.

"Fire Fang," Theo said. "Straight through."

Zeus committed forward and the Bind attempt came and he drove through it rather than around it, Fire Fang loading mid-push, and the move hit Tangela with two Howl boosts behind it and the contact was visibly different from the Fire Fangs that had opened the match. The sound was different. Tangela moved back a full step before it steadied. Mega Drain came back immediately and the drain landed but what it returned was less than what it had been returning, because two Howl-stacked Fire Fang had done more damage than the previous hits had managed, and Tangela's available pool was lower than it had been.

"Vine Whip, pressure—"

"Ice Fang," Theo said. "Same side."

Zeus hit the same flank with Ice Fang, super effective, the two boosts multiplying the type advantage, and Tangela's condition dropped past the point where Mega Drain could restore it to any meaningful position. The recovery was still happening. It just wasn't keeping up anymore.

"Vine Whip, finish it!" Rika's voice had gone sharp.

The Vine Whip came hard across Zeus's back and Zeus took it and the poison was ticking and the Leech Seed was still pulling and his condition was low enough that one more sustained exchange was going to make this very close. He was breathing visibly and his back leg was compensating for the Bind hits and the coat was marked in four places.

He went forward anyway.

"One more," Theo said. "Fire Fang."

Zeus drove straight. Tangela's vines rose to receive him and Fire Fang hit with both Howls behind it and with the specific quality of a Pokemon that was running low and not stopping because stopping was not what he was. Tangela put its vines flat against the ground and didn't lift them.

"Electrike takes it!" the commentator said. "And that was hard won! Tangela turned this into a war of attrition and Theo had to read the situation and completely restructure his approach mid-match to find the answer. That Howl call was the moment, and it worked. Good battle from both sides!"

Zeus came back to Theo's side. The poison was still active and his coat was marked and his breathing was not what it had been at the start of the day. Theo knelt and checked the coat and ran his hand along the flank where the worst Bind hit had landed.

John was still in the gallery. He had watched the Howl adjustment. He had watched the stacking and the finish. His thumb moved across his belt clip in the slow roll that meant he was thinking, the roll that preceded the release that meant he had decided something.

He said nothing. He watched the way he watched everything, which was the way a trainer watched things he intended to understand.

"That's enough for today," Theo said quietly.

Zeus pressed briefly against his hand.

John was still in the gallery. He had watched the Howl adjustment and the stacking and the finish. His thumb moved across his belt clip in the slow roll that meant he was thinking. He said nothing. He watched the way he watched everything, which was the way a trainer watched things they intended to understand.

His words were still in Theo's chest, sitting lower than they had been in the lobby but sitting.

---

Miyato was in the corridor when Theo came back, standing rather than sitting, Kiri on his shoulder. The staff were preparing to move Ryuu to the Pokemon Center.

"They're taking him now," Miyato said. "I'm going with him."

"I'll come," Theo said.

"Don't." It came out harder than he had meant it to and he heard it immediately. His hand came up toward his mouth and stopped before it got there. "Sorry — I — that wasn't — I just mean that having you there watching me deal with this is going to make it worse." The stammer was back, the syllables not landing where he sent them, and his eyes went to the wall rather than Theo's face. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to sound like that."

Theo looked at him.

He smiled. Just slightly, and not at Miyato's expense.

"Go," he said. "Call if you need anything."

Miyato held his gaze for a moment. Then he nodded once and went after the medical staff and Theo watched the corridor door close behind him.

He stood there for a moment. Zeus pressed against his leg. Jupiter had appeared at some point and was at his right side.

The bracket board visible through the doorway had five rounds still on it and a gap where Miyato's alias had been.

The hall noise continued. The commentator was already announcing the next match.

---

Theo found a quiet corner of the corridor with a row of empty chairs and sat down and took the dimensional bag off his back and put it on the chair beside him and held it for a moment.

He could feel the egg through the canvas. The warmth of the compartment maintained its temperature regardless of what the day did outside it. He had been feeling it through the bag strap during the Tangela match and had noted it and filed it in the part of his attention that ran underneath everything else.

He unzipped the compartment and took the egg out and held it.

It was warm and the markings on the surface caught the corridor light the way they always did, iridescent and beautiful, and it shook once in his hands, a small deliberate movement, and then was still.

He thought about what Miyato had shown him. How to hold it while cleaning it. The motion of it, thumb moving in slow circles over the shell surface, the cloth against the markings, checking for any change in the texture of the shell. Miyato had been meticulous about it in a way that had nothing to do with obligation and everything to do with caring about something that couldn't yet tell you it needed caring for.

Theo did that now.

The cloth in a slow circle. Checking the markings. The egg warm and present in his hands.

John's words sat in him. The half of himself he couldn't reach. The before that wasn't there. He turned the egg and kept going.

He noticed, somewhere in the middle of it, that his breathing had slowed. The anxious current that had been running underneath the day, not loud, not controlling him but present the way it was sometimes present, had found somewhere quieter. He had been doing the motion Miyato had shown him and his hands had steadied without him deciding to steady them.

He sat with that.

When had this happened? When had another person become the thing that grounded him rather than the thing he managed around? The gym had been different. He had been building toward something there and the people had been part of the building, a necessary kind of scaffolding. That was one thing. But Miyato had been on the road for a week and the moment he left the corridor something had been missing from it that hadn't been missing before.

Zeus and Jupiter were beside him. They were good companions. They were more than companions. What existed between him and his team was the realest thing he had and he didn't discount it or diminish it.

But Zeus couldn't do what Miyato did with the corridor silence. Jupiter couldn't do what Miyato's understated observation did when it landed correctly. Pokemon understood things no human got close to and there were things no Pokemon could do. He had been aware of the first part of that for a long time. The second part was newer.

He turned the egg once more.

Fourteen years old and six weeks of memory and apparently somewhere in those six weeks he had become the kind of person who noticed when someone wasn't in the room.

He didn't know how to feel about that. He suspected it was just true.

The egg shook again.

He looked at it.

"Soon," he said.

He put it back in the compartment and sealed it and looked at the bracket board through the doorway and five rounds and whatever came after them.

---

On a hill outside of Saffron City, two figures stood where the city wall met the open road.

The taller one looked at the gate and the areas surrounding the city

"If he moves toward Celadon," they said.

"I'll be on the route," the other said. "You go north."

"Cerulean is the other obvious path."

"Yes." The other was already looking north. "Between us, we have both exits."

Neither of them looked at the gate again. The order had been clear on that point. Saffron's gym leader was not someone to walk past, and they were not going to find out the hard way whether the order was overcautious.

Between them, they had fragments. A recon contact in Vermilion who had seen the boy around the harbor district in the weeks before the storm. Young, fourteen or fifteen. Dark hair. An Electrike and a Pikachu on the other side. Nothing more specific than that.

It wasn't much. But the circuit was a known structure, and trainers moved along it in predictable directions, and a boy matching that description coming out of Vermilion heading north was a manageable thing to track if you were patient about it.

They had time.

They split without anything else being said. One went west toward the Celadon route. One went east to circle toward Cerulean.

The gate stayed closed in the distance behind them.

 

[Live Wire]

The medical staff at the Pokémon Center took the ball, asked the necessary questions, and disappeared through the back door. Miyato stood in the waiting area after the handover, hands at his sides, watched the door close, and kept watching it a moment after it had closed.

He sat down.

The waiting area had adequate chairs and lighting, and a noticeboard on the wall with trainer resources that nobody read. Kiri was on his arm, her fins pressed flat against his skin, her eyes on his face with the look she gave him whenever she had decided he needed watching.

He stared at the noticeboard without reading it.

The match kept running. Not the part he wanted to examine, not the Twister, not the Poison Jab but the thirty-second sequence where his thumb was on the recall button and his body simply stopped cooperating. His thumb had been there. The button was right there. He had looked at Ryuu on the floor, and he had known what he needed to do and his body had made a different choice, and the choice had cost Ryuu something visible and wrong.

He had frozen. He could call it processing something too fast the way Theo had said, and that was not untrue, but it was also not the whole truth, and the whole truth was that he had frozen. In front of cameras, he had spent the whole morning trying to avoid. In a tournament he had registered for under an alias. As Yato, which had protected him from nothing that mattered.

The commentator's voice came back to him. "Tough situation for Yato here."

The laughing. The crowd that had been laughing at John's hat all morning and had pivoted to laughing at something else.

Kiri made a sound.

He looked at her.

She looked back with the complete steady attention of a Pokémon who had decided he was the only thing in the room that required her focus.

He pressed the back of his hand against his mouth. His shoulders came in slightly. He looked at the ceiling and let it happen, the quiet kind of crying that didn't make noise and didn't ask anything from anyone, just the accumulated weight of the day finding the release point it had been building toward since the referee's arm went up. It lasted less than a minute. When it passed, he sat with the aftermath of it for a moment, the flatness that came after, and Kiri was still pressed against him, still entirely present.

He wiped his face with his sleeve and sat a moment longer in the quiet that came after, Kiri still pressed to him, still entirely present. Then he stood up and went outside.

---

Saffron at midday was the city at its fullest version of itself, wide organized streets; the Silph building sending the afternoon light in four directions from its upper floors; and crowds moving with the purposeful efficiency of people who knew exactly where they were going. Blackthorn's air was cold and ancient and pressed with history, the Dragon Den's energy embedded in every stone of the canyon below the city. Saffron was deliberate and modern and had arranged itself according to a plan someone had drawn up and executed, and it had absolutely no opinion about who Miyato was or what the Dragon Den expected of him.

He walked without direction, and Kiri steered him occasionally with small pressure from her fins. He let her.

The Dragon Den came to mind the way it always came to mind when things went wrong but not as a comfort but as a reference point, the thing everything got measured against. The canyon was always cold. The water dark and fast below the rocks where the dragons rested, the training grounds carved out over centuries into the stone itself. Every lesson was about the bond a Dragon type required and the authority it would respect, the composure it needed from its trainer, and the weakness it could sense from a distance and would not forgive.

Miyato had flinched at things the other youth did not flinch at. He had liked cooking and the detailed care of things and the aesthetic of how objects sat in a space and how Pokemon could be groomed into their best versions of themselves with the right attention and the right products, and all of these things were not forbidden in the Dragon Den exactly. They were just noticed. And the youth who noticed things said what they said, some of it ignorant and some of it thoughtless and some of it precise in the way of young people who have identified a gap between what someone is and what they are supposed to be.

"You should be a coordinator. That's more your speed."

Sometimes kind. Sometimes not. Always meaning the same thing.

His brother had been the shape the Dragon Den was looking for. Composed and certain and inhabiting himself completely in the way that Miyato had watched for years from a distance and had never found the entry point to understand. His brother had put him on a Salamence one morning and flown him to the edge of a route and said eight badges before you come home and had turned the Salamence back toward the mountain before Miyato had finished watching him go. The image of it, the Salamence leaving, his brother's back, the mountain getting larger as the canyon received them, came back when things went wrong because it was the original version of the feeling. Every failure since was the same image in a different frame.

Kiri pressed against his neck.

He kept walking.

The park was off a side street, a small deliberate gap between buildings with benches and grass and four trees managing to be trees despite the glass and concrete surrounding them. He sat on the nearest bench, and Kiri settled in his lap.

There were people in the park with their Pokémon.

An old man on the bench across from him with a Slowpoke resting its head on his knee. The Slowpoke's eyes were half-closed. The man's were too. Neither of them was doing anything and neither seemed to require anything from the other; they were simply there together, no urgency in it, nothing asked on either side.

Two trainers at the far end of the park running precision drills with a Machoke that responded to every command before the trainer had finished saying it. The gap between instruction and response so small it had almost disappeared.

A kid nearby with a Meowth that kept trying to scratch him. He kept catching its paw with the same unhurried motion, redirecting it, setting it back down. The Meowth looked at him and tried again. He redirected again. No irritation. Just consistency.

Miyato watched all of it.

The Slowpoke doing nothing. The Machoke answering before the words were out. The Meowth and the kid's patient hands, the same correction over and over, no heat in it. None of them looked like the others, and not one of them was doing it wrong.

Something turned over in his head that almost became an answer and then didn't, sitting just past where he could reach it, and he stayed with it a while, and couldn't close the distance, and eventually stopped reaching and let the park be the park.

Kiri made a soft sound.

"I know," he said.

He sat a while longer. Then he got up and headed back.

---

The bracket updated at the end of round four.

Theo was passing the board when it happened, not looking for anything specific, and then John's name was there in the quarterfinal slot across from his and he stopped.

He stood in the corridor with trainers moving around him and looked at it.

John. The lobby. The contempt that had gotten past the wall in a way he hadn't expected and hadn't fully accounted for since. The way John had looked at the Pokédex and built a complete story before Theo had done anything, and the way some part of Theo still couldn't close the gap between that story and the one he was trying to write about himself. He had carried it through four rounds without saying so, and he had won three rounds, and the bracket had still put John across from him, and now it was confirmed, and he was aware of his own pulse in a way he usually wasn't.

He thought about Miyato's match. The freeze. Ryuu on the floor. The referee's arm going up while Miyato's thumb was on the recall button and his body had stopped cooperating. He had watched that from the crowd and felt something cold move through him that he had set aside quickly and not looked at directly since then. The tournament had real consequences. The bracket didn't care what you'd built or where you'd started. It just moved.

Zeus pressed against his leg.

Theo looked down at him. Then back at the bracket.

John was good, and Theo knew exactly how good, because he had watched every match and built the most accurate picture he could. He wasn't going to pretend otherwise, and he wasn't going to pretend the lobby was gone from his chest either.

He stood with it for a moment longer than he needed to.

He checked Zeus. The Tangela battle had left marks from the Bind damage visible at the flank, the sustained hits showing in how Zeus held himself even after the healing machine's work. He knelt and ran a hand along the coat, Zeus pressed briefly against his palm, and Theo made the call.

"Not right now," he said quietly. "You've done enough."

Zeus pressed against him again and Theo straightened and looked at Jupiter at his right side. Jupiter had the expression of a Pokémon who had looked at the upcoming situation and found it interesting and was ready to be interested in it.

They walked to the line.


John was at the far end of the arena before Theo had finished reading him.

The lineup had told Theo most of what he needed. John's Beedrill had dismantled Ryuu in under three minutes, using its speed to control every exchange before Ryuu had established anything. Theo had watched from the crowd and built a picture: Beedrill controlled distance. It preferred angles. It didn't need to commit because it could force the opponent to commit first. It had Twineedle for close pressure, Pin Missile for range pressure, and Poison Jab for the moments when it wanted to end something quickly.

He also knew because he had watched every other match John had fought that John hadn't used everything yet.

Jupiter walked out beside him without being called. He moved with the attention of a Pokémon who had already looked at the situation and found it interesting.


Theo's jaw tightened once. He let it.

"Begin!"

Fake Out bought exactly one exchange.

Jupiter crossed the distance faster than Beedrill could recalibrate from entering the arena; the priority move compressing intention and action to almost nothing and the slap connected.

Beedrill flinched.

"Charge Beam. Hold range."

The electricity gathered across Jupiter's fur and fired. Beedrill was already recovering from the flinch and the beam crossed the arena in the moment before it fully oriented itself. Close. Not close enough. Beedrill shifted its body left and the attack passed through the air it had been occupying and hit the floor behind it with a sharp crack, the packed concrete scorched black where it landed.

The boost settled over Jupiter anyway. Electricity crackled briefly across his cheeks.

Beedrill didn't circle or reposition. It came forward immediately, wings barely audible at competition speed, the sound arriving slightly after the movement itself.

"Iron Tail."

Jupiter's tail lit steel-bright and he drove it upward as Twineedle came down from above. The two moves met halfway. The impact sound carried across the arena; dense, flat, nothing like the Charge Beam crack, and both Pokémon bounced apart. Neither landed what they had aimed for. Neither came away clean, either.

Theo read the exchange carefully.

Beedrill's control in the air. How it had descended at the exact angle that gave Iron Tail the least useful approach. That was not improvisation.

"Quick Attack."

Jupiter launched forward, low and fast, reaching for Beedrill before it could reestablish range.

Beedrill had already shifted sideways and by the time the Quick Attack arrived at where Beedrill had been, Beedrill was somewhere else, and Pin Missile was already firing from the new position. Four projectiles, the sound of them like something hard and fast hitting a surface four times in tight sequence. One clipped Jupiter's shoulder. Three more landed before he had corrected course, each one finding him as he tried to adjust to the new line.

Beedrill was outside his range before Jupiter had finished resetting. Every commitment cost the same way, Quick Attack, Iron Tail, all of it reaching for a place Beedrill had already left.

"Disarming Voice."

Fairy energy spread from Jupiter in a broad pulse and found Beedrill regardless of where it moved, because Disarming Voice always found the target. It hit.

Beedrill kept moving at the same speed.

No hesitation. No reduction in pace.

Useful information.

"Double Team."

Jupiter split across the arena; copies forming across the field, each one carrying the same electric presence, the same sparking cheeks. For a moment, there were seven of them.

Beedrill came through the center without slowing.

Not because it had identified the real one. Because at this speed, it didn't need to. It could force exchanges before the copies could establish themselves, and the speed advantage rendered the illusion irrelevant. The real Jupiter took Twineedle across the shoulder, the same shoulder the Pin Missiles had already found, and the contact there felt different from the first exchange, and the copies dissolved.

Theo pressed his lips together.

Distance lost. Nothing gained.

Beedrill didn't need to solve Jupiter's tools. It only needed to be faster than them, and it was.

Two things worked regardless of distance: Disarming Voice found Beedrill wherever it was. Charge Beam, if Jupiter could land it, was building its attacks in power

The shoulder from earlier was settling into him now, a small hitch in the way he carried that side, present but not slowing him down

"Charge Beam."

Jupiter loaded it from range and Beedrill drove toward him before the beam was ready, stingers angled. Jupiter tracked the incoming angle and fired.

Beedrill was gone before the beam arrived, cutting hard left, and the electricity hit the space it had occupied, lighting a long, dark line across the floor. The boost settled over Jupiter anyway, and the electricity in his fur running at a different register now, visible even at a distance.

John watched this.

Theo watched John watch it.

"Pin Missile. Stay wide."

Beedrill swept to range and the missiles fired from the far side of the arena — controlling the center by threatening it from outside it, forcing Jupiter to track incoming fire rather than advance. Jupiter ducked two and took one across the flank and Theo called "Disarming Voice" and the fairy pulse found Beedrill again and Beedrill absorbed it and kept its position.

The pattern was clear: Pin Missile from range if Jupiter tried to close, Twineedle or Poison Jab if Jupiter tried to hold position. Beedrill was dictating the choice and winning either way.

Theo had found what worked at range (Disarming Voice, Charge Beam) and what the boosts were building toward. He hadn't found how to make Beedrill stay in range long enough for the boosts to matter.

Something was trying to form at the back of his thinking. He held it loosely and kept watching.

Every exchange had run the same way. Jupiter committed. Beedrill disengaged. Beedrill attacked. Jupiter reacted.

The speed wasn't changing. But the Charge Beam boosts were accumulating. The question was whether they could accumulate fast enough to matter, and the answer was no, not at this rate.

He needed Beedrill to commit. Not disengage. Commit and stay in contact long enough for the distance between them to close to nothing.

There was one way to make that happen.

"Hold position."

Jupiter stopped moving.

Across the field, Beedrill read the stationary target and came forward immediately. The stinger was loaded with purple-dark aura and it drove in fast from the direct line, the line it had been declining to use whenever Jupiter was moving because a moving target costs more to hit than a stationary one.

This time the target wasn't moving.

Theo felt something tighten in his chest anyway. The hit was going to land. He had already made the call.

"Stay."

Jupiter's ears pressed flat. Every instinct they had drilled said move, reposition, find the better angle. He stayed.
Beedrill committed fully, the stinger driving in, the impact hard and dense across Jupiter's side, a move fired at full extension with no evasion behind it to soften the cost, and Jupiter took all of it standing.

"Thunder Wave!"

The charge was there before the Poison Jab had finished landing, every boost Jupiter had banked discharging sideways at point-blank into the closed distance. At that range there was nowhere for it to go!

Beedrill jerked. A single involuntary spasm, stiffening through the whole body. Then another, the paralysis settling into the nervous system the way Thunder Wave settled, not stopping movement but introducing a stutter into what had been perfectly timed. Half-second delays appeared where there had been no delays before.

Jupiter found his footing. The side where the Poison Jab had landed was going to matter. He pressed through it.

"Charge Beam."

The fourth beam fired from close range. Beedrill tried to cut left and the stutter arrived at the wrong moment; the paralysis firing just as it initiated the direction change. The beam found it. Clean center hit, the crack of it carrying across the arena, electricity spreading across Beedrill's body and the force of it pushing it backward through open air.
A sound moved through the crowd, sharp and sudden, the first real noise it had made all match!

For the first time all battle, Beedrill looked reachable.

John's expression did not change.


"Agility."
"Charge Beam. Now."

Jupiter fired into the cut. The beam caught Beedrill mid-movement, before the Agility had carried it clear, and this one hit with everything Jupiter had built across the match behind it. The electricity found it square and didn't let go for the full extension of the beam.

