By the time the sun went orange over the park, Akiyama was sitting on a bench with Ralts in his lap, wiping the sweat off her forehead and wincing every time she flinched.
"Ralts!"
She threw a stubborn little fist in the air. Still good. Still going.
Filthy, worn out, and refusing to quit—it made his chest hurt to look at her.
Fourteen years he'd carried her around like something made of glass.
"You know what, let's just drop it. I'll buy a couple of strong Pokémon and we'll—"
"Ralts!"
She cut him off before he could finish. In the orange light she stared up at him, and there was too much in that look to name. Then she shook her head, hard, and pumped her fist again to prove she could do this. She was trembling all over. Like she already knew exactly how useless she was, and was terrified he'd finally decided he didn't want her.
"That's not what I meant." The words came out fast. "I'm not getting rid of you. I just don't want you hurting."
She shook her head again—bratty, mulish, and dead serious all at once.
Under the weight of that red eye, Akiyama sat quiet for a moment. Then he nodded. "Okay. I hear you. I'm sorry, Ralts. We do it together."
Off in the long shadows the yellow Pokémon watched, head tilted, turning something over.
Akiyama dug a clear crystal case out of his pack. Inside, arranged in neat rows, sat thirty-six Energy Cubes, each one no bigger than a fingernail.
The instant the lid came up, the smell of fantasy energy rolled out—and in the shadows the yellow Pokémon snapped fully awake.
These were the top grade: Psychic-type Energy Cubes, the kind that never filled you up no matter how many you ate. For a Psychic-type they were a temptation bordering on cruelty. They were also obscenely expensive, and absurdly delicate. Store them in anything but crystal and they went inert within hours.
Ralts reached for one just as somebody started shouting down the path.
"Coming through—sorry, sorry, excuse me—"
A girl in blue blew past like a gust of wind and clipped the case straight out of his hands.
Cubes went everywhere.
"Pika-pika!"
The Pikachu on her shoulder twisted around and called back twice, which was probably an apology.
Akiyama sat there blinking at the dirt-flecked cubes scattered across the ground, still catching up to the fact that he had just been robbed by pure bad luck.
"Forget it. We'll buy more." He sighed, gathered up the ruined cubes, dropped them in the trash can beside the bench, and stood, brushing off the seat of his pants. He scooped Ralts up and left.
He'd thought about chasing the girl down and making her pay for them. Then he'd looked at Ralts, exhausted on his arm, and decided it wasn't worth it. They were snacks. Snacks could be replaced.
Ralts' mouth screwed up into a pout.
Some people had no manners.
Once they were gone, the yellow Pokémon in the shadows teleported to the trash can.
If Akiyama had still been there, he would have recognized it instantly: an Abra. A very, very dirty Abra.
It raised a hand, and Confusion lifted the contents of the can into the air—splintered punch boards still crusted with ice, and, buried among the trash, the discarded Energy Cubes.
It picked them out one by one. It did not care about the dirt. It shoved a handful straight into its mouth.
The cubes dissolved into a cool blue liquid that spread out through every part of its body.
Its eyes went perfectly, enormously round.
Things like this exist?
.....
"That's all you've got?" Akiyama frowned.
"I'm afraid so." The clerk behind the counter was patient about it. "There isn't much demand in Bedrock City for cubes at that grade. The price scares most people off." She thought for a second and added, "And the capture frontier out past the city limits just opened for business, so we shipped a portion over there as a draw."
The capture frontiers were always set up on the outskirts of a city, in freshly cleared danger zones.
Trainers used a special Frontier Ball to catch wild Pokémon on a temporary basis. The balls could be used over and over; their hold was weak enough that a Pokémon caught by one could be caught by one again, and again, and again. The dangerous species got culled out, the docile ones got left in, and repeated catching gradually tamed them.
"That thing was genius," Akiyama said—remembering, as a kid, the shock of learning this world had a ball like that.
What had really jolted him was the name of the inventor.
Giovanni. The infamous boss of Team Rocket.
A man who had no business existing in this world.
He swiped his card and walked out with three cases of Energy Cubes.
Enough for about a month.
The light was going, so he headed back to the Pokémon Center to turn in.
"Night, Ralts."
He lay down in bed. Beside him Ralts was already fading fast.
"Ral..."
She was out between one breath and the next.
A full day of training had wrecked her.
She didn't wake up until noon the next day. When she finally opened her eye, Akiyama was sitting up in bed scrolling on his phone.
"Morning. Well. Sort of." He glanced back at the rustling behind him.
Ralts crawled out from under the blanket and shook a fist at the air.
Let's go. Today's training.
"No training today," Akiyama said, grinning. "Today we get some real battles in."
"Ralts?"
She tilted her head.
.....
"Right here."
He stopped in front of the frontier's ticket office and gave the confused Pokémon in his arms an explanation.
He'd thought it through the night before. A full day of drills had gotten her to the point where Ice Punch would, more or less, come out. Live combat would do more for her now than another day of punching boards.
And a capture frontier was mostly stocked with Oddish—things that couldn't hurt her if they tried. Perfect.
He got in line and walked inside, eyes going straight to the redemption board hanging in the middle of the lobby.
They had the Energy Cubes he wanted. Redeemable with frontier points, and you earned points by turning in the Pokémon you caught.
"Hi there. Admission's one thousand League coins," the woman at the window said. "That gets you twelve Frontier Balls. Fill all twelve and you're looking at roughly ten thousand League coins' worth of points."
Generous barely covered it. It was practically charity.
He swiped his card, caught the flicker of disbelief on her face when the balance came up, and moved along.
The twelve Frontier Balls came shrunk down and strung together, like an oversized green bracelet.
Cool air met him past the gate. Ahead, hills rose one after another, high and bare.
"Live rounds today," he told Ralts.
Her eye sharpened to a point.
They hadn't gone twenty steps before an Oddish came bouncing out of the grass, taking a leisurely stroll.
"Go, Ralts!"
"Ralts!"
She sprang out of his arms and used the only move she had.
Frost sheeted over her fist. She drove it into the Oddish's side.
The Oddish sailed backward and hit the dirt with its eyes spinning, still trying to figure out what had happened.
And in front of Akiyama, the progress bar he hadn't seen since the train reappeared. The 100% dropped to 99%.
Faint gold particles drifted out of the air and sank into Ralts.
Holy—it's live. I've got cheats.