Beedrill went flying backward, end over end, and hit the arena floor hard enough that the impact sound was different from anything else that had landed today. It skidded several feet before stopping.

For a second, nobody moved.

Then it was back up.

Faster than it should have been able to recover. The Agility still came off and the speed it lost due to the paralysis was already returning to it. The stagger from the hit was shaking off in pieces as it found its wings again. A dark patch had spread across one side of its carapace where the beam had connected, faint smoke still lifting off it, but its wingbeats picked back up to the same rhythm as before.

John's jaw was tight.

Theo allowed himself exactly one beat of something like hope before Beedrill was moving at full speed again, like the hit had cost it nothing it couldn't recover from in the space of a breath.


"Twineedle."

Jupiter tried to reposition but the timing had shifted and the twin stingers found his back before he completed the adjustment. The sound was sequential — two distinct impacts with a half-beat between them, the trained Twineedle pattern — and both hit the same general area, stacking contact over contact.

"Disarming Voice—"

The fairy pulse went out and found Beedrill and landed cleanly and Beedrill absorbed it without breaking pattern.

"Sweet Kiss—"

Beedrill read the angle. Pin Missile came first, four projectiles stopping Jupiter's forward advance and forcing him to absorb the hits or check his movement. He checked his movement. Sweet Kiss never found contact range.

Theo ran the numbers without meaning to. The boosts were there. The damage was also there. Jupiter was still in the field but the window the Thunder Wave gambit had opened had narrowed. Beedrill had adapted faster than he had.

"Quick Attack into Iron Tail."

Jupiter drove forward, tail steel-bright.

Beedril moved to meet Jupiter, but not with Twineedle or Poison Jab. Its body rotated mid-approach, tight and deliberate, and the lower stinger drove into the floor.

Theo registered the energy type and understood what was happening one beat too late.

Ground.

Not Bug or Poison. Ground.
Drill Run erupted up from the point of contact and caught Jupiter mid-advance, Ground-type energy driving straight through everything he had, launching him back and up, and the sound of it crossing the arena was nothing like the exchanges before it.

It was final.

He hit the concrete and didn't immediately move.

The referee's hand went up.

"Enough."

Theo stood at his side of the arena, already moving to return Jupiter, and only noticed his own free hand was open at his side, fingers not quite steady, when he made it be still.

His face was blank, but not because he lost.

Because he was processing the reason why.

It hadn't appeared in any of John's previous matches. John had kept it back. He had looked at the bracket and identified who had Electric types and prepared an answer and saved it. This wasn't improvisation that had outplayed Theo's tactics.

This was preparation that had anticipated them.

The paralysis gambit, the Charge Beam boosts, the Thunder Wave at close range, John had known an Electric type trainer might try to use those tools and had drilled a counter for exactly that pattern.

Theo exhaled through his nose as he whispered to Jupiter's Poké Ball.

"We'll get food."

A satisfied shake answered him.

Beedrill's stinger had hit the floor and hit it hard, and Jupiter was thinking about dinner.

---

John was at the corridor exit when Theo got to the healing machine. He stopped level with him. His eyes went to the floor between them, not because he was searching for words but because he'd already found them.

"That match was what I said it would be," he said. "From the lobby." His thumb had released the belt clip. "I know what Oak does with those devices. Who he gives them to. There should be a standard for who should carry one and it should have nothing to do with who vouched for you. Someone gets handed what should have been earned and everyone's supposed to pretend the work that should have come first doesn't matter." His voice was flat and clear and not loud. "Today didn't prove anything except I was right. The device should have stayed in a drawer."

He was already turning when he said it, quietly, mostly to himself: "Yellow didn't deserve hers either yet."

He kept walking.

Theo stood at the healing machine.

Yellow.

Theo knew the name from somewhere he couldn't fully trace, a Dex holder with a closeness to Red that sat in his memory as fact rather than rumour. He knew it the same way he knew everything from that part of him, complete and with no source attached.

It should have barely landed. There was a loss sitting in his chest and everything else John had said sitting under it, and one more name from a place he couldn't explain had no business getting his attention tonight. It got a second of it anyway, that small wrongness of knowing something he had no right to know, before he set it aside and let John keep walking.

The lobby words were in his chest and the words from thirty seconds ago were in his chest and now the match was in his chest too, and the match had not been close. That was the part he kept coming back to. After Fake Out the match had not been competitive. Beedrill had controlled every exchange and Jupiter had found some hits and taken more than he had landed and the scoreline of the thing was not something Theo could argue with. The match had not been competitive after the first exchange and he could not soften that.

He thought about what he could have done differently and none of it changed the honest reading, which was that Beedrill was faster than what Jupiter had tools for right now and John knew exactly how to use that.

He wasn't angry at Jupiter. Jupiter had read the match and adapted and gone down fighting and come back to Theo's side with his cheeks sparking at the standard rate, entirely fine, already thinking about dinner. The loss wasn't Jupiter's failure.

It was his.

Not for the tactics. The tactics were what they were. He was angry because he had wanted the match to say something and had wanted to walk off that floor with a result that John couldn't dismiss the way he'd dismissed the lobby confrontation, and the result had said nothing useful. Weeks of struggle sat in him: the dock, the gym, the route, the badge, everything he had built from the exact nothing John was accusing him of starting from and John had walked away from all of it unchanged. He had looked at Theo's team and made his assessment and the assessment had been right about the match and he had walked away still right about everything else, and Theo couldn't close that gap because the match hadn't closed it for him.

His jaw was tight.

He pressed it closed and let the tightness sit.

He got Jupiter healed and walked out into the city.

---

Miyato was on the street near the Pokemon Center, coming from a side road, heading back the same direction. Neither of them had arranged it. They were just both returning from the same kind of afternoon by different routes.

They looked at each other.

Neither asked. The day was on both of them, and it was visible and it didn't require narration.

They fell into step and walked the last block in the silence that had its own quality, not empty, just two people who had been through the same kind of thing and didn't need to perform anything about it. The city continued around them, indifferent and full, and the tournament bracket in the old fighting gym had moved on to the next round without either of their names on it.

The room was the room. Pokemon out of their balls, the evening coming in through the window, the city quieter than midday. Zeus was at the foot of Theo's bed. Jupiter had located the snack situation in the side pocket of the bag within thirty seconds of returning and was investigating it with the focused attention he usually reserved for battles. Kiri was on Miyato's chest. Ryuu was not there, which was the shape that everything else arranged itself around without anyone saying so.

Miyato looked at the ceiling.

Theo sat on the edge of his bed and looked at him.

"How are you doing?" he said.

Miyato considered it honestly. "Not great," he said. "Nurse Joy said she'd have a full assessment of Ryuu's condition tomorrow morning." His hands were on his stomach and still. "I don't know what that means yet."

Theo nodded.

The room was quiet.

"I lost to John too," Theo said.

Miyato turned his head to look at him.

A beat passed.

"So," Miyato said slowly, the words arriving as he said them, "between the two of us, we went to a rookie tournament for trainers with three badges or fewer and both lost to the person dressed as a bug catcher with a fishing net."

Something was released in the room.

Theo laughed. The real kind, out of him, before he had finished processing the sentence. Miyato's face registered what he had just said about half a second after he said it and his own laugh followed, the slightly surprised one, the laugh of someone who had not planned the joke and found it worked.

They sat with it.

John's words were still in Theo's chest. The self-doubt and the confusion the words had built and that the loss had confirmed, were still sitting in the same place, unresolved. He did not know what to do with them. He was not going to figure it out tonight.

He looked at Jupiter, who had found what he was looking for in the side pocket and was eating it with the complete equanimity of a Pokémon for whom the day's losses and the evening's snack were equally straightforward components of a Tuesday and did not require him to connect them.

Theo looked at the ceiling.

The bracket in the old gym had moved past both their names and the tournament was going to finish without them and John was still in it somewhere doing what John did, and the words he had said in the lobby and the words he had said after the match were going to keep sitting in Theo's chest for longer than tonight.

He breathed out once through his nose and let the room be what it was.

---

Theo: John said the match was exactly what he knew it would be from the lobby. Today didn't prove anything except that he was right about me.

Dr. Matthews: And what did you want today to prove?

Theo: That the past weeks were real. That what I built in them was mine,

Dr. Matthews: Was he wrong about that?

Theo: About the match? No. He won cleanly. About the rest? Yes. But I couldn't make the match say it. So it just sits there.

 

[Live Wire]

Dr. Matthews: What did you do that day?

Theo: Drills. Sparring. Kept moving.

Dr. Matthews: Did it help?

Theo: For the parts I was actually present for.

---

Nurse Joy's assessment did not take long and Miyato listened to all of it without interrupting.

Ryuu was mostly fine. The Poison Jab had broken the surface layer at the flank but hadn't compromised anything structural beneath it. The immediate concern was not the wound itself but what the wound had done to the molt cycle.

Dratini shed in stages, the old layer separating from the new over several days. Normally, it needed no help at all. The wound had disrupted that. At the injury site the old skin hadn't released; it had dried and stuck fast to the new layer underneath, and left alone, it would choke the healing and could scar the skin forming beneath it.

Nurse Joy gave him the essentials, and he asked two questions, both about the wound site.

He had learned molt care at the Dragon Den from the age of nine. Every clan youth did; the dragons in the canyon shed regularly and sometimes had to be managed, and the elders believed firmly that understanding a dragon's body was inseparable from understanding a dragon. He had done standard molt care more times than he could count and had a particular interest in Pokémon grooming that had given him more hours with the relevant techniques than most clan youth accumulated in years of required training.

"I can do it," he said.

Nurse Joy looked at him for a moment. "The wound site specifically—"

"I'll go slower there," he said. "I know."

She gave him the solution bottle and pointed him to the recovery area.

---

The first forty minutes were the outer work, the sections of the molt that had separated normally but needed encouragement to clear fully. This was the easy part. Ryuu held still and the cloth moved, causing the old layer to come away in thin sections. The new skin beneath it was smooth and slightly paler than the surrounding scales, catching the recovery room light with a faint iridescence that would deepen as it settled.

Miyato worked without rushing. Patience was not natural to him in general, but with his hands in close work, it arrived on its own, and very little else in his life did that.

Kiri was on his shoulder, occasionally pressing her chin against his neck.

He had released her from her ball when he sat down because the recovery room was quiet enough and she would be upset being confined while Miyato worked. She had immediately assessed the situation, decided it required her presence, and installed herself.

Miyato dampened the cloth again, pressed it gently against the old layer at the outer edge of the stuck section, and held it there. The soak had softened the adhesion but not fully, he could feel the resistance when the cloth moved, the difference between encouraged separation and a section still holding.

Ryuu's flank moved with his breathing.

"You're alright," Miyato said quietly and to no one who would respond to it in words.

He waited until the resistance changed and then began working from the edge inward, coaxing the cloth rather than pulling.

When he reached the section directly adjacent to the wound, Ryuu hissed.

Sharp and sudden. Miyato paused.

He waited until Ryuu's breathing settled. He then continued from where he had stopped, even slower than before.

The second hiss came ten minutes later. Then a head movement, short and sharp, the kind that was not aimed at anything but made clear that the situation was not acceptable.

Miyato paused again. Waited again.

When the third incident came, a tail movement caught his eye. He looked at Ryuu.

Ryuu looked back.

There was a quality to the look that was not aggression and not exactly pain, but something testing. Something measuring what Miyato would do.

"I know it hurts," Miyato said. "I'm not stopping."

Ryuu's eye held his for a moment.

Then Ryuu was still.

Miyato went back to work.

He talked because the silence of the work was easier with words moving through it and because Ryuu listened even when Ryuu's eyes were on the wall rather than on him.

He talked about the Dragon Den. The canyon below Blackthorn.The training culture. What was expected of Dragon Clan youth, and what the years of watching the sparring sessions were meant to build in you. The composure, the authority, the presence that dragon types responded to.

He talked about what he was in that environment. The anxiety that read as uncertainty when uncertainty was the one thing the Dragon's Den had no patience for. The interests that didn't fit the shape of what was valued. The way he flinched at things, the other youth absorbed without comment.

"I wasn't the weakest," he said. "I wasn't even close to the bottom, technically. My lineage alone put me above most of the other youth in terms of what was expected from me." He dampened the cloth again. "But it didn't matter. I didn't carry myself the way the clan expected someone of my lineage to, and the gap between what I was supposed to be and what I actually was became visible. Everyone could see it."

He worked along the edge of the section.

"It was like being the runt of the litter," he said. "Not in ability. In how you fit the place you were in. Like everything around you had a shape and you were adjacent to it but not quite inside it, and everyone could tell."

Ryuu flinched.

Not a hiss. Not a tail movement. A small involuntary contraction that moved through him from somewhere, the kind of response that didn't come from discomfort at the molt work because Miyato's hands hadn't moved.

Miyato went still.

He looked at Ryuu.

Ryuu's eye was on the wall but the quality of it had changed entirely. Something had landed.

Miyato understood something then that he hadn't understood before. The pride that had walked to the battle line against Beedrill without being called. The Twister from the floor after the match was already over. The refusal to follow commands from someone who hadn't earned the right to give them. None of it was arrogance. It was the ambition of something that had been seen as not quite right for the space it occupied and had decided early that the only answer to that was to be undeniable.

"I understand it," Miyato said quietly. "Better than you might think."

Ryuu's eye moved. Not to Miyato's face. Just moved, away from the wall, to somewhere in the middle of the room. Present in a way he had not been a moment before.

Miyato went back to work.

"The runts have to fight for everything," Miyato said. "From the start. Food, space, and the right to be worth anyone's attention. Most of them don't make it to the point where anyone considers training them." His hands kept moving. "But the ones that do, they're not the easiest to work with. They don't give respect for free. They've never had anything for free."

Ryuu was very still.

"You didn't listen to me in that tournament because I hadn't earned the right to be listened to," Miyato said. "Not because you're difficult. Because you have standards." He looked at the new skin becoming visible as the old layer cleared.

His hands paused.

"I don't think less of you," he said. "For what happened in that match. I need you to understand that."

The eye on his face didn't move.

"I froze," Miyato said. "At the line. Not you. Me. You fired when you had nothing left. I couldn't press the recall button." He breathed out. "Between the two of us you did better."

Ryuu was still for a long moment.

Then he moved his head so the eye was no longer directly on Miyato. Not away, just forward. Back to the middle distance he usually occupied. But the quality of the middle distance was different from its usual quality. Less pointedly elsewhere.

Miyato kept working.

By the time the wound-adjacent section had cleared fully and the new skin lay visible and clean along the flank, the afternoon had passed its midpoint. The new skin was slightly paler than the surrounding scales, faintly iridescent in the recovery room light.

Miyato held the warm cloth against it for one more minute to keep it moist.

Then he sat back and looked at Ryuu in his lap.

Ryuu looked at the wall.

He did not move away.

Miyato set the cloth down.

"Rest," he said.

He reached for Ryuu's Pokéball.

Ryuu looked at it.

Then Ryuu moved toward it. Not a recall, a choice. He oriented himself toward the ball and went in without being called.

Miyato sat with the ball in his hand for a moment.

He set it carefully in his pocket.

---

The park Theo found was larger than anyone he had seen before, several blocks of it, proper Saffron scale, the grass maintained, and the paths well-worn and the trees old enough that their roots were beginning to find the edges of the footpaths.

The midday sun sat directly overhead. There were no long shadows anywhere, just the full weight of it pressing straight down, making the maintained grass look almost bleached in the open sections where the trees didn't reach. The bench seats were warm enough to feel through his jacket when he sat. The air had the feel of a city park in full afternoon, cut grass and warm concrete and something from the trees that was neither of those things, the smell of established growth in a contained space.

The city carried on at the park's edges, traffic on the surrounding streets, office buildings on lunch rotation, Saffron doing its midday business without looking in. From the eastern end of the park, the Silph building was visible above the treeline, its glass upper floors sending the overhead sun in four directions at once, outcompeting everything around it for light.

Theo found the open section of the permitted area and released Zeus and Jupiter and started working.

The drills were good. Smoother than he expected, given the tournament, the battles had shaken some inconsistency loose and what remained was more reliable. The work was producing results.

John's words were still underneath everything.


Other rookie trainers challenged him. He accepted without thinking because it required less from him than declining did. He won the first comfortably. Won the second the same way. Won the third and his hands were already at the notebook before the match had properly ended.

Zeus looked at him between the second and third challenges. Not during a command, just looked, checking on something and not finding it satisfactory.

"I'm fine."

Zeus's ears communicated that this response had been received, but it was rather unconvincing.

Jupiter's response to the third match was more pointed. He came back to Theo's side after the win and sat down in the warm grass with an expression of personal dissatisfaction so complete it was nearly a statement. He had been used as a function for the last hour, and he had won every time and found the entire experience inadequate and was not going to pretend otherwise.

Theo sat down beside them.

Neither moved away. Zeus settled at his left side and pressed once against his leg and stayed. Jupiter sat on his right and his cheeks sparked at the low ambient rate he maintained when things were essentially fine and he looked at the park around them with the air of someone who had made his position clear and was now willing to be present for whatever came next.

He looked at his notebook.

Then he closed it.

He stayed where he was for a while.

His phone rang.

Kadan's name.

The last time they had spoken was the night they arrived in Saffron. Theo had called the gym to say he had made it safely, Kalea had talked the most, and the call had ended before there was anything else to report. Kadan had no idea a tournament had even happened. He was hearing all of it now for the first time.

The call started where Kadan's calls always started, quick and efficient. They talked about the tournament first, the bracket, the format, and how it had gone, and then about the matches specifically, pulling them apart with the methodical attention that was just how Kadan's mind worked on problems. Theo answered everything, and the exchange was the easy one, the one they had always found quickly.

Then Kadan was quiet.

"It's sitting on you more than a Round 4 loss should," he said. Not an accusation. Just reading something.

Theo said nothing.

"What happened?"

Theo told him. The lobby. The post-match comment. The formulation that had been under everything since.

Kadan was quiet again. A different kind of quiet.

"I'm nineteen," he said.

Theo waited.

"My first professional circuit was last year. Two years of training before it, good team, good theory, more battle knowledge than most trainers my age. I went in certain I was ready and certain that the certainty was justified." His voice was level. He said it like someone who had decided to say something he didn't usually say and was going to say it correctly. "The first few matches confirmed what I already thought. Then there was a match six weeks in that I should have won by everything I had been taught to measure by."

He stopped for a moment.

"I lost it," he said. "Badly. Not because the opponent was significantly better than me. Because I entered the match to prove something rather than to win it. I was more invested in my own read of the situation than in what the situation was actually doing. The two things were different and I didn't notice until the result showed me they were."

Zeus pressed against Theo's leg.

"The rest of that season I spent proving it was a fluke," Kadan said. "Every match with the loss underneath it, this need to demonstrate it was an anomaly rather than a measurement. And carrying that made me worse. A trainer who needs to prove something is a trainer who has already made it about themselves." He said it plainly, a thing understood fully and no longer worth protecting. "I finished that season with a record that wasn't technically disastrous. It felt disastrous."

"What changed it?" Theo said.

"Kalea," Kadan said. There was something in how he said it, the acknowledgment of a debt he didn't minimise. "She's irritating in ways I usually find counterproductive, but she got past the part of me that was done listening and she didn't stop until I opened the door again." He stopped. "And Surge. He sat me down and said there's a difference between training because you want to get better and training because you need to prove something. One of those opens you up. The other closes you down." A pause. "He's not wrong. He's rarely wrong, which is a quality I find irritating in a different way."

"I know what you mean," Theo said.

"The part John said that's still sitting," Kadan said. "It's not the worse-than-me part, is it."

"No," Theo said.

"It's the part where you can't fully argue back."

"Yes."

Kadan was quiet for a moment. "The six weeks are real. What you built in them is real. I've watched you work. The Tangela match with adapting mid-battle, finding the answer under sustained attrition, and the Howl decision; that's not the equipment. That's you." He said it simply. "John's right that he beat you. He's talking from ignorance about everything else. He built a story without the information."

Theo looked at the park. The grass. The old trees with their roots finding the path edges.

"How do you stop letting it drive the work?" he said.

"You notice when it's doing it," Kadan said. "And you redirect. Every time. It doesn't stop happening. You just get faster at catching it." A brief pause. "The drills today. How present were you?"

Zeus was looking at him.

"Not fully," Theo said.

"Notice that," Kadan said. "That's the work."

Theo looked at the park. The old trees. The bleached grass in the overhead light.

Something had been sitting underneath the John conversation that the John conversation hadn't addressed. Not the loss. Not the words. Something behind the words, about where John had come from to say them.

"Is it difficult?" Theo said. "To become a trainer. Before the circuit."

Kadan was quiet for a moment. The kind of quiet where Theo could almost hear him deciding how much ground the question actually covered.

"It was," he said. "Before, you had to clear a written proficiency exam, not the basic license test, a serious one. Type theory, Pokémon biology, wilderness survival and battle law. And that was just the door. You also needed financial backing before you could register for a circuit: a sponsor, family money, or a clan arrangement. If you didn't have any of those, you couldn't go. Didn't matter how good you were." His voice had the quality it got when something engaged him. "It cut out an enormous number of trainers. People who could have been genuinely exceptional and just didn't have the right starting point."

"And now?"

"The wild encroachment happened," Kadan said. "You know what that is?"

"Yes," Theo said.

"The League looked at the maps," Kadan continued. "The routes shrinking. The Alpha territories expanding. The ranger corps stretched thinner every year. And they decided correctly that they needed more trained people. Not just circuit trainers. Civilians who could defend themselves, their families, and their towns when the nearest ranger was not there yet." He paused. "So they introduced a basic League sponsorship. Every civilian who qualifies for a trainer license gets enough backing to complete one circuit. One. After that, the League evaluates. The ones they want, they recruit. Government positions, ranger auxiliary, escort work, League infrastructure. Good money, real stability. The rest have to find their own footing if they want to continue."

"And the second circuit?"

"Far easier than it used to be," Kadan said. "Especially if you've done the first cleanly. Escort contracts, wild zone surveys, containment support. The world needs people who can handle a fight and know the routes." A brief pause. "It's changed who shows up, too. Trainers from places that never used to produce them."

Theo was quiet for a moment. Zeus pressed against his leg.

"If it's so simple now, What is John's issue with me?" he said.

"Hard to say," Kadan said. "He's on the basic sponsorship. He's not clan-backed; that's clear enough from everything you've described." He thought for a moment. "The sponsorship covers the first circuit and that's it. No premium gear, no personal coaching, no preferential access to breeding programs or move tutors. It's a floor, not a platform. Someone privately sponsored through a lab or a clan gets a different experience entirely, and it's visible in how they train and in what their team can do. If John built what he's built on a basic sponsorship, and he's watching trainers with full private backing move through the same tournament." A pause. "That could be enough. Or it might be something older. Something from before the basic sponsorship existed. I genuinely don't know."

Theo said nothing.

He was thinking about what John had said under his breath as he walked away. The name. Quiet, mostly to himself, like something that had been sitting so long that it came out without deciding to.

Yellow.

Theo knew who Yellow was. Not personally; the knowledge that lived in him without a source, the way all of it did. A trainer from Viridian Forest. Oak's Pokédex, the same device Theo was currently carrying. Psychic abilities that shouldn't belong to a human being. She was not someone John should be dismissing.

But the bitterness in that one word hadn't been dismissal. It was more like bitter acceptance.

He didn't mention any of this to Kadan.

He set it down in the place where things went that he meant to come back to, and made himself a quiet promise that when he had the time and the connectivity he was going to look into her properly.

He didn't say anything further about it, and Kadan didn't push.

---

They arrived back at the Pokémon Center at similar times, both heading in from different entrances, and found each other in a lobby that had stopped moving.

A crowd stood around the main screen, nobody sitting, the sound up. A match graphic sat pinned across the top of the feed, and Theo read it as they drifted closer. WOLFE vs RAY. DIAMOND DIVISION, SEASON OPENER. Under the names, two teams were reduced to a single icon each.

"...and this is what it's come down to: Ray's Metagross against Wolfe's Incineroar, the last one standing on either side! Wolfe gave up his Politoed and his Gengar for a board position, and Ray made him pay full price for both, and now there's nowhere left for either man to hide! And Incineroar commits! Here it comes!"

On the screen, the Incineroar came through its own firelight, Flare Blitz carrying it forward like something thrown, and the Mega Metagross rose to meet it with pale light blazing along every seam, one massive arm dropping with the whole of that weight behind it.

Flame met steel. The feed's sound cut out for a full second, overwhelmed, and the arena went to dust and light and a scorch mark forty feet long.

Then the dust thinned, and both of them were still up.

The Incineroar swayed, smoke rising off its shoulders where its own recoil had burned it, one knee buckling and catching. The Metagross stood over its own crater, a foreleg dented deep, pale fire flickering along its seams. Neither moved. The commentator was halfway into a sentence about a second exchange when the Metagross dropped.

No hit. No contact. It went down on all four legs at once, and the Mega light guttered out along its body in slow waves until what lay on the sand was only a Metagross again, enormous and spent.

"IT'S OVER! The count came due! Perish Song! The Politoed's Perish Song from a couple of exchanges back, and the Metagross just ran out of clock! Wolfe never needed to win that last exchange; he needed his Incineroar to SURVIVE it! Wolfe takes the opener!"

The lobby broke into pieces around them.

"He traded a Mega Gengar for a timer. Who does that—"

"He does. Every match. That's the whole playstyle."

"The Metagross got baited in."

"I can't stand watching Wolfe, man. It's not battling; it's—."

"That's such a cheap way to—"

"Because Ray's Metagross was winning that exchange!"

"Wolfe didn't need to win the exchange. He needed it to run out of time."

Theo and Miyato moved through it toward their room, and Theo's steps came slower than they needed to.

Pokémon out of their balls. Zeus and Jupiter in their usual positions. Kiri on Miyato's shoulder, making a small sound at the room generally. Ryuu's ball on the nightstand

Miyato told Theo about the molt care. The hours, the lashing out, and what he understood about Ryuu by the end.

"He was the weakest in his clutch," Miyato said. "He's always had to fight for everything. The refusal to follow commands from someone who hasn't earned it isn't stubbornness for its own sake. He doesn't respect what hasn't been earned. Because he never had anything he didn't earn."

Theo looked at him.

"You figured all of that out today."

"Today," Miyato confirmed.

They sat with it.

Miyato looked at the window. The city evening coming in through it, Saffron quieter than midday but still going.

"My brother put me on a Salamence," he said. "One morning. No warning. Flew me to the edge of Route 6 and said to get eight badges before you come home. Turned the Salamence around before I'd finished processing it all." He said it as he had said it to Ryuu, plainly, without dressing it up. "And I've been standing at that route entrance in my head ever since."

Theo said nothing. His hands had closed at some point during it, and he made them open, because this wasn't his moment to be angry in. He was listening.

"The Dragon Den," Miyato said. "I was never what they were looking for. Too anxious, wrong interests, and flinched at the wrong things. The other youth noticed. "His chin didn't go up. This wasn't the version of his heritage he was proud of. "My brother was everything they expected. I was what was left."

The room was quiet.

"I don't know who I was before six weeks ago," Theo said.

Miyato looked at him.

"I woke up in Vermilion, and I didn't know my name," Theo said. "I knew everything about Pokemon and nothing about myself. I chose a name during the questioning. Surge took me in. Six weeks ago is where I started."

He said it simply. He'd been learning to say things without the managed details, just the facts.

Miyato had gone very still. When he spoke, the first word caught, the small involuntary catch that stress put in his mouth, whether he wanted it there or not.

"Th-there's nothing before that?"

"Nothing I can reach," Theo said.

Miyato was quiet for a moment, and Theo could almost watch it happening, days of small, unasked questions finding their answers all at once.

"You knew every piece of Pokémon information," Miyato said slowly, checking the pieces against each other. "You've never once mentioned home. Not one time. I noticed, and I decided it wasn't mine to ask about." His hands were in his lap and still. "How do you c-carry—" He stopped himself. Set the question down. Didn't pick it back up.


"That's why it won't settle down," he said. Not a question. Just working it out. "What John said. He talked about what you built before the circuit, who you were before someone helped you, and you can't reach any of it to argue back."

"No," Theo said.

"So he gets to say it, and it just stays there."

"Yes," Theo said.

Miyato looked at the window.

"Mine too," he said after a moment. "The part I keep coming back to isn't the tournament. It's standing at that route entrance, watching the Salamence go."

The room held both of those things for a moment. Not fixed. Not resolved. Just present in the same space, shared rather than carried separately.

Kiri made a small sound.

Jupiter, who had found his snack situation in the side pocket of the bag and was working through it with appropriate focus, sparked once at the ambient rate.

Theo looked at the ceiling.

The problems were still there. The same problems as this morning, unresolved and real. But they were sitting differently than they had been at the start of the day; distributed across the room rather than each of them carrying their full weight alone, which turned out to make a meaningful difference.

"Nurse Joy confirmed Ryuu is mostly fine," Miyato said after a while. "She'll check again tomorrow."

"Good," Theo said.

They were quiet.

Outside, Saffron did its evening things. The Silph building's upper floors caught the last of the day's light and held it a few minutes longer than everything else around it.

 

[Live Wire]

"The Poison Jab site is healing well," Nurse Joy said, examining the wound along Ryuu's flank. "The new skin is coming in nicely. No signs of infection or scarring." She made a note on her tablet. "But he needs time outside the ball for proper recovery. Fresh air helps the tissue settle. I'd recommend at least four hours today."

Miyato nodded. "Can he slither?"

"Not yet," Nurse Joy said. "The new skin is still delicate. Another day or two before he should put weight on it. Keep him elevated or carry him if he's going to be out."

"Understood," Miyato said.

Theo was at the bench near the entrance with Zeus and Jupiter. Zeus had his chin on Theo's knee. Jupiter was conducting what appeared to be a detailed inventory of the notice board from a distance, his eyes tracking across each posting like there would be a test on it later.

Miyato walked over with Ryuu coiled in his arms. Kiri was on his shoulder, her fins occasionally brushing his neck.

"Four hours," Miyato said. "He can't slither yet."

Theo looked at Ryuu. "We were going to explore the city anyway."

"Yes," Miyato said.

They had promised each other that the night before. After the tournament. After the losses. After everything that had happened in the bracket, they had sat in their shared room and agreed that they would spend at least one day in Saffron doing something that wasn't training or battling or preparing for the next challenge.

Just walking. Just looking. Just being in a city neither of them had seen before.

Zeus stood. Jupiter gave the notice board one last pass, found nothing worth acting on, and turned away.

They walked out into Saffron.

---

The city was different in daylight.

The morning they had biked through it, Saffron had been waking up, the early version of itself that most people didn't see. Now it was fully operational. The streets had a particular smell, not salt like Vermilion, but something clean and metallic, the scent of glass and steel and air conditioning exhaust from buildings that ran climate control year-round. The sidewalks were wider than anywhere Theo had walked before, designed for the foot traffic of a city that sat at the intersection of four major routes.

The Silph Co building caught the midday sun and sent it in four directions, the reflected light sharp enough that Theo had to look away. Street vendors sold lunch from carts, the food different from Vermilion's harbor fare: skewers and rice bowls and things wrapped in leaves that he didn't recognize. The psychic gym sat in the distance with its deliberate simplicity that was somehow more present than if it had been ornate, the building's clean lines making everything around it look cluttered by comparison.

Theo had never been in a city like this.

Vermilion was a port city. Practical. Built for use. The streets followed the harbor's logic and everything smelled like salt and machinery and the sea. Saffron was deliberate. Wide streets on a grid. Glass-fronted buildings. Expensive in a way that wasn't trying to hide it. Even the people moved differently, faster, more purposeful, everyone going somewhere specific rather than the wandering pace of a harbor city.

Miyato was looking at everything with the expression he got when something was different from what he had expected.

They walked.

Past the market district. Past a park where a group of trainers were running drills with their Pokemon, the commands carrying across the open space. Past a bookstore with a display window full of adventure novels and travel guides and technical manuals about Pokemon training.

Past a clothing store.

Miyato stopped.

Miyato had stopped dead at the store window, and whatever he'd seen in it was rearranging something behind his eyes.

"That's—" Miyato started. He didn't finish the sentence.

The window display had several outfits on mannequins. Practical traveling clothes. Good quality. The kind of thing a trainer on the road would actually wear rather than the kind of thing someone who had never been on the road thought trainers wore.

"Do you want to go in?" Theo said.

Miyato looked at him. Then at the store. Then at Ryuu in his arms and Kiri on his shoulder, who looked at the window too, chin coming forward, in for whatever Miyato was in for.

"Yes," Miyato said.

---

The store was larger inside than it looked from the street.

Three floors. The first floor had everyday wear. The second had specialized outdoor gear. The third had formal attire and occasion wear. They were on the first floor and Miyato was moving through the racks with the focused attention of someone who knew exactly what he was looking for even if he hadn't known he was looking for it until he walked in.

Theo stood near the entrance and watched this happen.

He had never seen Miyato like this. The anxiety that usually sat in Miyato's posture was still there, but it was sitting underneath something else, something that looked like genuine interest, the way his cooking looked when he was in the middle of it and had stopped thinking about everything except what was in front of him.

Ryuu was in Miyato's arms and didn't seem bothered by the movement. Kiri was on his shoulder, her head occasionally turning to look at something Miyato was examining before settling back.

"You should get something," Miyato said without looking up from the rack he was examining.

Theo looked at him. "I have clothes."

"You have the clothes from the gym," Miyato said. "And they're fine. But you've been wearing the same jacket since Vermilion and it doesn't—" He stopped. Looked at Theo properly for the first time since they'd walked in. "It doesn't fit you."

Theo looked down at himself.

The jacket was from the Vermilion gym. Surge had given it to him in the first week when he'd noticed Theo didn't have one. It was gray. Practical. Slightly too large in the shoulders. The kind of thing that worked.

The rest of his clothes were from the gym too. Simple. Efficient. Everything chosen with the specific criteria of does this function and nothing beyond that.

He realized, standing in the clothing store in Saffron, that he had no idea what he actually looked like.

He knew what he saw in mirrors. Fourteen years old. Average height for fourteen. Dark hair that he kept short because longer required more maintenance. The scar across his palm from the wormhole that he usually kept in his pocket. Hands that were still when he wasn't forcing them to be still, which was different from a month ago when they had only been still when he was forcing them.

But what that added up to as a person standing in a room, he didn't know. He had never thought about it and had never had reason to think about it.

Miyato was still looking at him.

"You have Zeus and Jupiter," he said. Both electric types. And you lived with Surge at Vermilion Gym." He paused. "Are you—are you going, electric-type specialist?"

Theo looked at him.

He had never said it out loud. He had trained Zeus and Jupiter, studied the matchups, built every strategy around one typing, and some part of him had been circling the word for weeks without landing on it. Because saying it meant choosing it. And everything else about him had been handed over, or taken, or lost somewhere he couldn't reach. This would be the first thing that was picked.

At his side, Zeus's ear moved. Once. Brief and steady.

"Yes," Theo said.

It came out quieter than he intended and heavier than he expected, and once it was out he found he wanted it said properly, at full size.

"Yes. Electric-type specialist." His hand had found Zeus's head without him sending it there. Jupiter's cheeks sparked once, low and satisfied, the sound of something being confirmed rather than announced. "That's what I am."


Miyato's expression shifted. Something that looked like satisfaction.

"Then people should know what you are when they look at you," he said.

He walked to a different section of the store. Came back with a jacket. Black. Well-made. Simple in the way expensive things were simple, no unnecessary details, everything about it suggesting someone had thought carefully about what a jacket needed to be and had included exactly that and nothing else.

On the back, between the shoulder blades, was an embroidered symbol. A lightning bolt. Stylized. The universal marker for Electric-type.

Miyato held it out.

Theo took it. The material was different from what he was used to. Lighter. The kind of thing that would move with him rather than sitting on him. He put it on.

It fit.

Not the too-large fit of the gym jacket. Not the generic fit of something pulled off a rack because it was the right size. It fit the way things fit when someone had actually thought about how a person moved and had cut the fabric accordingly.

Miyato was looking at him with the expression of someone who had just confirmed something they had suspected.

"That's better," he said.

Theo looked down at himself. At the jacket. At the lightning bolt symbol he couldn't see but knew was there.

"People will ask about it," he said.

"Yes," Miyato said. "That's the point."

---

They bought the jacket.

Miyato bought two shirts and a pair of pants that actually fit him properly, which apparently the clothes he had been wearing did not, though Theo hadn't noticed until Miyato had pointed it out and now couldn't stop noticing.

They left the store and continued walking, and Theo could not stop being aware of the jacket he was wearing. Of the symbol on his back. Of the fact that if someone saw him from behind, they would know what he was before he said anything or sent anyone out.

It felt different.

Not bad different. Just different.

Zeus was walking beside him with the steady patience Zeus brought to walking.Jupiter was on his shoulder, running another inventory, this time of the street, eyes moving storefront to storefront, missing nothing.

Miyato had Ryuu in his arms. Kiri was on his shoulder.

Then Nurse Joy had said Ryuu needed to be outside his ball for the wound recovery and couldn't slither until the new skin had fully settled and Miyato had looked at Ryuu.

"I can't carry you and Kiri both if you're going to be out," he had said. "Kiri's on my shoulder. If you want to be out, you'll have to—"

He had stopped and held out his arms.

Ryuu had looked at him for a long moment.

Then he had moved into Miyato's arms. Slowly, and on his own. A choice he hadn't planned on, and was clearly still weighing even as he settled.

Now Ryuu was coiled in Miyato's arms while they walked, head against Miyato's chest, his whole weight given over, past the point of monitoring his own comfort.

Miyato's posture had changed. Not dramatically, but Theo could see it: how he held Ryuu, hands finding their positions without conscious thought, the occasional small adjustment of his grip that Ryuu resettled into without fully waking.

They were in a dependency neither of them had chosen. Ryuu couldn't slither until the wound recovery was complete. Miyato couldn't walk through Saffron with both Ryuu and Kiri without carrying one of them. The situation had created a temporary requirement that both of them had to accept or one of them had to go back in the ball.

And neither of them had chosen the ball.

They passed a small plaza with a fountain. A few benches. Some trainers sitting with their Pokemon. An older woman with a Meowth that was lying in a patch of sun.

A man walking past them slowed. Looked at Ryuu. Looked at Miyato.

"That's a beautiful Dratini," he said.

Miyato's hands shifted slightly on Ryuu. The habitual response preparing itself. The deflection. The explanation that would redirect attention.

Then something changed in his face.

"Thank you," he said.

The man smiled. "Is he yours?"

Miyato opened his mouth.

Ryuu opened his eyes. Looked at the man. Then, very deliberately, looked at Miyato.

The moment stretched.

Then Ryuu nodded. Once. Unmistakable. And made a soft sound: "Tini."

Not to the man. To Miyato.

Miyato's breath caught.

The man smiled. "They really do bond to their trainers, don't they? You two look like you've been together a while."

Miyato was very still. His hand on Ryuu had stopped moving. Everything in him had stopped moving.

"We—" His voice came out rougher than intended. He tried again. "We fit each other."

The man nodded. "I can see that. Good luck with your journey."

He walked on.

Miyato stood in the plaza with Ryuu in his arms and Kiri on his shoulder and the sound of the fountain behind him and did not move for several seconds.

Theo said nothing. There was nothing to say that wouldn't have been too much or too little, and the moment belonged to Miyato and Ryuu and anything Theo added to it would have just been noise.


They kept walking.

---

The bookstore they passed earlier had a small outdoor seating area with tables and chairs. They stopped there. Got something to drink. Sat with their Pokemon while the city moved around them.

Ryuu was across Miyato's lap now, settled flat and heavy, going nowhere unless somebody made him. Kiri was on the table examining a napkin. Zeus was under the table with his chin on Theo's foot. Jupiter was on the table beside Kiri, conducting what appeared to be a detailed inventory of the outdoor furniture.

Theo was aware that he felt different from how he had felt the day before.

The tournament had been—

He didn't have a word for what the tournament had been. Important. Difficult. A test he had passed in some ways and failed in others. He had won his first three rounds, and had lost to John in the fourth. Miyato had won his two rounds and had also lost to John in his third.

Neither of them had made it past the Fourth round.

And somehow, sitting in the bookstore's seating area with his Pokemon around him and Miyato across from him, that felt like it had happened to a different version of himself. Recent. Real. But separate from where he was now.

Miyato was looking at something across the plaza. His hand was on Ryuu's back, moving in the small repetitive pattern people's hands moved when they were petting something without thinking about it.

"That person from the gym told me something," Theo said. "After the tournament. He said I was building something. That one bracket result wasn't the whole shape of what I was making." He looked at his drink. At Zeus under the table. At Jupiter still conducting his inventory. "I think he was right."

Miyato was quiet for a moment.

"Ryuu said yes," he said.

Theo looked at him.

"When that man asked if he was mine," Miyato said. His voice had the quality it got when something was important and he was choosing the words carefully. "Ryuu nodded. Made that sound. To me. Not to the man. To me." His hand was still moving on Ryuu's back. "He's never—"

He stopped.

"I know," Theo said.

Miyato looked at Ryuu, Kiri and the plaza around them.

"We fit each other," he said quietly. "That man said it and Ryuu didn't disagree and I think—" He stopped again. "I think that's true."

---

Something moved in Theo's peripheral vision.

Fast. Purple-gray. Coming from the direction of the bookstore.

He registered it was a Pokemon half a second before it reached them.

A Sneasel.
And its clawed hand flashed out.

Miyato's hat was simply gone.

The Sneasel landed on the back of an empty chair three tables away, Miyato's hat in one clawed hand, tail flicking, openly delighted with himself and waiting to see what they'd do about it.

Miyato's hand had gone to his head. To the space where his hat had been. His red hair was visible. Completely visible. No hat. No cover.

His other hand had closed on Ryuu. Not hurting. Just holding. The panic response was happening in his body before his mind had caught up to it.

"Nox—" A voice from the bookstore entrance. Female. Slightly out of breath. "Nox, that's not—"

A girl came running out of the bookstore.

Fifteen, maybe. Taller than both of them. Long golden hair to her shoulders catching the light in a way that made it look almost metallic. She was wearing dark clothes, styled in a way that reminded Theo immediately of something he'd seen in pictures but couldn't quite place. A long coat despite the weather. Fitted. The kind of thing someone wore because they had decided on an aesthetic and committed to it fully.

She stopped when she saw the Sneasel on the chair.

"Nox, give it back," she said.

The Sneasel—Nox—looked at her. Then at the hat. Then back at her.

Then held the hat out at arm's length and dropped it.

It fell toward the ground.

The girl lunged. Caught it before it hit. Straightened with the hat in her hands and turned to them with the expression of someone who had just been through this exact scenario multiple times and was getting very tired of apologizing for it.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "He thinks he's funny and I keep telling him that stealing people's things isn't funny but he doesn't—" She stopped. Looked at Miyato properly for the first time.

At his red hair.

Her expression changed.

Something clicked into place behind her eyes. The specific recognition of someone who had just connected information they hadn't expected to connect.

"You were at the tournament," she said.

Miyato said nothing. His hand was still on his head. His face had the quality it got when too many things were happening at once and he couldn't manage all of them.

The girl looked at the hat in her hands. At Miyato. At his hair. At the Dratini in his lap.

"Blackthorn," she said. Not a question. A statement. "Red hair, Dragon-type, and you're traveling alone." Her eyes moved to his face. "That's interesting."

Miyato's jaw moved. Nothing came out.

Theo stood.

"His hat," he said.

The girl blinked. Looked at Theo. At the hat. Walked over and held it out to Miyato with both hands, the gesture carrying genuine apology.

"I'm really sorry," she said. "Nox has a thing about headwear and I'm working on it but he's—" She glanced back at the Sneasel, who was now sitting on the chair like he owned it. "He's a work in progress."

Miyato took the hat. Put it back on. The red hair disappeared under the brim and his hands came down to Ryuu again and he exhaled slowly through his nose.

The girl was still looking at him. Then at Theo. Then at their Pokemon.

"You're the ones from Round 3 and 4," she said. "I was looking for you after the tournament, but you'd disappeared."

Theo looked at her carefully. "Why were you looking for us?"

Something shifted in her expression. The curiosity was still there but now it had a specific quality to it, like someone who had just found something they'd been searching for.

"Because your matches were interesting," she said. "Not the wins, everyone who makes at least Round 3 can win. The other stuff." She looked at Theo. "That John kid. He had something against you. I watched him watch you in the lobby before your match and that wasn't normal tournament competition. That was personal." Her eyes moved to Miyato. " And your Dratini. The one in your lap. Round 3, right? He wouldn't listen. Just sat there while your opponent's Pokemon—" She stopped. "That's not normal either."

Miyato's hands tightened on Ryuu.

"How did you—" he started.

"I notice things," she said simply. "Stories. Drama. Conflict." She smiled, and it was the first genuine expression Theo had seen from her. "I have a nose for interesting situations. And you two—" she gestured at both of them—"definitely interesting."

Miyato was looking at her with the expression of someone who had just realized they were being read more accurately than they were comfortable with.

"I don't—" he started. Stopped. His hands moved to his jacket pockets. "I'm not—"

"Miyato," Theo said quietly.

Miyato looked at him. Exhaled. Looked back at the girl.

"W-why does it matter?" His voice caught on the first word. The stutter that came out when he was nervous and couldn't manage it away. "Why would you care about—about any of that?"

The girl's expression softened slightly. "Because interesting people usually have interesting stories. And interesting stories are—" She stopped. "They're worth knowing about."

She said it with complete sincerity. Like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Miyato was still looking at her with the specific tension of someone who didn't know whether to be flattered or worried about being noticed.

"Who are you?" he said finally.

The girl blinked. "Oh. Right." She held out her hand. "Kiyah. I won the tournament. Beat John in the finals."

Theo took her hand. Shook it. "Theo."

"Miyato," Miyato said. He didn't offer his hand because both hands were on Ryuu, but he nodded.

Kiyah looked at them for a moment. At their Pokemon. At Miyato's hat.

"There's a story on both of you," she said. Then, at whatever crossed Miyato's face: "Too direct. Sorry. Bad habit."

"What kind of thing?" Theo said.

"A useful thing," Kiyah said. She opened the notebook. "I'm challenging Sabrina soon. Early scheduling because of the tournament win. After that, I'm heading to Celadon for some training." She looked at them. "What about you two?"

"One badge," Theo said. "Vermilion."

"I do not have any," Miyato said quietly.

Kiyah wrote something. "So you'll probably do Celadon next, then. Or Saffron if you think you're ready." She looked up. "Are you ready for Sabrina?"

"No," Theo said.

"Smart," Kiyah said. "Most people aren't and they challenge her anyway." She looked at Miyato. "Your Dratini. The one that wouldn't battle. Is he—" She gestured vaguely. "Is that resolved now?"

Miyato's hand moved on Ryuu's back. "We're—we're working on it."

His voice was steadier now. Not entirely steady, but better.

Kiyah nodded. "That's good. Dragon-types and their trainers—" She stopped. "That's not an easy relationship to build. Especially if it starts complicated."

She said it with the specific understanding of someone who knew what she was talking about.

Nox had moved from the chair to Kiyah's shoulder with no visible transition between the two positions. He watched them openly, chin down, the conversation apparently worth his attention.

"I should go," Kiyah said. "I have a meeting with my sponsor in an hour and if I'm late they get concerned."

"Sponsor?" Miyato said.

"Publishing company," Kiyah said. The words came out easily, practiced. "They sponsor trainers sometimes for publicity. They funded my tournament entry in exchange for, well. Representation." She gestured vaguely at her coat. "It's fine. Better than most alternatives."

She looked at both of them. At Miyato specifically.

"Your hair," she said. "It's distinctive. You might want to be careful if you're trying to keep a low profile."

Miyato's hand went to his hat. "I'm—I know."

"I'm not going to tell anyone," Kiyah said. "But other people will notice. Just—" She looked at him directly. "Be careful."

Then she looked at both of them again.

"If you want to talk," she said. "About the tournament. About whatever's actually happening with you two. I'm usually at that bookstore." She gestured behind her. "I like good stories. And yours—" She smiled. "—seem like they might be really good ones."

Then she turned and walked back toward the bookstore with Nox on her shoulder, and Theo and Miyato watched her go.

---

They sat for a while after she left.

Jupiter had abandoned his inventory and was staring at the space where Kiyah had been, ears up, still deciding whether any of that required follow-up.

Zeus was still under the table.

Ryuu was asleep in Miyato's lap.

"She beat John," Miyato said finally.

"Yes," Theo said.

"In the finals."

"Yes."

Miyato was quiet for a moment. "I want to know how she did it."

"So do I," Theo said.

Miyato looked at the bookstore. At the space where Kiyah had disappeared.

"She knew," he said. "About Blackthorn. Just from the hair."

"Yes," Theo said.

"And you." Miyato looked at him. "She saw something in you too. The way she talked about John. She noticed things that most people wouldn't notice."

Theo said nothing.

Miyato was quiet for a long moment. Then he looked at the table. At Ryuu in his lap.

"Yesterday," he said finally. "After the tournament. You told me. About—" He stopped. "About not remembering."

Theo looked at his hands.

"And I've been thinking about it. About what that actually means." Miyato's voice was careful. The way it got when he was trying to say something important without pushing. "You don't remember anything before six weeks ago. You just—appeared. And I said I understood but I don't think I actually understood until now. Until that girl looked at us and said we were carrying something and I realized—"

He stopped. Took a breath.
"Everything heavy in my life has a name." His hand kept moving on Ryuu's back, slow, automatic. "The clan. My brother. This one." A small tilt of his chin at the Dratini asleep across his legs. "I can point at all of it. I know the canyon it comes from. On the worst days I at least know what it is that's sitting on me."

He looked at Theo.

"You can't do any of that," he said quietly. "You know more about Pokemon than anyone I've ever met and you can't say one sentence about where it came from. If someone asks where home is, there's just... nothing there. A hole with no edges."

Theo's throat was tight.

"I manage it," he said.

"I know," Miyato said. "That's what you do. You manage things." He looked at Jupiter, at Zeus under the table, at the plaza. "But managing something isn't the same as anyone else knowing it's there."

Theo looked at the ground.

"The therapist I see says the memories might come back," he said. "Or they might not. She says either way I have to build something with what I have now."

"And you are," Miyato said immediately. "You're building something real. Zeus and Jupiter know that. Anyone who watches you battle knows that." He paused. "I know that."

Theo looked at him.

"But it has to feel like building a house on ground you can't see," Miyato said. "The foundation's down there. You just don't know what it's made of, or whether it holds."

Theo's breath went out of him slowly. Zeus's chin came off his foot, and pressed against his shin instead.

"Yes," he said. "That's exactly what it feels like."


"I can't fix that. I don't have answers about where your knowledge comes from or why you can't remember or any of it." His hand was still on Ryuu. "But I can—I can know about it. And not make you explain it every time it matters. And not treat you like you're fragile because of it."

"I'm not fragile," Theo said.

"I know," Miyato said. "That's what I'm saying. You're one of the strongest people I've met and you're doing it without being able to point to anything that made you strong." He looked at Theo directly. "That matters. I wanted you to know I understood that."

They sat for a moment.

Jupiter made a small sound. Not quite a chirp. Something else. Concerned, maybe. Checking.

Theo put a hand on him. "I'm okay."

Zeus pressed against his leg.

"Thank you," Theo said to Miyato. "For—" He gestured vaguely. "For getting it."
"Mine has a name and a crest and a canyon it comes from," Miyato said. "Yours doesn't even give you that much. But it's not only yours now. That's all I wanted to say."

Theo looked at him. At Ryuu in his lap, Kiri at the table, the earnest set of Miyato's face that said he meant every word.

"Then the same goes for the clan," Theo said. "And the brother." He nodded once at the sleeping Dratini. "And him."

Miyato's eyes were wet.

He didn't try to do anything about that.

They sat for another minute. Then stood up.

"She said she wouldn't tell anyone," Miyato said. "About Blackthorn."

"Do you believe her?" Theo said.

Miyato was quiet for a long moment.

"I don't know," he said. "But I think—" He looked at Ryuu in his arms. "I think I want to."

They started walking back toward the Pokemon Center.

Saffron moved around them. The city doing what cities did. People and Pokemon and the constant low noise of a place where a lot of things were happening simultaneously.

Theo was aware of the jacket he was wearing. Of the lightning bolt on his back. Of the way Miyato was carrying Ryuu. Of Kiri on his shoulder. Of everything from the last few hours settling into him and staying put, which was not what most days did.

The city kept moving.
And something between them had shifted. Not fixed, because some things didn't fix. But out in the open now, where both of them could see it.

Two houses going up on ground neither of them had picked.

Close enough to borrow tools.

---

Dr. Matthews: You got a new jacket.

Theo: Miyato noticed the old one didn't fit. He found one with a lightning bolt on the back. The electric-type symbol. So people know what I am before I say anything or send anyone out.

Dr. Matthews: How does that feel?

Theo: Like I'm choosing something instead of just accepting what gets handed to me. I can't point to where I learned what I know or who taught me or where I'm from. But I can decide what I am now. That feels like enough.

 

[Live Wire]

Dr. Matthews: How do you feel about waiting for something you know is coming but can't control when?

Theo: The egg's moving more. Every day it gets stronger. Miyato told me it has dragon-typed aura, but I don't know what species. I don't know when it'll hatch or if I'll be ready when it does. I can prepare for a battle because I control the preparation. I can't prepare for this.

---

The egg woke them at three in the morning.

Not a gentle movement. A deliberate thump against the incubator's temperature-controlled compartment, loud enough that Theo sat up before he was fully awake, his hand already reaching for the dimensional bag on the desk between their beds.

Another thump.

Miyato was up too, pushing his blanket aside, both of them crossing the small space in the dark to stand over the incubator. The egg was backlit by the compartment's soft glow, rocking with enough force that the whole unit shifted slightly on the desk.

"Tini," Ryuu said from Miyato's bed, awake and watching.

Zeus was at Theo's feet, ears forward. Jupiter climbed onto the desk to get a better look, cheeks sparking low and steady.

The egg rocked again. Settled.

Zeus and Jupiter both went very still.

Their eyes were on the egg, their attention complete and focused in a way Theo hadn't seen before. Zeus's ears had rotated fully forward. Jupiter's cheeks sparked once, then went quiet, and he leaned closer to the incubator's compartment with an expression Theo couldn't read.

"Lec," Zeus said, very quietly.

"Pika," Jupiter echoed.

Both of them looking at the egg like they were hearing something Theo couldn't hear.

Then the moment passed. Zeus stepped back. Jupiter shook himself and looked at Theo with the expression he got when something had happened that he didn't have context for yet.

The egg went still.

They stood there for a full minute, waiting for the next movement. It didn't come.

"Not yet," Theo said quietly.

"But soon," Miyato finished.

Theo looked at the egg in its compartment, at the way the shell had developed small hairline fractures across the surface that hadn't been there two days ago. Miyato had told him it had dragon-typed aura. Mixed with something else Miyato couldn't identify. Theo didn't know what species. Didn't know what would come out when those fractures finally gave way.

"Do you know what it is?" Miyato asked quietly.

Theo shook his head. "No."

"But it's dragon-typed."

"You said it was."

Miyato looked at the egg. At Zeus and Jupiter, who were both still watching it with unusual focus.

"If you're an electric-type specialist," Miyato said slowly, "how would a dragon-type fit into your team?"

Theo was quiet for a moment. Then he said, simply: "I'll love it. And I'll treat it as part of my team regardless of what type it is."

Miyato looked at him. Nodded. "Okay."

"Go back to sleep," Miyato said. "We have training in the morning."

They went back to their beds. The egg stayed quiet. Zeus settled beside Theo's bed but kept looking at the desk. Ryuu watched the incubator from Miyato's pillow for another ten minutes before closing his eyes.

Theo lay awake in the dark and listened to Miyato's breathing even out and thought about the fact that they had three days until their gym battle and something was about to hatch that would change the shape of his team in ways he couldn't plan for.

He fell asleep eventually.

The egg didn't move again that night.

---

The training ground behind the Pokémon Center came with reinforced flooring, target dummies with adjustable resistance settings, and a small obstacle course for agility work. The flooring carried scorch marks from previous sessions.

Theo and Miyato had booked it for three hours. Mid-morning, the sun still low enough that the reinforced flooring hadn't started radiating heat, the sounds of the city arriving over the fence in pieces. Somewhere beyond the far wall a Growlithe was barking at something with great conviction.

They were on day four in Saffron. Sabrina had given them a week, which meant three more days until their battle. Kiyah's was in two days. The timeline sat in Theo's awareness the way deadlines always did, a weight that didn't go away just because he wasn't actively thinking about it.

Zeus was working the bite technique on a reinforced training dummy while Theo watched from the sidelines.

"Higher," Theo said. "The joint, not the plating."

Zeus adjusted. His jaws closed on the dummy's shoulder joint, not enough to break, but enough to register that the pressure point had been found.

"Trike!," Zeus said, satisfied, and released.

He'd been working this for a week now. Not just biting harder, but biting smarter. Gaps in armor. Joints in exoskeletons. The difference between a bite that bruised and a bite that made something stop using a limb.

The dark energy was coming easier too. Early on Zeus had needed a full breath to gather it, the shadow gathering visibly along his jaw before he committed. Now it arrived as he moved, faster each week, carrying more weight when it landed. Still a long way from real mastery. Theo had seen footage of Wattson's Manectric using Crunch — the dark energy there was instant and total, present the moment the jaws opened, like it lived in the teeth full time. Zeus wasn't close to that. But the direction was right.

There was one problem left in the approach.

"Zeus. Hold on."

Zeus's ear turned.

"You dip your head before you commit. Left dip, left angle. Right dip, right angle. Every time." Theo crouched to his level. "Anything watching your head knows where the bite's going before it arrives."

Zeus went still for a moment, processing. Then he reset, came in again, and fought the habit the whole way, the bite landing clean but the approach visibly uncomfortable, like walking with a changed stride.

It would take time. That was fine. Better to break it here than have Sabrina's team read it in the gym.


"Good," Theo said. "Again. Then flow into Spark."

Zeus reset. Found the joint. Bit down. The moment his jaws released, he was already moving, electricity crackling across his coat as he transitioned into Spark without the pause most Pokémon needed between attacks. The dummy took both hits in rapid succession.

Theo made a note on his PokéNav. The transition was getting cleaner. Still not seamless, but Zeus was understanding how one move could set up the next rather than existing in isolation.

He wasn't waiting on the second command anymore either. The Spark followed the Bite because Zeus knew where the sequence was going, not because Theo called both halves. Against a psychic type that was worth more than power. A Pokémon that waited on its trainer mid-exchange handed over a free beat, and Sabrina's team would collect on every one.

Theo could see the week's work in him. The muscles along the sides of his face had thickened. The first day, Zeus had needed three tries to find the dummy's shoulder joint through the plating. Now he found it first time, every time, from either side. Small gains, stacked daily. The kind that didn't show in a single session and couldn't be faked across multiple.


But for some reason, A kid was watching them from outside the training ground's fence.
Ten years old, maybe. Expensive clothes. He'd been there for the last twenty minutes, pacing along the fence line, stopping to watch, moving again.

Theo noticed him the second time he passed Zeus's position. The kid looked at them, looked away quickly when Theo's eyes tracked the movement, and kept walking.

Third time around, same pattern. Watch. Look away. Keep moving.

"Trike?" Zeus said, noticing Theo's attention shift.

"Just a kid," Theo said quietly. "Probably wants to watch the training."

But the kid didn't come in. Just kept pacing. Watching. Looking away whenever Theo or Miyato glanced his direction.

After the fourth pass, he disappeared.


Across the training ground, Jupiter was running the obstacle course.

The course had platforms at varying heights, gaps requiring precision jumps, narrow balance beams. Jupiter had run it six times already this morning and was on his seventh, his movements getting faster each iteration.

"Pika!" he called as he cleared a jump that should have been too wide for him. His trajectory was perfect, his landing clean, and he was moving before his feet had fully settled.

Theo watched him land and immediately pivot for the next obstacle. Jupiter's speed had always been good, but this was different. This was evasion being trained into instinct. The kind of movement that would make him harder to hit in battle, the kind of positioning that would give him angles other Pokémon couldn't find.

"Ranged targets next," Theo called.

Jupiter finished the course and turned to where Theo had set up a series of targets at varying distances. Each one was marked with a small illuminated circle that Jupiter needed to hit with Charge Beam.

Jupiter's cheeks sparked. He worked through the targets in sequence, each one lighting up as the beam found it. The last one didn't. The shot went wide by half a meter.

The shot went wide by half a meter.

"Pi-ka-chu," Jupiter said, frustrated.

"Again," Theo said. "Take your time. Accuracy over speed."

Jupiter reset. His cheeks sparked, and this time he held the buildup a beat longer, ears flat with concentration, cheeks straining with the effort of not releasing.

The far target lit up.

"Chu!" Both paws went up.

"Yeah," Theo said, and meant it. "That one."

Jupiter fired at the far target four more times without being asked. Hit it three. The miss annoyed him visibly and he stayed on it until it didn't.


Theo looked at Jupiter properly. His cheeks sparked differently when he was concentrating on precision work like this. Not the excited crackle of battle readiness, but something lower and steadier. A deliberate controlled pulse rather than reactive bursts.

"The psychic training's going well," Theo said, more to himself than to Jupiter.

Jupiter's ear twitched. He looked at Theo with the expression he got when he'd been caught doing something he hadn't decided whether to share yet. Then he turned back to the targets and fired again.

Theo let it sit. Jupiter would show him when he was ready.

On the other side of the training ground, Miyato was running drills with his team.

Kiri and Ryuu were sparring lightly under Miyato's direction, practicing the kind of controlled exchanges that built timing without risking injury. Kiri would fire Bubble at half strength, Ryuu would dodge or counter with Dragon Breath at quarter power, and they'd reset and go again.

"Kiri, smokescreen to your left—Ryuu, counter through it—"

"Sea! Sea!" Kiri called, releasing smoke.

Ryuu's Dragon Breath came through the cloud exactly where Miyato had predicted it would, dispersing the smoke and forcing Kiri to reposition.

"Good," Miyato said. "Again. Ryuu, tighter angle this time."

"Tini," Ryuu acknowledged.

Theo watched Miyato work with them and noted the way Ryuu was responding to commands now without the long hesitation that used to precede every action. Not immediate, Ryuu still made it clear he was choosing to follow rather than simply obeying but the choice was coming faster. The gap between command and execution was closing.

That was progress.

"Your Electrike's technique is impressive."

Theo turned.

Kiyah was standing at the training ground's entrance with Nox on her shoulder, watching Zeus with visible interest. Her notebook was already open, pen moving across the page in quick strokes as she documented something.

"He's been working on it," Theo said.

"I can see that." She walked closer, eyes on Zeus mid-drill. "He's fighting a habit right now. The head thing. You just started him on that today?"

Theo looked at her.

She could not have been there long and had already spotted it.

"Today," he said.

"Thought so. He keeps almost doing it." Her pen moved. "Most trainers at the badge-two level focus on raw power output. You're training precision and transitions between moves."

Theo said nothing.

Kiyah looked at Jupiter. "And your Pikachu's running evasion drills and practicing ranged accuracy. You're not training them to hit harder. You're training them to fight smarter."

"Makes sense for how they fight," Theo said.

"It does." Her pen was already moving in her notebook. "Your priorities are different. Most trainers your age are focused on making their Pokémon stronger. You're focused on making them better." She looked up from the page, eyes bright. "That's interesting. Why?"

"What's the difference?"

"Stronger" is adding power. Better is understanding what your Pokemon already does well and building on that foundation." She paused. "It's the kind of thinking that usually comes from watching a lot of high-level battles or having a really good teacher."

Theo looked at the training ground. At Zeus working his technique. At Jupiter resetting for another ranged drill.

"I don't remember having a teacher," he said. Simply. The truth, and also all he could give.

Kiyah's pen stopped mid-word. She looked at him for a long moment, then scribbled something else in the margin of her notebook. "Interesting," she murmured, more to herself than to him.

Miyato noticed Kiyah and immediately fumbled the command he was giving Ryuu. "K-Kiri, use—no, Ryuu, I meant—"

"Tini?" Ryuu said, confused.

"Sea? Sea?" Kiri echoed.

Miyato's ears went pink. He took a breath and reset. "Sorry, Kiri, Bubble. Ryuu, counter."

Kiyah smiled briefly and looked away to give him space to recover.

"I brought something," she said, pulling a TM disc from her bag. "Knock Off. Dark-type coverage. Super effective against Psychic, which is what Sabrina specializes in."

Theo looked at the disc. "I can't just take—"

"You can." She held it out. "I have two. And you'll need it. Pure Electric won't carry you through Sabrina's gym."
Theo didn't take it.

"How do you know we have a gym battle?"

Beside him, Miyato's eyes narrowed. Sabrina didn't take low-badge challengers. Their exception wasn't something anyone had announced, and neither of them had told her.

Kiyah looked between the two of them, unbothered, like she'd been waiting for one of them to catch it.

"I went to the gym after the tournament. Wanted a look at the building before my own challenge." She tapped her pen against the notebook. "The attendant mentioned there were two other low-badge challengers booked this week. First time in a while, apparently. Two low-badge trainers travelling together, in Saffron, right now." She shrugged. "It wasn't a hard guess."

Miyato's shoulders came back down.

"You won the tournament," Theo said. He was thinking about the finals bracket, about who would have been standing at the end of it. "Nox must be really strong. That Beedrill was a problem neither of us could solve."

Kiyah didn't answer right away. Her hand drifted to her belt, thumb rubbing slowly across a Great Ball sitting next to the other two. It hadn't opened all morning. She hadn't mentioned it once.

She smirked.

"Nox is very good," she said, and left it there.

Theo took the disc. It was slightly warm in his hand, the way TMs always were. "Thank you."


"Don't mention it." She looked at Miyato's training setup. "Can I join? I need to keep Nox and Luck sharp before my battle."

"Luck?" Miyato said.

A Pokeball on Kiyah's belt opened on its own. A Togepi emerged in a flash of light and immediately started bouncing toward where Kiri was resting between drills.

"Toge-toge-pi!" Luck called, delighted.

Kiri turned. "Sea!" Just as delighted.

The two of them met in the middle of the training ground and immediately started what appeared to be an enthusiastic conversation conducted entirely in chirps and calls and occasional fin-waving from Kiri.

"She decides when she's out," Kiyah said. "I stopped trying to control it months ago."

Miyato was watching Luck and Kiri with the expression he got when something was wholesome enough to bypass his anxiety entirely. "She's—she's very f-friendly."

"She's a chaos agent in an egg," Kiyah said fondly. "But she's good in battle when she decides to take it seriously." She looked at Miyato. "Mind if Nox spars with one of yours? Light contact only."

"R-Ryuu could use the practice," Miyato managed.

They set up the sparring match while Theo went back to working with Zeus and Jupiter. The training ground filled with the sounds of Pokemon moving, attacking, calling to each other in the language that existed in syllables and intent.

"Elec-trike!"

"Pi-ka!"

"Tini-tini!"

"Sea! Sea!"

"Toge-pi-pi-toge!"

"Sneas," Nox said, the only one who didn't feel the need to elaborate.

Theo found himself watching Kiyah work with Nox while also keeping an eye on Luck, who had apparently decided that Kiri was her new best friend and was now attempting to ride on Kiri's back while Kiri swam through the air in lazy loops.

Kiyah called adjustments to Nox's positioning without looking away from her notebook, where she was apparently taking notes on Ryuu's movement patterns while simultaneously directing her own Pokemon. She noticed when Jupiter's Charge Beam accuracy improved at long range. She noticed when Zeus started flowing directly from Bite into Quick Attack without Theo calling the transition.

She noticed everything and said some of it out loud and kept the rest to herself.

After an hour, they took a break.

Miyato had brought flasks of iced tea with honey, and they sat on the benches at the edge of the training ground while their Pokemon rested. Luck was still attached to Kiri, who seemed perfectly content with this arrangement. Ryuu was lying in a patch of sun with his eyes closed. Zeus and Jupiter were beside Theo, both of them watching Nox, who was watching them back with the patient assessment of a Dark-type that had taken the measure of every Pokémon in the area and filed the information away.

"Sabrina's gym is harder than most people expect," Kiyah said. She was working through her own drink while Nox groomed his claws beside her. "Psychic-types don't just hit hard. They hit smart. They read your positioning, predict your calls, and counter before you've finished the command."

"Future Sight," Theo said.

"Among other things." She looked at him. "You know battle theory well."

"Type matchups help," Theo said. "Psychic is weak to Bug, Ghost, and Dark. Resists Fighting and other Psychic moves."

"That's good foundational knowledge," Kiyah said. "But Sabrina doesn't just rely on type advantage. Her Pokémon are trained to exploit hesitation. If you second-guess a call or pause to reconsider mid-battle, they'll read it and punish it." She looked at Miyato. "Both of you need to commit to your commands even if you think they might be wrong. A wrong decision executed immediately is usually better than the right decision delivered too late."

Miyato nodded, hands wrapped around his flask. "That's—that's good to know."

Kiyah talked about Sabrina's known team composition, about the gym's layout, about the fact that the psychic energy in the building could make some Pokemon uncomfortable if they weren't used to it. She talked about all of this the way someone talked about things they'd researched thoroughly and remembered clearly.

Theo found himself asking questions he already knew the answers to just to see if Kiyah's information matched what was in his head. It did. Perfectly. Every time.

"How do you know all this?" Miyato asked.

"Research," Kiyah said. "I've been studying battlers for years. Ever since I decided I wanted to be like Karen."

"Karen?" Theo said.

"Elite Four in Indigo. Dark-type specialist." Kiyah's expression shifted slightly, something genuine underneath her usual composed observation. "I wanted to be a battler like her. Studied her matches, her strategies, everything. That's where most of my battle knowledge comes from."

"Wanted?" Miyato said. "Past tense?"

Kiyah was quiet for a moment. "I still admire her. But I realized I care more about the stories than the winning. So I'm traveling to collect those instead." She smiled briefly. "This is my first circuit. Saffron will be my third badge."

"You talk like you've done this before," Theo said.

"I've watched enough battles to know how they work," Kiyah said. "Watching and doing are different, but the theory translates." She looked at both of them with the expression that said she'd filed them in the category of very interesting and wasn't elaborating on why.

They finished their break and went back to training. Kiyah worked with Nox on prediction drills—throwing patterns at him that he had to read and counter without waiting for commands. Luck eventually detached from Kiri long enough to practice... something. Theo wasn't sure what Luck was practicing. It looked like she was just bouncing enthusiastically while occasionally releasing small bursts of fairy-type energy.

"Metronome training," Kiyah said when she noticed Theo watching. "She's learning to control what Metronome pulls. Doesn't work yet, but she's getting closer."

"That's—" Theo stopped. Metronome training. Controlling a move that was specifically defined by its randomness. "That shouldn't be possible."

"It probably isn't," Kiyah agreed. "But Luck doesn't know that, so she's trying anyway."


As they watched, Luck's fingers waggled, glowed, and produced a small sad puff of bubbles that drifted sideways and popped against Kiri's face. Kiri sneezed. Luck cheered as if this had been the goal all along.

"Doesn't work yet," Kiyah said. "But try telling her that."


The training session went until early afternoon. By the time they packed up, Zeus had run his bite-to-spark transition fifty times, Jupiter had cleared the obstacle course in under thirty seconds, and Miyato's team had sparred enough that both Ryuu and Kiri looked pleasantly tired rather than drained.

They were walking back through the Pokemon Center's main hall when a kid intercepted them.
Theo recognized him immediately.

He was holding a Poké Ball in one hand and looking at them with the expression of someone who'd been watching them for a while and had worked up the nerve to approach.

"You're trainers, right?" the kid said. "With strong Pokemon?"

Theo looked at him. Said nothing.

The kid shifted his weight. "I need help. Something's wrong with my secret base and I can't tell the adults because they'll just shut it down and say it's too dangerous, but it's mine, and I found it first."

"What's wrong with it?" Kiyah asked. She was already reaching for her notebook.

"It's haunted," the kid said. Voice dropping. "Things move around when I'm not there. The lights flicker. Electronics turn on by themselves. And I heard... things. Laughing. Moving." He looked at Theo's team. "You have Electric-types. Maybe they could help?"

Kiyah's entire posture changed. She leaned forward, the notebook already flipping to a fresh page.

"Haunted? With electronics moving on their own?" Her pen was flying across the page. "When did it start? What exactly moves? Have you seen anything or just heard it?"

The kid blinked at the rapid-fire questions.

"This sounds like a great story," Kiyah said, eyes bright. "I'll help."

"Where's your secret base?" Theo asked.

"Old house on the east side. Past the residential zone. Nobody uses it anymore." The kid looked at all three of them. "I haven't been back in three days. Whatever's in there, it won't leave."
He shifted his weight. "Last time I went everything just went on. All at once. The phones, the radios, the old TV, everything I had in there just lit up and started screaming. The lights were going crazy. It was so loud I couldn't think." He looked at his shoes. "Nothing touched me. I just — I ran. And when I got to the street, it stopped. Like it wanted me out."

"What do you think it is?" Miyato asked quietly.


"I don't know." The kid's voice had gone smaller. "Maybe Gastly? Or Haunter? Those live in abandoned places, right? Or—" He paused. "My friend said it could be a Rotom. Those haunt electronics sometimes."

Miyato's hands went to his jacket pockets at the word "haunt."

"We should tell someone at the Pokémon Center," Miyato said. "Or a Ranger. They'd handle it properly."

"By shutting down my base!" the kid protested.

"It could be dangerous," Miyato said. "Ghosts—if it's actually ghosts—"

"It's worth investigating, Just to see." Kiyah said. She was looking at them with the expression of someone working through possibilities.

"We don't know what's actually in there," Miyato said. His voice had tension underneath it.

"That's why it's interesting," Kiyah said.
Theo ran it through quickly. The kid wasn't hurt. Whatever was in there had the opportunity and didn't take it. It had chased him to the street and stopped. That was territorial behavior, not predatory. And if it was Rotom, electric-typed, possibly drawn to the kind of energy Theo carried, there was a chance it would react to him differently than it had to the kid.

If it wasn't Rotom, if it was something worse, then there were three of them. They could leave. That was always the option.

"Show us where it is," Theo said.

Miyato looked at him. "Theo—"

"We'll be careful," Theo said. "If it's too dangerous, we leave."

Kiyah was already standing. "This is going to be interesting."

The kid's expression shifted from nervous to relieved. "It's—it's actually pretty creepy," he admitted. "So that you know."

---

The walk took fifteen minutes.

The house was on the east side of Saffron's residential district, past the maintained buildings and into the section where the city gave way to old construction that nobody had decided what to do with yet. The street was quiet. No foot traffic. The houses on either side were occupied but had the look of places where people kept to themselves and didn't ask questions about the empty building in the middle of the block.

Kiyah walked beside Theo, Nox on her shoulder. She glanced at his jacket.

"That's the electric-type symbol," she said. "On your back."

Theo looked over his shoulder at the lightning bolt. "Yeah."

"How long have you had it?"

"A few days. Miyato found it."

"It suits you," she said.
The house itself was two stories, old wood construction. Windows broken on the upper floor, some with glass still hanging in jagged teeth from the frames. The front door hung open just enough to show the darkness inside but not enough to see what made that darkness.

Paint peeled in long strips from the siding. The porch sagged in the middle. One of the upper windows had something dark smeared across the inside of the glass that could have been dirt, mold or something else.

The kind of place that would be condemned eventually but hadn't been yet because nobody wanted to go inside and make that assessment official.

The kid stopped at the front gate.

"It's in there," he said. "My base is in the back room on the first floor. That's where—that's where things move."

Miyato was looking at the house the way someone looked at something they'd really rather not be looking at. Kiri was pressed against his neck making small concerned sounds.

"I'll wait here," he said.

"Miyato—" Theo started.

"I can't." Miyato's voice came out strained. His hands had gone into his pockets and his shoulders had come up. "Ghosts. I've been scared of them since I was seven. I know it's—I should be able to but I can't."

He looked genuinely miserable about this.

Kiri pressed closer. "Sea. Sea."

Ryuu, who had been beside Miyato the whole walk, moved closer as well. Not touching, but present. Closer than he usually stayed.

"Tini," Ryuu said. Quiet. To Miyato specifically.

Miyato's hand came down to rest briefly on Ryuu's head. "You're staying with me?"

"Dratini," Ryuu confirmed.
Theo looked at Ryuu. At the way he'd positioned himself between Miyato and the house. At the deliberate choice being made to stay and comfort rather than follow into something interesting.

Ryuu, who had refused to battle for Miyato in front of a crowd two days ago. Who had only just started responding to commands without long hesitation. Now choosing to stay when everything in him probably wanted to fight.

Miyato might not see it from here. Wouldn't know what it meant. But Theo did.

"Okay," Theo said. "You wait here. We'll check it out."

"Be careful," Miyato said. "If it's actually dangerous—"

"We'll leave," Theo said. "Promise."

Kiyah was looking at the house with undisguised interest. "This is definitely going to be a good story."

Theo, Kiyah, Zeus, Jupiter, and Nox walked through the front gate while Miyato stayed behind with Ryuu and Kiri watching from the street.

The front door creaked when Theo pushed it open.
The interior was dark despite the broken windows. Dust thick in the air, visible in Jupiter's light. The smell of old wood and something else underneath. The floorboards creaked under their weight, each step announcing them to whatever was deeper inside.


"Pika," Jupiter said quietly, cheeks sparking just enough to provide light.

"Elec," Zeus agreed, staying close to Theo's left side.

The hallway extended ahead of them with rooms branching off to either side. The kid had said his base was in the back room. They moved toward it, their steps loud in the silence, and Theo was aware of how much darker it was inside than it should have been given the time of day and the number of broken windows.

The backroom door was open.

Inside, blankets had been arranged into something like a fort. A flashlight sat in the corner, batteries dead. Scattered around the blankets were toys, a portable game system, some comic books, and electronics.

A lot of electronics.

Broken phones. Dismantled radios. An old PokéNav with the screen cracked. A portable music player. All of it arranged in careful piles like someone had been sorting through a collection.

"The kid didn't collect all this," Kiyah said quietly.

"No," Theo agreed.

The lights in the room flickered.

Once.

Twice.

The temperature dropped enough that Theo could see his breath.

Something in the corner moved.

The broken television against the wall came to life with a burst of static. In the screen, shapes formed. Eyes. Watching.

The refrigerator in the opposite corner hummed.

Zeus growled. Low and steady.

Jupiter's cheeks sparked properly now, both of them, ready.

"Sneas," Nox said, dropping from Kiyah's shoulder into a ready stance.

The electronics around the room began turning on. The phones. The radios. The game system. All of them crackling to life with static and distorted sound.

And then, from somewhere in the room, something laughed.

Not human laughter. Not quite Pokemon laughter either.

Something else.

The back wall rippled. Shadows pooled and gathered mass. Something large was forming in the darkness, purple gas condensing into shape.

Eyes opened.

Red eyes.

Watching them from the shadows.

The temperature dropped further.

Then something behind them laughed again.

 

[Live Wire]

Dr. Matthews: What scares you more? The things you can predict or the things you can't?

Theo: The egg's about to hatch and I don't know what's inside. We went into a haunted house and I didn't know what was in there either. Miyato asked me yesterday how a dragon-type fits into an electric specialist's team and I told him I'd love it regardless. I meant it. But I'm still scared I won't be ready when the moment comes.

Dr. Matthews: Fear of the unknown is natural. What helps you manage it?

Theo: Having a plan. Even if the plan falls apart, starting with one helps. And having people I trust beside me.

---

The lights went out.

Complete darkness. Instant. The temperature dropped so fast that Theo's next breath came out white, lit only by the faint blue spark of Jupiter's cheeks.

Every electronic device in the room fired to life simultaneously. The broken fan in the corner, the refrigerator, dead phones on the shelves, and a radio with no power source. All of them screaming static at once, layering into something that pressed against thought rather than traveling through it.

Purple gas seeped from the walls.

Not floating. Seeping. The deliberate movement of something that had been in this space for a very long time and considered the space its own.

Zeus growled. Low and continuous. His eyes swept the perimeter without settling.

The gas surged without warning and hit him from the side he'd just covered. It threw him into the wall. He hit hard, made a short sound, and was on his feet before Theo had finished saying his name, coat bristling, teeth showing.

The ceiling fan accelerated past anything mechanical, electricity crackling between the blades in violet arcs, and from the rotating energy a shape assembled, propeller appendages extending outward, an orange-white face forming inside the rotation.

The refrigerator door swung open hard enough to bang the wall. Cold mist spilled across the floor and from inside the freezer another shape emerged, ice-blue coloring its electrical form, frost radiating outward in visible waves.

Fan Rotom. Frost Rotom. Both positioned between the group and the exit, their voices distorted and layered, two signals running on the same frequency.

Theo read the field.

The first thing he did, the thing Dale had drilled into him over weeks of deliberately uncomfortable exposure sessions in the back gym, was feel the pressure.

Every Pokemon put something out. An aura, a weight, a presence that a trainer who'd been shown what to feel for could read. Not perfectly, not precisely, but well enough to know the shape of the problem.

Dale had walked him through every tier from the top down, standing him next to Pokémon of each level and making him sit with the sensation until he could locate the difference: Surge's own team at the Master level, a weight that settled in the chest and didn't lift; Lance's Dragonite at the Grandmaster level, which he had only experienced on the dock that day.

Then working downward, Elite, Ace, Expert, Advanced, Trainer level, and Novice; each tier is distinct enough that with little practice you could feel the register the way you could hear the difference between a note played softly and the same note played at full volume.

The Rotoms were Novice level. Possibly low Trainer. The pressure they put out matched his own team.

The gas was different.

It hadn't moved yet. It was sitting at the edges of the room doing nothing, yet it was still emitting something noticeably heavier than the Rotoms. Trainer, maybe. Possibly a Peak level. Not a clean read from something that wasn't fully present, but enough to know the gas and the Rotoms were not operating at the same level and were not, despite appearances, the same threat.

The Rotoms were manageable. The gas was the problem.

"Zeus, Fan Rotom. Jupiter, Frost Rotom. Eyes on the gas."

Both Rotoms fired before anyone had called a response. The Thundershock came off Fan Rotom's blades in a jagged yellow line that lit the whole room for a quarter second, every broken shelf and dead screen thrown into hard relief. The Shock Wave left Frost Rotom low and flat, curving as it travelled, bending around an overturned chair to keep its lock on Zeus. Two electric attacks crossing a dark room from opposite corners, converging.

Jupiter took it.

The electricity ran into him and something happened that snagged Theo's attention and held it; his cheeks flared brighter than the discharge warranted, and the bolt seemed to fold into him rather than pass through. He staggered one step. Steadied. His cheeks began sparking at nearly double their normal rate.

"Quick Attack. Charge Beam."

Both moved at once. Zeus drove at the fan while Jupiter's cheeks were still building the beam, two approaches developing in the same seconds from opposite sides of the room. Fan Rotom's blades accelerated and the air barrier they generated caught Zeus a stride short of range, hurling him back across the floor even as Jupiter's Charge Beam lit the dark and found Frost Rotom square. The fridge absorbed it with the easy tolerance of something that ran on electricity. Zeus skidded, found his feet, barked his frustration at the spinning blades.

But the boost had settled into Jupiter. The absorbed Thundershock and the Charge Beam boost together now. The next hit was going to be different.

The gas moved from a new angle.

Shadow energy, cold and wrong in a way that had nothing to do with temperature, came from the side nobody had been covering. Nox was already low and moving, quick enough to take only the edge of it, brushed sideways rather than thrown. He caught himself against the wall.

"Luck, go!" Kiyah called.

Togepi materialized mid-bounce, entirely delighted with the chaos, unbothered by the darkness and the cold and the layers of static, small and confident and not yet able to tell the difference between threatening situations and interesting ones.

Both Rotoms recalibrated fast. The electric approach had done nothing useful against Jupiter and Shock Wave hadn't dropped Zeus. They dropped it immediately and changed approach, Fan Rotom sending Night Shade at Zeus, Frost Rotom tracking Jupiter with Swift.

Zeus went left. The Night Shade came after him, a ribbon of violet-black cutting the dark, and caught his flank at the edge of the movement; a searing line across the coat that made his back leg buckle for half a stride. He pulled it back under him and kept his feet.

The Swift was already in the air. Star-shaped charges fanning out and then turning, all of them turning, tracking Jupiter through the angle change like they had eyes. They hit in a rattling sequence along his side and shoulder. He rode the impacts backward two steps, cheeks still running hot, ears flat.

"Jupiter, Disarming Voice. Zeus, Ice Fang, ground the fan."

Jupiter's Disarming Voice filled the room first, resonant and sweet and wrong for the space, the kind of sound that found its targets because there was nowhere in the room it wasn't. Both Rotoms flinched into it, and under the cover of that half-second, Zeus was already closing low, cold building in his jaws, coming in beneath the air barrier while the barrier was still deciding where the threat was. The Ice Fang clamped onto Fan Rotom's form and dragged it earthward. The blades scraped the floor. The barrier failed.

Across the room, Frost Rotom was still flickering from the Voice. A real flicker; the ice-blue aura stuttering like a signal losing strength.

"Brick Break!" Kiyah called.

Nox was moving before the Voice had finished fading. Low, fast, the pivot came at the last stride so the strike arrived from below the angle Frost Rotom was watching. His claw came down through the electrical form and the fighting energy hit the ice underneath it and something in the Rotom's structure gave. It flew backward into the broken furniture, wood cracking under it, its aura guttering in and out like a bulb at the end of its life.

The gas condensed.

For one moment Theo saw something forming in it, a face in the shadow, red eyes and a grin that stretched past the point where grins were supposed to stop, watching all of them with the patience of something that had been here considerably longer than they had. Then it dispersed back into formless dark.

Still just watching.

Both Rotoms were regrouping. Fan Rotom's blades at half speed, Frost Rotom's aura barely there. They pressed forward regardless, Night Shade and Swift in tandem, splitting attention across the room. A Swift found Zeus mid-turn and drove him down to one knee; he was up before the stars had finished dissolving. Nox slid under the Night Shade's arc and came out of the slide already closing. Jupiter held the center, cheeks running hot, tracking both Rotoms at once and firing nothing, saving what he was carrying.

Then the gas came at all of them at once.

Not a move Theo could identify or counter. The will of something old and territorial pressing itself into every corner of the space, finding every person and Pokémon wherever they stood. It wasn't pain exactly. It was the cold of something that had decided the room belonged to it and was reminding everyone of that fact simultaneously.

"Luck, Metronome!"

Luck's fingers waggled. The energy gathered, shifted, became something else.

Extrasensory erupted from her small form and hit the gas dead center. The purple mass recoiled and the sound it produced scraped against the inside of Theo's skull, high and wrong and furious. It scattered back into formless shadow.

The gas returned faster. Less controlled than before. The fury in how it moved was visible.

"Luck, again!"

Metronome. Fingers waggling, energy building.

Extrasensory. Second time.

"She's doing it!" Kiyah's voice had something in it Theo hadn't heard before. "The training is holding; she's pulling the same move twice!"

The psychic blast hit harder than the first. The shriek the gas produced was worse. The shadow mass compressed so tightly it nearly took shape before scattering again.

Both Rotoms had stopped moving.

They were looking at the gas. At each other. At the gas again. The attack posture had left them entirely; what replaced it was the look of Pokémon that had just understood that the situation they'd been recruited into was considerably larger than whatever arrangement had put them here.

Fan Rotom called to the gas. Not an attack. Communication. Something between those who had shared territory.

The gas answered with rage.

Shadow energy erupted and hit both Rotoms at once, throwing them into opposite walls hard enough to crack old wood. They crashed and their forms flickered badly, light guttering in and out. They slid down the walls and lay on the floor in front of Theo, barely maintaining cohesion.

The gas took shape fully.

The floating body solidified out of shadow, disembodied hands extending with three clawed fingers each, a face condensing with a mouth that split it nearly in half. Red eyes burning in sunken sockets. The grin went past where it should have stopped and kept going.

Haunter. Old. Massive for its species. Decades of this territory in every particle of it. The laugh it produced came from everywhere at once and didn't travel through the air so much as occupy it.

Nox's claws were already coated in Dark-type energy.

Haunter raised both hands. Shadow Ball forming in each palm, both growing to size, and when they launched, they went simultaneously, one at Nox, one at Zeus.

Nox cut sideways and the Shadow Ball tracked him mid-flight and found him anyway, the ghost-type energy knocking him down hard. He lay still for a moment, more from the force of it than from the damage.

Zeus saw it coming. He had already started to clear the angle. The Shadow Ball caught him before he finished the movement, and the impact threw him sideways across the floor.

Jupiter didn't wait.

"Pika!" He dove forward and the Charge Beam he released was not what Charge Beam usually was. The stored Thundershock and the two boosts from the beginning of this fight released together now, the output sitting in a category that hadn't been available until this moment.

Haunter recoiled from it and its form temporarily dispersed into separate particles. What passed through them kept going and blew a hole in plaster that had survived decades.

"Luck, Metronome!" Kiyah's voice cut through the Night Shade that was still pressing down on all of them. "Don't stop!"

Luck's fingers waggled despite the exhaustion in how her small body moved. The energy gathered anyway.

Extrasensory. Third time.

Kiyah made a sharp sound, halfway between a laugh and disbelief.

The psychic blast hit Haunter from below while it was still reforming from the Charge Beam, point-blank into its dispersed form, and the impact was worse than both previous ones combined. Haunter was thrown into the far wall hard enough to shake the building's frame.

Both Rotoms had pulled themselves off the floor.

They turned toward Haunter. Then they did something that took Theo a half second to process: they moved toward him. Not toward Haunter. Not toward the exit. Toward Theo specifically, one on each side, Frost Rotom cold against his left shoulder and Fan Rotom warm and dry-electric against his right. They looked at Haunter from that position with the clear body language of things that had chosen a different side and were announcing it.

Haunter shrieked.

Not from the damage. From the defection. It felt the Rotoms' attention leaving it and the loss hit it like a personal offense.

"Why did they—" Kiyah started.

"Luck, again!" Theo cut across her. No time.

Metronome. Fourth time.

Luck bounced once in place. Then twice.

Splash.

She looked at her own hands.

For exactly one second the tension in the room had nowhere to go.

Haunter's grin spread impossibly wider, past its face, past where a grin was supposed to be able to go, and the laugh that came off it scraped through every surface in the room simultaneously.

Then it phased out.

Gone. The room was empty of it. Theo called positions and everyone who could move moved and the Rotoms stayed pressed against him and three seconds passed. Then four. Then five.

The electronics crackled.

Not winding down. Building. Static layering back under everything. The temperature dropped further than it had been.

"It's toying with us," Kiyah said quietly. Her hand had already moved to her final Pokéball, resting there without opening it.

Jupiter's ears went flat. "Pika."

Haunter materialized directly behind Theo and Kiyah.

Not across the room. Not at a distance. Chest-distance close. The cold radiating off it was physical, the cold of something that had never been alive, and Theo felt it on the back of his neck before he'd consciously registered the sound of the room changing.

The Shadow Ball between its hands was larger than either of the previous ones. It had been building it since it phased out. Concentrated, deliberate, aimed not at a Pokemon but at the people standing in its territory.

Nox was on the wrong side of the room. Jupiter had started turning but hadn't finished the movement. The Rotoms were starting to move,

"ELEC-TRIKE!"

Zeus came off the floor.

He threw himself across the room and between Theo and Kiyah and the Shadow Ball and took it head-on. The explosion blew him backward and he hit the floor and skidded, ghost energy still crawling across his coat.

He got up.

Slower than he'd gone down. One side of his coat was scorched dark and his left foreleg wasn't taking full weight. He planted himself between Haunter and the trainers anyway and bared his teeth and did not move from the spot.

Something in Theo went cold and settled at the same time. His hands were not still. Zeus was standing. That was enough to stay in the fight.

Jupiter didn't wait for a command. The stored charge was spent. This was just everything he had left, fired without asking anyone. Haunter got a Shadow Ball up to meet it and the two attacks collided midway, the ghost energy compressing the beam's head for half a second before the beam punched through the center of it and tore the rest apart. What survived the collision hit Haunter, reduced and still hard enough to disperse its form. It struggled to pull itself back together.

Kiyah's hand closed around the Great Ball.

Her thumb found the release and pressed halfway. The decision was already made; the situation had gone past the point where she held anything back.

Luck threw herself forward.

Not at Haunter. At Haunter and through it, at the space between Haunter and the trainers, a small body with no hesitation putting itself between the thing threatening her people and the people it was threatening. Mid-jump the light came, white and brilliant in the dark, almost blinding after the shadows, and her form expanded inside it, wings pushing out from her back and spreading wide and steady.

Kiyah's thumb came off the release. Her hand stayed on the ball for one more breath. Then it left.

The light held for seconds and faded.

Togetic hovered between Kiyah and Haunter. Wings beating without effort. Evolved and entirely unbothered by it.

She didn't reach for Metronome.

The Extrasensory she used came directly from her. Learned. Her own. At point-blank range into Haunter's reforming face, it hit with more force than all three Metronome pulls combined; the difference between borrowed power and power that belonged to her was visible in every particle of the impact. Haunter went into the far wall hard enough to shake the building's frame.

The Rotoms moved forward from Theo's sides in unison, and Zeus fired with them. He didn't leave his position, planted between Haunter and his trainer, weight braced on three good legs, and the Shock Wave came off him flat and hard. Three electric attacks hit Haunter simultaneously while it was still against the wall from Togetic's Extrasensory. It recoiled, its form destabilizing at the edges, the grin flickering.

Jupiter's Charge Beam came in from the blind side, the angle Haunter had surrendered when it turned on the Rotoms, and the electricity tore through its flank without resistance. The destabilization got worse. The edges of its form were coming apart and pulling back together and the effort of holding itself coherent was visible now in a way it hadn't been at any point in this fight.

Nox closed on damaged legs. Not fast. Not clean. Just committed, one step and then another, Dark-type energy coating his claws all the way in, and the Throat Chop caught Haunter under what passed for its jaw and snapped its head back with force the ghost had no answer for.

Haunter's form came apart for one full second. Not a flicker. A genuine dispersal, the shadow particles separating and hanging in the air.

Then it pulled itself back together.

Slowly. The grin was still there, but the width of it had changed. Something had gone out of it

Haunter looked at the room.

Six Pokemon still standing. The Electrike that had eaten its best Shadow Ball was back on its feet between it and the trainers. The Rotoms it had ruled had turned against it. The Togepi had evolved and taken its best shot and returned it with interest.

The shriek it produced as it phased through the exterior wall carried fury and defeat in the same sound, and then it was gone.

The room was silent.

Just breathing. The electronics winding down one by one. The refrigerator settling back into its ordinary hum. Frost melting from the floor in slow patches, the cold leaving gradually, the way a presence left rather than the way a temperature changed.

"Toge-togetic!" Luck spun a slow, delighted circle in the air, discovering her wings worked exactly as well as she'd expected.

Theo crossed the room and dropped to one knee in front of Zeus. The scorch along his side had stopped smoking. He was keeping the left foreleg light, and he let Theo look him over with the patience of someone who considered the inspection unnecessary.

"Trike." Hurt. Present. Not going anywhere.


Both Rotoms followed Theo across the room and hovered close, one on each side, and the closeness was different from everything they'd been doing before the Night Shade had dropped everyone. They'd found what they'd been looking for without having known they were looking.

Kiyah had her notebook open. Her pen was moving before she'd sat down.

"They stopped attacking mid-battle," she said, not looking up. "Both of them. Just stopped and looked at you." She wrote something. "Why?"

Theo looked at the two Rotoms. "I have an affinity with electric types. They feel something in me and they're drawn to it. I don't completely understand the mechanism."

Frost Rotom made a soft sound. Pressed closer. "Rotom."

"That's an agreement," Kiyah said, still writing. "Interesting."

"Can I ask you something?" she said to the Fan Rotom.

Fan Rotom turned toward her. "Rotom?"

"I know you're drawn to him," Kiyah said. "I can see it. But I want to ask if you'd consider coming with me instead."

Fan Rotom hesitated. Looked at Theo. Back to Kiyah.

"Rotom?" Uncertain.

Kiyah crouched down and met Fan Rotom at eye level. "I'm going to be an explorer. Not just a trainer. I'm going to travel everywhere across the open sky, over the endless seas, through forgotten ruins where no one's walked in centuries." Her voice was quiet but intense. "I need a partner who can handle that. Who wants to see everything the world has to offer. Who wants to be part of stories that matter."

She paused. "You're a Fan Rotom. You can fly. You can move through air and wind. You'd be perfect for what I need to do." Another pause. "But more than that, I think you'd love it. The freedom. The discovery. Being somewhere new every week."

Fan Rotom was listening. Really listening.

"I won't promise you'll always be safe," Kiyah continued. "I won't promise it'll be easy. But I promise you'll never be bored. You'll see things most Pokemon never see. And when we find something amazing like a ruin that hasn't been documented, a vista that takes your breath away, a story that needs to be told then you'll be there. You'll be part of it."

She held out a Pokeball. "Is that something you want?"

Fan Rotom looked at Theo one more time. Theo met its gaze and nodded once. Permission. Understanding.

Fan Rotom turned back to Kiyah.

"Rotom!" Agreement. Certain now.

The Poke Ball opened. Fan Rotom entered without resistance. One shake. Two. Click.

Kiyah stood, holding the ball carefully. "Thank you," she said quietly.

Then she looked at Frost Rotom, still hovering at Theo's shoulder.

Frost Rotom looked back at her. Then at Theo. It wasn't going anywhere and it knew where it was going and the question it was asking wasn't whether, just the form of it.

Theo pulled out a Pokeball. "I don't know where this ends up or what we'll face getting there. But if you come with me you're part of the team. All of it." He held the ball out. "Want to?"

Frost Rotom pressed itself against the button.

Red light. One shake. Click.

The door crashed open.

Miyato came through it with Ryuu and Kiri right behind him,all of them breathing hard and wide-eyed, people who had heard an explosion and run toward it rather than away. Very loyal or very foolish. Possibly both.

He took in the room. Everyone standing except Zeus. Togetic where Togepi had been. Kiyah already writing. Both Rotoms in their balls.

"It's over," Theo said.

Miyato put both hands on his knees and bent over and breathed. "I heard the explosion and I just — I ran." He looked up. "I ran into the haunted house. Me. The person who has been terrified of ghost types."

Kiri chirped from his shoulder. The pride in it was unmistakable.

"I know you're proud," Miyato said. "I think I might be too. I'm also possibly going to be sick. Both things can be true."
Theo looked past him at the doorway. "The kid."

Miyato straightened. "Gone. I was keeping an eye on him outside like you asked and then the explosion hit and I started running and when I looked back he was just—" He made a short gesture. "gone."

"Can't blame him," Kiyah said, still writing.

"I'm not blaming him," Miyato said. "I'm just saying he had the right idea and I did the opposite."

Ryuu pressed against his leg again. Miyato looked down at him. "Yes, I know. You don't have to keep telling me."

Kiyah didn't look up from the notebook. Her handwriting had accelerated.

Theo and Miyato watched her for a moment.

"Kiyah," Miyato said.

She kept writing.

"Metronome stability across three consecutive pulls, evolution trigger under direct threat stimulus, Haunter territorial mass above standard species average, suggesting decades of roaming, Rotom bonding mechanics in high-stress environments—" She was narrating at low volume as she wrote, pen barely keeping up.

Miyato looked at Theo.

"Let her finish," Theo said.

She finished eventually. Closed the notebook. Looked up, blinking, someone returning from somewhere else. "Sorry. The details go if I don't get them down."

"We should go," Theo said. "Before someone investigates."

---

Nurse Joy took one look at them and exhaled through her nose.

"Haunted house," Kiyah said before anything was asked. "Territorial Haunter. Two Rotoms. One evolution under combat conditions. One Electrike taking a direct Shadow Ball meant for his trainer."

Nurse Joy looked at Theo.

"Healing bay," she said. "All of them. Now."

They sat in the lobby while the team was assessed. Kiyah wrote. Miyato sat with Kiri on his shoulder and Ryuu across his lap. Zeus had taken the worst of it but he would recover. Everyone would recover by morning.

Eventually Kiyah closed the notebook.

"This was the best story I've had in months," she said. "Thank you."

"You helped defeat it," Theo said.

"I know." She smiled. "That's what made it good. Being part of it, not just watching."

"Wait," Theo said. "The Rotoms had Blizzard available. Frost Rotom especially. Hurricane for Fan Rotom." He looked at her. "They never used them. against the Haunter or against us. Why?"

Kiyah tilted her head. "Really!?"

"After the first electric attacks failed on Jupiter they switched to Night Shade and Swift. They never went to the weather moves. Against Haunter at the end they only used Thundershock and Shock Wave. Blizzard would have done real damage to it."

Kiyah was quiet for a moment. "I think they didn't want to hurt anyone badly. They wanted us gone. The haunted house, the electronics, the gas, all of it was designed to frighten. To drive people out." She looked at the Poké Ball on her belt. "Blizzard in an enclosed room at those temperatures would have been serious. Hurricane could have injured a trainer." She paused. "They were scary on purpose. They were never trying to put anyone in the hospital."

Theo sat with that.

"The Haunter was different," she continued. "It used everything. The Rotoms were territorial but not vicious. There's a distinction."

The lobby was quiet for a moment.

"Your battle is tomorrow," Miyato said.

"Yeah." Kiyah stood and stretched. "Don't come."

Theo looked at her.

"I'm leaving after," she said. "Win or lose. Cerulean next, then wherever the next story is." She looked at both of them. "This was good but I do not stay in one place too much. That's how this works."

"Why do you like stories so much?" Theo asked.

Kiyah's smile shifted. "That's a good question. What are you willing to trade for the answer?"

Silence.

"I'm joking," she said quickly, waving a hand. "You don't owe me anything."

She sat back down. "I like stories because they matter. Because people do things and those things have meaning and someone should remember them." She looked at her notebook. "My father was an explorer. He kept journals about everywhere he went, everything he saw. When he passed away, I read them all. Every single entry."

She paused. "I realized I wanted to do the same thing. Collect stories. Remember them. Make sure they don't disappear when the people who lived them are gone."

"That's—" Miyato started.

"I have amnesia," Theo said quietly. "I don't remember anything before six weeks ago."

Kiyah looked at him.

"The knowledge is there but the context isn't," he continued. "I know things but I don't know how or why I know them. Everything before waking up on a dock in Vermilion is just—gone."

Kiyah didn't move.

"She already knows about me," Miyato said

Kiyah was quiet for a moment. "That's why you didn't remember having a teacher."

"Yes."

She pulled out the notebook. Wrote one line. Closed it. "Thank you for trusting me with it." She stood and shouldered her bag. "Good luck with Sabrina. Good luck with the egg. Good luck with whatever you and your Dratini are still figuring out." This last to Miyato.

"Good luck with your travels," Theo said.

"If this journey ever gets written down," she said at the door, looking at Theo, "I want to read it. The whole thing."

"I don't know if—"

"You will." She said it like she already had the information. "You're the kind of story that gets told."

Then she was gone.

Miyato stared at the door she'd walked through.

"She just—"

"Yeah," Theo said.

They sat in the lobby for a while. The healing machines cycled in the back room. The city ran its late evening outside.

"I ran into a haunted house," Miyato said eventually. Quiet. Like he was still cataloguing it.

"You did."

"Because I heard an explosion."

"Yes."

Ryuu pressed against Miyato's leg from where he'd coiled on the floor. "Dratini."

Miyato looked down at him. Put one hand on his head. "I know," he said. "I'm proud too."

---

The Haunter fled east through Saffron's industrial district.

Rage burned in every particle of its form. Pure, all-consuming fury that threatened to tear its own essence apart.

Defeated. Driven from its territory by children. By Rotoms that should have served it but turned against it. By a Togepi that evolved mid-battle and struck it down.

Humiliated. Wounded. Furious beyond reason.

It found an empty warehouse. Dark. Abandoned. Walls thick enough to muffle sound.

The rage intensified. Stopped being emotion and became something physical, something real. Its form began condensing, compressing, responding to the fury consuming it. Hands merging with its body as its weight became real instead of spectral. That too-wide grin spreading further, becoming permanent, splitting its face into something grotesque.

Haunter became Gengar.

Stronger and more capable of things its previous form couldn't achieve.

It turned back toward where those trainers had been. Where those humans were still staying.

Revenge would be simple. Wait until they slept. Phase through walls. End them before—

Pressure.

Psychic pressure. Massive, controlled, absolute. Coming from everywhere and nowhere simultaneously.

Gengar spun around.

A woman stood in the warehouse. She hadn't been there a second ago. Hadn't walked in. Hadn't materialized with any sound or flash of light. She was simply there, as if she'd always been standing in that exact spot and Gengar had only just developed the ability to perceive her.

Dark hair. Calm expression. Eyes that looked through Gengar's form to whatever passed for a soul underneath the malice and shadow.

Sabrina.

"You've been causing problems," she said. Flat. Statement of fact.

Gengar snarled and formed Shadow Ball in both hands, each one swelling past the size it had managed as a Haunter, the new body feeding them freely. It launched both with everything the evolution had given it.

They stopped mid-flight.

Not slowed. Stopped — hanging in the air between them, spinning slowly in place, the ghost energy inside them still churning and going nowhere. Sabrina raised one hand. She didn't gesture with it. She just raised it, and the Shadow Balls compressed inward like something enormous had closed a fist around each one, smaller and smaller and denser and denser until there was nothing left to compress and they simply ceased.

The warehouse was quiet for a moment.

Gengar threw everything else. Sludge Bomb arcing high, Night Shade cutting low, another Shadow Ball down the middle, three attacks on three lines from something that had spent decades learning how to make a space impossible to stand in.

The Sludge Bomb curved away mid-arc and splattered against the far wall. The Night Shade bent around her like light through water. The Shadow Ball she let come all the way to arm's length before it stopped, trembled, and folded itself out of existence a foot from her face.

She hadn't moved. Her hair hadn't moved. Her expression carried the mild attention of someone reading a notice board.

Her eyes shifted slightly.

The force that answered came from her directly, no Pokemon, no wind-up, and it hit Gengar like a wall of pressurised air given a purpose. It slammed the ghost flat against the concrete and held it there. Gengar strained, phased, tried to pour itself down into the floor's shadow — and got nowhere. The pressure had it locked into reality, pinned fully into the physical world it had spent decades only half-occupying, and being entirely real for the first time in years was its own kind of pain.

It fought. Everything it had learned in a long existence of hunting and haunting went into the fight.

She hit it again.

The blow came down as a flat plane of force, wide as a door and moving fast, driving Gengar into the concrete hard enough to open a crack that ran six feet across the warehouse floor. The next one struck from the side and folded the ghost's left half inward against itself, hands crushed flat to its body, that permanent grin distorting under pressure it had no way to answer. The third came from directly above and simply pressed, the ghost's form spreading thin against the ground like something under a stone.

None of it looked like effort. Her hand stayed at her side. Her breathing never changed. Between the second strike and the third she glanced at the window, then the door, then the street beyond, checking her surroundings while the strongest ghost in Saffron burned through the last of itself against a hold she was barely paying attention to.

She pulled out a Great Ball and threw it. Red light. One shake. Two. Three.

Click.

She looked at the ball for a moment.

The boy was there.

Not having walked in. Not having made a sound. Standing in the corner of the warehouse with his hands in his pockets, watching her the same way he'd been watching trainers from outside the fence that morning, as he'd always been there. Like this was always where things were going to end.

Sabrina looked at him without any surprise.

She crossed the warehouse floor and placed one hand on top of his head. Not the absent gesture of an adult with a child. Something more deliberate. An acknowledgment between parties who both understood what had been arranged.

"Well done," she said quietly. "Those children needed the push."

The boy said nothing.

When he smiled, it started where smiles started and kept going. Past the corners of his mouth. Past where it should have stopped. It spread across his face and past his ears and into territory that a human expression simply didn't cover. The impossible width of something that had been wearing a borrowed shape and was, for just this moment, not entirely pretending.

Sabrina teleported.

The warehouse was empty.

 

[Live Wire]

Dr. Matthews: What do you do when someone has already decided what you are before you've done anything?

Theo: Try to show them something they haven't seen yet.

Dr. Matthews: And if there isn't anything yet?

Theo: Find it right there. Or don't.

---

The naming happened at six in the morning with no ceremony, while Theo was sitting on the edge of the bed eating a piece of toast.

Perkuns had been at it since five.

The Rotom had cycled through three different items in the room. The bedside lamp first, causing it to flicker at rhythmic intervals until Theo unplugged it, which Perkuns acknowledged by simply continuing to flicker the unplugged lamp out of what appeared to be pure principle. Then Miyato's travel speaker, which produced eight seconds of sustained static before Miyato threw a pillow at it without opening his eyes. Then the small electric kettle on the kitchenette counter, which Perkuns heated to exactly the wrong temperature for tea twice in a row until Miyato gave up entirely and went to find a konbini.

Jupiter watched the whole thing from the bed and did not look entertained. Zeus hadn't moved. He'd been watching the door since before Theo woke up.

Perkuns drifted toward Theo and hovered.

"Perkuns," Theo said.

He hadn't planned to say it at that specific moment. The name had been sitting in his mind since he caught him, arriving the same way Zeus and Jupiter's names had arrived from the storm. He didn't know why this name made sense for a Rotom made of lightning and mischief, didn't know where the connection came from. But it carried the same weight as the other two names. That was enough.

The Rotom went very still.

Then it crackled. Not a small flicker. Not a polite acknowledgment. It lit up the entire corner of the room in a burst of static electricity that left Theo's hair standing sideways and Jupiter's cheeks sparking in sympathetic irritation and Zeus's ear moving exactly once and then settling.

Perkuns spun in a fast, tight circle, zapped the unplugged lamp and somehow lit it anyway.

"That's probably a yes," Miyato said from the doorway, tea apparently obtained, having fully depleted his reserve of surprise for the morning.

Theo looked at Perkuns hovering with energy and found the development enormously satisfying.

"Perkuns," he said again, just to confirm.

The Rotom crackled softly and drifted to settle near his shoulder.

Jupiter looked at Perkuns. Then at Theo. Then went back to inventorying the ceiling, apparently willing to accept the development while reserving judgment.

Zeus looked at the door.

"Let's talk about what she might use," Theo said.

Miyato was working through something from the hot foods case. Kiri was on his shoulder. Ryuu had been put back in his ball for the walk over but was now on the seat beside Miyato, his length still awkward from the recovery but healthy, chin resting on the table edge.

"We already established we don't know," Theo said. "Sabrina normally doesn't take challenges below badge five. She made an exception for us because of Surge's contact. So we don't have data on what Pokémon she uses at lower badge levels."

"So what are the options?" Miyato asked.

"Abra line is almost certain. Kadabra or Abra, depending on badge level. Slowpoke line. Mr. Mime line. Natu line. Exeggutor line. Jynx. Espeon. Drowzee line. Girafarig line. Unown's possible but unlikely." Theo paused. "At badge five and above, she uses specific combinations. Below that, we're guessing."

Miyato was staring at him again. That look he got when Theo's knowledge showed its depth.

"How do you know all that?" Miyato said quietly.

Theo looked at his coffee. "I just... know. The information's there. I can't tell you where it came from."

Miyato was quiet for a moment. "Which level are you requesting?"

Theo looked at him. "Badge three."

Miyato's chopsticks stopped. "You have one badge."

"I know."

A pause. "Why badge three?"

"Because Surge said something to me before I left." Theo turned his coffee in his hands. "He said this wasn't going to be a normal journey. That I should stay ready for what comes. If I'm requesting badge two and Sabrina offers badge three, I'm saying yes. So I might as well request it from the start."

Miyato looked at the table. Then back at Theo. "You challenged Surge at badge three for your first badge."

"Yes."

"And now you're doing it again."

"Yes."
Miyato looked at the table for a while. Then at Theo. "No wonder you're—" He stopped. Restarted. "That explains a lot. About why you're better than me." He said it plainly. No bitterness in it, like he'd had a while to sit with it.

Theo didn't confirm it or correct it. There was a beat.

"Most people wouldn't do that," Miyato said.

"Most people hadn't spent weeks watching Master, Elite, and Ace tier battles from the gym floor." Theo turned his coffee in his hands. "I had context that made it feel less impossible than it was."

Miyato didn't buy it. Theo could see him not buying it. He left it there anyway.

Theo looked at his coffee. At Miyato. At Ryuu, watching them both with careful attention.

He should tell Miyato. Everything. The amnesia Miyato knew about, but not the rest of it. Not the wormhole, not the resonance, not the egg.

They were traveling together. Miyato deserved to know what he was traveling with.

Not now, though. Later. When there was time to have that conversation properly.

Miyato murmured, "Shame Protect isn't allowed until badge five. Could've used it."

---

The walk to the gym was fifteen minutes through Saffron's early morning. The city never quite stopped moving, the sidewalks full even at this hour, and Theo hadn't fully adjusted to it.

The egg had started moving more in the last day. Small tremors, frequent enough that Theo had taken to carrying the incubator in his arms rather than leaving it in the dimensional bag. The temperature-controlled compartment kept it stable, but having it close felt necessary in a way Theo couldn't articulate.

Perkuns stayed near his shoulder. Cold presence where warmth usually was.

Jupiter walked at his heels, tail moving in patterns that said he was ready and had been ready for a while.

Zeus walked slightly ahead. Always slightly ahead when something mattered.

The gym had no crowd. No spectators. From outside, the building was entirely ordinary, nothing about the facade giving any indication of what was inside. The doors opened automatically.

Inside was dim. Quiet in a way that had been arranged to minimize distraction. The battle floor was immaculate. The air had a faint pressure throughout it, even and constant, like the pressure of wind moving through walls.

Sabrina was already at the far end of the field.

The same stillness she'd had when they first met. The same composed attention. She stood with her hands at her sides, not looking at the door.

She was looking at Theo.

She had been looking at him before they walked in. He understood this without needing it explained.

Her eyes moved. Briefly. To the incubator in his arms.

Not a glance. Acknowledgment. She knew what was inside even if he didn't. The knowledge sat in her expression for exactly one second and then was gone.

"Theo," she said. Flat. Not a question. "Badge three. Two on two."

She'd already known the request. She hadn't needed to hear it.

Miyato had taken a seat against the far wall without being instructed to. He asked nothing about whether he was permitted, and Sabrina offered no opinion, which appeared to mean yes.

An official stepped forward from the edge of the field.

"Two on two, single format. Challenger Theo versus Gym Leader Sabrina of Saffron City." A pause that was exactly the right length. "Begin."

---

Sabrina sent Kadabra.

It materialized in a curtain of light and the room changed. The pressure that had been even throughout the gym localized, pulled toward one end of the field. The Kadabra was tall for its species, its spoons held loosely at its sides, standing as still as the woman who owned it. Its eyes found Zeus.

Not scanning. Already finished with the scan before it started.

The back of Theo's neck tightened.

"Zeus. Go."

Zeus crossed to the center of the field unhurried, patience laid over every step.

Kadabra looked at him.

Two seconds of stillness.
Then nothing changed in Sabrina's expression and Kadabra was moving. No wind-up. No preparatory shift of weight. It was simply somewhere and then somewhere else, the psychic blade already assembling along the edge of one spoon as it came, a crescent of pale violet light that hummed at a pitch just below hearing.

"Shock Wave."

The electricity was out of Zeus before Kadabra finished crossing, snapping across the floor in a low crooked line, hunting the signature rather than the shape. Kadabra sidestepped on an angle that should have put it clear. The Shock Wave bent after it anyway and caught the shoulder, a glancing burn that made the arm jerk once.

The Psycho Cut arrived in the same half-second, a flat downward arc that struck across Zeus's right side, and the sound it made was thin and clean, like something being cut rather than something being hit. Zeus went through it without breaking stride, the fur along his ribs left scored and standing wrong.

"Bite. Get in there."

Zeus came in low from the left and drove into Kadabra's guard. Kadabra was already pivoting, already at a different coordinate, the pivot so clean and so early it looked like something decided before the intent was formed.

Because it was.

Bite caught nothing. Psybeam answered from close range and hit Zeus in the chest hard enough to push him back two steps.

He held the two steps. Reset.

Theo's read was running. He almost called Charge Beam and didn't. Missing at this range would cost more than not trying it at all.

Kadabra was reading his intent before his commands finished forming. By the time Zeus committed, Kadabra had the information and was already elsewhere. The gap between decision and execution was as small as it could physically be.

It was still enough.

Sabrina hadn't spoken. Hadn't moved. Kadabra knew exactly what she wanted and exactly when, and Theo was the only voice in the building.

"Bite. Don't decide. Just go."

This was the thing they'd worked in drills. Bite didn't need a trajectory the way other moves did.

Zeus came off his position before the word finished and the Bite landed and Kadabra made a sound that wasn't quite pain, and both spoons snapped up and a telekinetic shove threw him sideways across the floor.

He came out of the slide already turning.

What followed had no gaps in it.

Zeus pressed and Kadabra gave ground in short teleport-shaped increments, never far, never enough to break the engagement, and it fed out Psybeams the moment distance opened past arm's length. Zeus stopped waiting for the openings and started making them. He drove the psychic toward the wall and Kadabra blinked out of the corner it was being walked into and reappeared behind him and Zeus was already turning when it arrived, because that was the third time it had chosen that angle.

The Shock Wave and the Psybeam met over the centre of the floor.

The electricity hit the beam side-on and rode along its length, spitting where the two forces argued, and the Psybeam held its line and burned through the middle of the Shock Wave and came out thinner. What reached Zeus rocked his head. It didn't stop him. What reached Kadabra was the arc that had wrapped the outside of the beam, and it earthed itself into its forearm and left the hand shaking on the spoon.

Kadabra looked at its own hand for half a second.

That was the first thing it had done all match that wasn't a decision.

"Attack Now!"

Zeus was within its reach on the word. The jaws closed on the forearm with the dark chill already in them, black energy blooming across the yellow hide and cracking apart as Kadabra tore the arm free, and the spoon it had been holding rang off the tiling and slid ten feet.

Kadabra didn't go after it. It shifted the other spoon to its good hand and kept working.

The floor between them wasn't immaculate anymore. Thin curved gouges where Psycho Cuts had overshot. Dark scorched streaks where the Shock Waves had gone wide. A grid of shallow craters marking every place a point-blank Psybeam had missed and found tile instead.

The cost was on both of them now.

On Zeus it showed in how he set each foot down. The scored line along his ribs had gone raw with the movement, one back leg was landing a fraction late, and he'd started breathing through his mouth.

On Kadabra it showed in less. But it showed. The frost-burned arm hung a degree lower than the other. Its footing had gone wider, the stance of something that had decided it could not afford to be knocked over again. And the teleports had begun coming later, held back until the last possible moment, the way you hold back something you're running out of.

Theo saw that and understood what it meant and did the only thing the understanding allowed.

"Bite. Everything you have left."

Zeus drove in.

Kadabra moved to the gap it had been finding all match, the same angle, the reliable one.

Zeus was already there when it arrived.

Not because Theo had called it. Because Zeus had watched that gap open five times and had spent the fifth one deciding he would be standing in it on the sixth.

The Bite looked different coming in. Meaner. Something dark gathered along the teeth as they closed, the shadow of it running ahead of the jaws.

Theo knew exactly what he was looking at.

The Crunch met Kadabra at the destination and connected, dark energy spreading up past the elbow of the arm that was already frost-cracked, and the psychic's knees gave, and both spoons hit the floor, and Zeus was still holding on.

Kadabra tore loose. Backed off three steps. Straightened.

Its eyes were sharp and recalibrated, and there was nothing composed left in them.

It had been pushed. At Sabrina's gym, at badge three, by an Electrike carrying one badge. Then it spent what it had left.

Teleport, and the cost of it was visible in how the light took a half-second longer to close than it had at the start; the drain on a Kadabra was enormous, and this one had been paying it all match and had just decided the position was worth every remaining unit of it.

It reappeared directly behind Zeus.

Zeus started to turn.

Too slow. The leg that had been landing late was the one he needed, and it wasn't there.

Psybeam at point-blank range, no wind-up, nothing held back.

Zeus went down.

Theo already had the ball in his hand. He recalled Zeus before he'd fully processed the motion.


"That was the right play," he said quietly to the ball. "You pushed it where it wasn't expecting to be pushed"

He looked at the field.

Kadabra was standing. Breathing hard from the Teleport. It had taken the Ice Fang, the Bites, the Shock Waves, and the Crunch. It was standing. Barely.

At the far end, Sabrina had not moved from the position she'd started in.

Theo's throat was tight. His next decision felt uncertain in a way his calls usually didn't. Sabrina's silence was unsettling. The way she seemed to know what he was thinking before he thought it.

He pushed through it.

"Jupiter. Go."


Jupiter hit the field and locked onto Kadabra immediately.

His cheeks sparked. Low and steady.

Kadabra looked at Jupiter.

Its spoons lifted slightly.
Something shifted in Kadabra's posture. Not much, but perceptible. Jupiter wasn't reading the way Zeus had read. The signal was more complex, harder to categorise cleanly. Kadabra's spoons adjusted.

Theo held onto that.

Then he looked at how Kadabra was standing and stopped feeling good about it.

It had nothing left to conserve. Zeus had taken everything a careful fighter could afford to spend, and what was standing on the other side of the field now had no reason left to be careful. Every read it made from here would be committed the moment it made it, and there wouldn't be a second option held in reserve behind it.

That made it less accurate. It also made it much harder to bait.

"Fake Out."

Jupiter crossed the field.

Fake Out's entire logic was intent and action reduced to something so close to simultaneous that the gap between them was nearly gone. Kadabra got a half-second less warning than it was used to, and the impact landed while Kadabra was still processing.

Flinch. Spoons dropped.
"Sweet Kiss. Close."

Jupiter was already closing when the call reached him. The kiss landed against Kadabra's cheek while the flinch was still unwinding, a bloom of pink fairy light going off at contact range, and the confusion took hold before Kadabra had its spoons back up. Its head came around too far. It fired Psybeam at a stretch of floor Jupiter had left two feet and a full second ago, and the beam punched a scorched divot in the tiling and kept going into the wall.

"Iron Tail."

Jupiter had never stopped moving. He came around the outside of Kadabra's bad turn, tail already gone hard and silver, and swung through the ribs on the side the confusion had turned away from. The impact was flat and heavy, and Kadabra went with it, both spoons hitting the floor and skidding as it caught itself on its hands.

It steadied. Shook its head once. The confusion was thinning out of its eyes, and what came in behind it wasn't analysis.

It was personal.

"Quick Attack."

Jupiter blurred in low and Kadabra didn't try to move at all.

It let him come. Both spoons went up and the Psybeam fired down the line Jupiter was already committed to, point-blank, no aiming involved, and the only thing that saved him was that the confusion had put the shot a hand's width wide. It went past his shoulder and cratered the tiling behind him.

The Quick Attack landed after that. Under the ribs, clean, driving the air out.


"Disarming Voice."

Jupiter was already turning away when the sound went out of him, a resonant sweetness that filled the gym corner to corner and didn't need to find anything because there was nowhere in the room it wasn't. Kadabra took it standing and then didn't. Its legs folded and it went down to one knee on the scorched floor.

Stayed there.

Then pushed to its feet.

Its eyes found Jupiter. The confusion was gone and what was in those eyes now was not tactical assessment.

It had personal
Theo started to say Quick Attack. Stopped. Changed it.

"Iron Tail. Now."

The hesitation was half a word long and it was enough.

Jupiter came in with the tail lit and Kadabra had both spoons crossed in front of it before he arrived, and the steel came down into the join where they met. The spoons held. Metal on metal, a high, flat ring that carried up into the rafters, and Kadabra's arms folded under the force, then locked, and Jupiter's whole body was still driving down into a brace that wasn't giving.

Kadabra turned its wrists.

The tail slid off the angle, and Jupiter went with it, carried past on his own momentum. He hit the floor shoulder-first, rolled, and came up facing the wrong way.

"Shock Wave."

He fired it over his shoulder without turning, and it found Kadabra because Shock Wave always found what it was looking for, and it earthed itself across the psychic's chest and made it stagger.

Kadabra was already splitting when the stagger finished.

Four of them across the field, and every one of them was standing the way the original had been standing a half-second ago, and Theo had no way to tell which one had just been hit.

Four copies of Kadabra spread across the field.

Which was real? Theo's eyes moved across all four and found nothing to separate them. Sabrina knew. Sabrina would tell Kadabra which attacks to dodge before they landed.

"Disarming Voice. Clear the field."

Jupiter didn't aim it. There was nothing to aim it at. The sound went out of him in every direction at once and filled the gym to the corners, and all four Kadabras took it at exactly the same instant because all four of them were inside a room that had become the attack.

Three of them came apart. No sound to it, just the folding-away of things that had never been there.

The fourth stayed up and rocked backward on its heels.

"Charge Beam. Full power."

The electricity gathered along Jupiter's cheeks and down his back and it took longer than it should have, and Kadabra had the time to get one spoon up.

It wasn't enough. The beam took the spoon out of the way and kept going and hit centre mass and drove Kadabra back along the tiling with its heels leaving two dark lines behind them.

Its legs buckled. The buckle became a kneel. The kneel stayed.

And the electricity that fed the beam came back up through Jupiter as it always did, banking into him, sitting there, waiting to be spent on something.

Its eyes were still on Jupiter.
And then Kadabra did something.

Theo saw it happen and knew immediately that it hadn't been commanded. Sabrina hadn't moved. She was watching her own Pokémon do something she had not arranged and she was letting it happen.

Kadabra lifted its head and looked at Jupiter and pushed out the last thing it had.

It didn't travel. There was no beam to it, nothing crossing the space between them, and Jupiter never saw it coming because there was nothing to see until it was already on him. It arrived as a dark tide going out from the kneeling psychic across the tiling, low and thin and moving fast, and it went up Jupiter's legs and over his back and settled into him.

His fur stood up along the spine. Both cheeks lit at once, sharp and wrong.

And Theo felt the shape of what had just happened to his Pokémon before he had words for it, because he knew Jupiter's toolkit better than he knew his own handwriting, and he could feel the doors closing one after another. Sweet Kiss. Double Team. Flash. Every trick and every misdirection and every clever angle Jupiter had ever used to make a bigger opponent look in the wrong place, all of it shut behind something that had gone into him and would not come back out until it was ready to.

Not a position move. A choice. Kadabra was going down, and it had one thing left, and it chose this.

A challenge.

Sabrina spoke for the first time in this battle.

"Your tricks and misdirection. Let's see what you are without them."

Jupiter felt it. Every line of his body changed. His tail stiffened. Both cheeks crackled sharp and bright in a way that meant something had gotten past all his usual composure.

Theo understood what had just been done.
"Iron Tail. Finish it."

Jupiter crossed the floor and Kadabra got the spoons up again because that was what it had left and it was going to use it, and this time the brace went down under the first contact instead of holding.

The tail came through the guard and took Kadabra across the side of the head.

It went sideways off its knee. One arm reached out and found the floor and held for a moment, taking its whole weight.

Then that gave too.

But the Taunt was active. Jupiter couldn't use Sweet Kiss. Couldn't use Double Team. Couldn't use Flash. The entire architecture of how he fought was behind a wall.

And Kadabra had built it on the way out.

The field was still.

Sabrina released Hypno.

Hypno materialized and stood.

It didn't look at Jupiter the way a predator looks at prey. It looked at the middle distance, at something slightly beyond the current moment. It had been doing this for a very long time and its patience would outlast whatever was in front of it.

Its pendulum hung from its hand. Swayed once. Settled.

Nothing about Hypno was built for speed. Everything was built for duration.

Theo ran the problem quickly.

Bulk. The settled mass of something that had absorbed a great deal and continued operating through all of it. Psychic sensing at full depth. And behind it, Sabrina had access to everything Hypno perceived and the ability to deliver instructions directly into its mind faster than speech.
Double Team wouldn't work. Sabrina would tell Hypno which copy was real before they finished forming. Except Jupiter couldn't use Double Team anyway. The Taunt had closed that door.

Disarming Voice would land. It always landed. It would also do almost nothing; fairy chip against that mass was a losing trade against a Pokémon built to outlast, and every second spent trading chip was a second the pendulum kept building. Jupiter couldn't win a war of attrition here. He needed weight.

His hand went to his belt before he had a call ready. There was no one left to reach for. He made himself stop and looked at the field instead.

"Quick Attack. Get close."

Jupiter crossed the field, and Hypno stepped aside with unhurried weight, Psybeam already formed and waiting. Jupiter ducked under it and broke off, resetting his angle before Hypno could fire again.

Jupiter was in retreat but started moving immediately after.
"Quick Attack again."

Hypno was already moving before Jupiter committed, that heavy, unhurried step carrying it out of the approach line on information it hadn't been told out loud, and the Psybeam that came off it wasn't aimed at Jupiter at all.

It went into the floor ahead of him.

The tile came apart in a line four feet long, and Jupiter had to break his approach to avoid running into it; the break put him further left than he'd intended to be, and the second Psybeam went into the floor left of that.

Theo watched two shots miss and understood that neither of them had missed.

She wasn't trying to hit him. She was building a shape. Every shot that went into the ground closed an angle, and Jupiter had come onto this field with the entire floor available and now had somewhat less of it, and the reduction had cost Sabrina nothing except two Psybeams she had never expected to land.

The third one caught him across the flank because by then there was only one place left for him to be.

It took him off his feet and skidded him along the floor.

He landed on one hand. Came back up. Shook it off.

Theo's throat was tight. Every call was arriving at the field already answered.

"Dig."

Jupiter tore into the floor and vanished, tile fragments still settling in the hole behind him. Hypno didn't take a defensive stance. It didn't scan the ground. It simply stood with its pendulum hanging quietly from one hand and waited. It had outwaited longer silences than this.

When Jupiter erupted from below, Hypno had already moved. The strike grazed its side anyway, the first contact anything had made all battle.

Then Hypno's arm came down.

Pound, from a standing start, no wind-up worth the name. Jupiter got Iron Tail up into it and the two connected in the air between them and held for a moment, steel against the flat of a heavy arm, neither of them going through the other.

Then Jupiter went backward.

Not thrown. Bounced, the force coming back up through the tail and taking him off his feet, and he landed on all fours and skidded and came up with the tail still lit.

Nothing about Hypno had changed. It lowered its arm and stood where it had been standing.

Theo revised something in his head. He'd been treating close range as the safe zone because Psybeam wanted distance.

Close range wasn't without danger either.

"Iron Tail."

Jupiter came in on the angle that had worked against Kadabra, low and fast and off the centre line, tail already hard.

Hypno wasn't there when he arrived.

It hadn't dodged. It had simply stopped being in that spot at some point before Jupiter committed to it, and the swing went through empty air with all of Jupiter's weight behind it and nothing to give that weight to. He landed badly off the follow-through, one foot skidding out.

The Psybeam grazed him while he was still finding his footing.

He went back, caught himself, and stayed up.

He'd been early. That was the thing Theo could see and couldn't fix. Not slow. Early; arriving at a spot the moment after it stopped mattering, every single time, because the decision to go there had been readable before Jupiter finished making it.

Hypno's pendulum began to move.

Slowly. Back and forth. Building Hypnosis. If it connected, the battle was over.

The pendulum swung in its arc, psychic energy building with each pass. Hypno's eyes locked on Jupiter, waiting for the moment when the hypnosis would be complete.

"Quick Attack. Break the line."

Jupiter moved the instant Theo called it. Not toward Hypno but sideways, cutting across Hypno's field of vision, breaking the sustained eye contact the Hypnosis needed to settle.

The pendulum's rhythm faltered. The psychic energy dispersed.

Hypno turned to track Jupiter's new position.

Theo called Iron Tail. Hypno stepped out of it and the answering Psybeam missed Jupiter by the width of a twist.
"Charge Beam."

Jupiter planted, charged, fired. The beam crossed the field on its line and Hypno was two steps left of the line before the release finished, unhurried, already moved on Sabrina's read of the aim. The electricity scorched a strip of floor and died against the far wall.

A beam needed a stance and a straight line. Sabrina was reading every straight line before it existed.

Jupiter was circling now, not committing, cheeks crackling in an uncontrolled rhythm. The electricity kept building with nowhere useful to go. Sweet Kiss locked. Double Team locked. The one release he had left needed him stationary and honest about his aim, and stationary and honest were the two things this opponent punished most.

And then Jupiter stopped.
His head came up. Both cheeks lit simultaneously, brighter than Theo had ever seen them, and Jupiter's tail rose and electricity gathered at the tip.

Not discharging. Gathering. Spinning. Compressing into a shape, and Theo watched it happen and recognized it a half-second late.

Jupiter threw it.

It came off the tail low and flat and wrong, nothing like a beam, nothing that needed a line to travel down, and it went across the gym floor as a compressed knot of everything Jupiter had been carrying since he came onto the field.

Charge Beams had gone into him and neither had left. That was what the move was made of. All of it, wound tight and spinning, and Hypno was still working out that Jupiter had stopped moving when it arrived.

It hit square.

The impact broke open across Hypno's chest and the electricity went where electricity goes, along the arms and down through the frame and into the floor, and Hypno's feet slid backward through the tiling and its head snapped down.

The pendulum tore out of its arc and swung hard and wide on the cord.

The gym was silent.

Miyato had leaned forward on the bench.

Perkuns crackled from near the door.

Jupiter stood in the center of the field and looked at his own tail for a long moment. Then looked at Hypno.

His cheeks sparked in a way that had satisfaction and excitement and something else in it. Something new.

Theo breathed out.

"Again."

Jupiter formed it deliberately this time. Faster because he knew the shape now. Hypno's Psybeam met it mid-field and for a half-second the two forces ground against each other, the beam's line bending the ball's arc off true. The Electro Ball punched through, reduced, and still hit Hypno hard enough to rock it. The Psybeam's remainder cut across the far wall and scorched it.

Hypno was not down. Its bulk had absorbed both impacts. It was hurting. It was not down.

But something in Sabrina's stillness had changed.

The Taunt was wearing.

Theo could read it in Jupiter's posture releasing degree by degree. Almost.

Hypno's pendulum was moving again. Building Hypnosis. The real threat.

"Hold," Theo said low. "Wait."

Jupiter was still.

Hypno watched him. The pendulum swung.

The Taunt ended.

Theo felt it in the total release of Jupiter's posture and called:

"Double Team."

Jupiter split across the field.

Five copies at speed, spreading to the edges in every direction, and Hypno's building Hypnosis had nothing fixed to follow and the psychic energy dispersed half-formed. The pendulum stilled on its cord.

Hypno turned. Scanning.

Sabrina was reading the field, the angles he'd moved through, the pattern everything he'd done had been building toward. She was narrowing the probable region down. Feeding it to Hypno before she had to speak.

Hypno fired Psybeam at the center of the region.

The beam crossed the field on a fixed line and hit a copy. Dispersed it. The remaining four copies scattered further and Hypno turned with the beam already committed, the shot gone, no adjusting it mid-flight.

That was the difference. Psybeam didn't chase. Whatever Sabrina predicted had to be right at the moment of release or the prediction was wasted.

Jupiter kept moving. Not in the pattern he'd been running before, making each new position the wrong answer to whatever question the last one had asked. Moving so that the pattern Sabrina was reading kept arriving one step behind.

Hypno fired again. Copy. The third attempt clipped the edge of a copy and dispersed it and found empty air where Jupiter had been half a second earlier.

But Jupiter was hurting.

Theo could see it in the way the copies were slightly less crisp at the edges, the Double Team costing more to maintain than it had at the start of the battle. Every Psybeam that had landed before Taunt wore off was still there, banked in Jupiter's body the way all accumulated damage banked, and the copies were the work of a Pokémon pulling from a reserve that had been spent down.

Hypno fired a fourth time. Straight across the near side of the field, at a stretch of floor Jupiter had been steering around for the last minute without registering why.

The gouges were there. Four of them now, and a fifth from earlier, and between them they had turned a quarter of the gym floor into ground a small Pokémon moving at speed would not choose to cross.

He hadn't chosen it. He'd been avoiding it. And avoiding it had made him, for one half-second, predictable.

It hit Jupiter.

Not a copy.

Jupiter.

The beam struck his left shoulder and the force of it turned him sideways and he hit the floor on one knee and the copies collapsed all at once, every one of them dissolving in the same instant Jupiter lost the concentration to hold them. The field went empty except for Hypno standing at one end and Jupiter on one knee at the other.

Miyato had gone very still on the bench.

Theo's jaw was tight. His hands hadn't moved from his sides.

Jupiter pushed to his feet.

His cheeks weren't sparking. The electricity had gone somewhere inside, pulled in, and his his movement was slower to start, a half-second behind where it had been before the Psybeam landed. His body was still working through something.

Hypno watched him. Nothing about it had changed all match.

Its pendulum had begun to move again.

Low arc. Building.

"Double Team," Theo said.

Jupiter split into three copies this time. Not five. Three was all he had.

Hypno's prediction had been good enough to find him once. It would narrow further with every attempt and three copies gave Sabrina a smaller field to work from than five had. The math was not in Jupiter's favor and Theo knew it and called it anyway because the alternative was standing still while Hypnosis finished building and that was the only outcome worse than this one.

The first Psybeam went out on a hard flat line and took a copy through the middle. It came apart soundlessly, folding into nothing, and the beam carried on past it to burn another mark into the far wall.

The second came four seconds later, angled tighter, and found the copy on the left. Two left. The remaining pair scattered wide and Jupiter's movement between them stopped having any logic to it at all; no rhythm to read, no preferred side, every new position chosen against whatever the last one had suggested. He was burning what he had left to make himself unpredictable, and it was the only thing keeping him on the field.

Hypno's pendulum was swinging higher.
"Quick Attack. Dead on."

Jupiter came out of the last copy at the only speed he had left and went across Hypno's line of sight rather than at it, cutting the angle the Hypnosis needed to hold onto, and the pendulum's rhythm broke for the second time and the energy that had been gathering came apart in the air.

Hypno was already turning before the swing finished.

It had known. Not where he was going. That he was going, that this was the answer and the answer had already been used twice, and it put the Psybeam across the far side of the arc without waiting to see him arrive there.

Jupiter was still committed to the movement. There was nowhere in it to stop.

The beam took him under the ribs and folded him around it and he hit the floor and slid.

The last copy went out somewhere behind him.

On the floor. One hand planted. Head down.

He was up in three seconds.

Three seconds was a long time. Long enough for Theo to count them and feel each one. Long enough for Miyato to lean forward with both elbows on his knees. Long enough for Perkuns, somewhere near the gym door, to go completely silent.

Jupiter stood.

His cheeks were sparking again. Not the steady satisfied kind nor the bright excited kind.

Something underneath both of those. The electricity in him had nowhere to go and it was just sitting there, present, sharp, right at the surface.

Hypno looked at him across the field.

It raised the pendulum.

Three seconds to build Hypnosis at this range.

"Jupiter." Theo said it quietly.

Jupiter turned his head and looked at him.

His cheeks sparked once. The look wasn't the smug look and wasn't the inventory look. The third one. The one Theo had seen twice before and hadn't named yet.

"I've got you after," he said. "Whatever's left. Leave it all here."

Jupiter looked at him for one more second.

Then he turned back to Hypno.

Something happened.

Theo didn't have the word for it. He watched it happen and understood it a beat late, in pieces. Jupiter went quiet. Not physically; he was still standing, still sparking at the cheeks, still present on the field in every observable way. But the quality of him changed. The everywhere-at-once sharpness that Jupiter carried, the constant low broadcast of his attention and mischief and readiness, folded inward. Smoothed below a threshold. Not gone. Not absent. Quieter.

The way a sound becomes inaudible.

The Coven Hypno had found it on Route 6 and told Jupiter it was there. Given him small exercises. Paper cups on tabletops. Jupiter had moved one by a fraction of an inch in the outpost and looked at Theo and neither of them had said anything about it.

This was not that.

This was not conscious. This was pressure finding a release valve it hadn't known existed. The frustration of a locked toolkit and Psybeam hits and a battle that had taken everything the trickster had and asked for more, and something in Jupiter reaching for the only thing left and finding the thing the Hypno had told him about.

Sabrina's read reached across the field.

Reached for what it expected and got static instead.

Not Jupiter's exact position. Not his trajectory. Just less information than there had been a moment ago. The signal that had been there throughout, readable even under the Double Team, suddenly ran quiet in a way that made the prediction fuzzy at the edges rather than precise.

Hypno's pendulum hesitated.

Not stopped. Hesitated. A half-arc shorter than the one before it.

Sabrina's head tilted a fraction. A very small fraction.

Theo saw it.

He almost didn't. Her stillness had been so complete for the entire battle that the tilt was barely a movement at all.

He understood immediately that she had just gotten less information than she expected to get and was recalibrating why.

Hypno fired Psybeam.

It crossed the field on the angle Sabrina had predicted and landed where Jupiter had been and found floor.

Hypno turned. Scanned. The prediction had been off by enough to matter. Jupiter had moved and the move had no clear trajectory from the previous position, no obvious logic to the angle, the probability region that Sabrina had been using to place her predictions was suddenly wider than she'd allowed for.

Psybeam again.

Floor.

Miyato was on his feet. Theo hadn't seen him stand.

The pendulum was still moving. The Hypnosis was still building as the Hypno had two things running at once now and the two things were working against each other because every Psybeam committed the pendulum to stillness for the half-second of the shot and the Hypnosis lost ground it had to rebuild.

Third Psybeam. Floor. Jupiter was somewhere near the far edge of the field and Hypno's shot had been aimed two feet left of there and Sabrina's tilt was slightly sharper now.

Theo watched Hypno's weight shift as it recalibrated.

She was extraordinary. Even operating with half the read she'd had before, the narrowing was happening.

Jupiter couldn't hold this. Not indefinitely. It was costing him to maintain the quiet. Theo could see it in the way his legs had started to plant more deliberately, the small signs of a Pokémon working at the limit of what it was doing. He had a window and it was closing fast.

"Close in," Theo said. "Iron Tail. Everything."

Jupiter moved.

Not the direction Hypno was reading toward. The opposite side entirely — the far edge, Hypno's blind angle, the one place the narrowing hadn't reached yet — and he came in low and fast with whatever Quick Attack speed he had left driving the approach, Iron Tail charging as he closed.

Hypno caught it.

Felt it coming a half-second before it arrived because even quieted Jupiter was still Jupiter and a half-second was what Sabrina could extract from static. Hypno turned and braced and raised both arms.
The Iron Tail landed anyway.

It came in over the top of the brace and caught Hypno across the forearms with everything Jupiter had carried across the field packed behind it, and the sound of steel-hard tail meeting braced bone cracked off the gym walls. The brace held. Barely. Hypno's feet slid back two full steps, gouging pale lines through the floor's finish, and the pendulum tore loose of its arc and swung wild on the cord.

The Hypnosis went out like a snuffed candle.

Hypno found its footing.

Psybeam, point-blank, immediate, no wind-up — the answer to anything that got this close was the answer it had been giving all match and it gave it now and Jupiter was right there, too close to dodge, and the beam hit him in the chest before he cleared the range.

He went back a step.

One step.

Stayed up.

His cheeks lit bright. Both of them. Brighter than Theo had seen across the entire battle.

"Knock Off."

Jupiter's tail came around, dark energy sheathing it. The move was days old, the framework from Kiyah's TM still settling, the edges of it rough. Rough was enough. It caught Hypno across the temple with everything a spent body could put behind a super-effective hit.

Hypno's knees bent.

Not slowly. All at once.

The pendulum swung once on its cord.

Hit the floor.

Hypno's eyes closed.

The gym was quiet.

---

Jupiter stood in the center of the field.

His cheeks were still lit. Not as bright. Dimming slowly back toward the low-steady kind as the battle's last exchange faded out of him. His left side was where the final Psybeam had landed and he was holding it slightly differently than the rest of his body, the small compensating shift that said it hurt but it wasn't the worst thing he'd taken tonight.

He didn't fall over.

He stood there and let the field settle and breathed.

Theo crossed to his end without waiting and dropped to one knee in front of him and held both hands out and Jupiter walked into them and stayed there. His tail made one slow arc. His cheeks flushed low.

"That last Psybeam," Theo said quietly. "You took it and stayed up." He held Jupiter for a moment more.
"I didn't call that," he said. "You know that, right?"

Not a question. Jupiter knew. Theo just needed to say it out loud.

Jupiter's cheeks sparked once more. The expression wasn't the smug look and wasn't the inventory look and wasn't even fully the third thing yet. It was still settling into whatever it was going to be. Something that had come out of tonight and hadn't existed before tonight.

Theo stood as Sabrina teleported across the field.

She stopped in front of Theo and looked at the two of them for a moment and held out the Marsh Badge.

Theo took it.

He looked at it. The weight of it. The realness of a thing that had been an outcome for weeks and was now a physical object in his hand.

"That was well earned," Sabrina said.

He looked up.

She was still watching Jupiter.

"The shielding." She said it without inflection. An observation, nothing more. "He found it under pressure, not through practice. That means it'll come back easier than before. It's not a technique yet. But he knows the shape of it now."

"That's what matters."

Jupiter looked at her.

She looked back. Held it.

"The Electro Ball needs work," she said. "Right now it only carries his speed. The charge component hasn't integrated yet. When it does the output will be significantly different." Another beat, this one slightly longer. "He'll get there."

She turned to go.

Stopped. Didn't turn back.

"The thing in your bag." Flat. Just the fact of it. "When it's ready, it will matter. Make sure you are as well."

---

Miyato was crossing the floor from the bench. His chin was up and his ears were pink and he wasn't looking directly at Theo, which was how he looked when something had gotten past the composure and he hadn't decided yet what to do about it.

He reached Theo and stood next to him and looked at the field.

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

A gym attendant appeared from the side corridor and stopped a respectful distance away. "We can take your Pokemon to the healing station now. In-gym machine. They'll be ready before you leave." She looked at Theo's belt. "All of them except whichever you're keeping out."

Perkuns drifted close to Theo's ear and crackled once.

"Just the Rotom stays," Theo said.

He handed over Zeus's ball first. Then Jupiter's. He held Jupiter's for a half-second longer than the others before he let it go, and the attendant took it carefully and didn't comment on the pause.

"Twenty minutes," she said, and left.

Theo looked at the field. Immaculate already, showing nothing of what had happened on it. Sabrina's end empty. The gym settling back into its ordinary quiet.

Miyato stepped forward onto the field edge and looked at the far end where Sabrina had reappeared, still and waiting.

His turn.