Morning light came through the stained glass in colored bars, sliding across the floor of a room in the Pokémon Center.
"Mm…"
Akiyama surfaced out of a dream, remembered something halfway up, and opened his eyes.
Kirlia was still asleep in the crook of his arm, the corner of her mouth curled. Whatever she was dreaming about, it was good.
Both her hands were locked around a black badge case. Through the clear panel on the front, the Rock Badge sat in its foam slot like it belonged there.
He worked his arm out from under her by inches and eased off the bed.
The room looked like a small disaster. Cake plates. Streamers. Balloons on the carpet. And the filthy clothes from yesterday, still balled up on the couch where he'd thrown them.
If my cousin ever found out I lost my mind over one little rock, she'd never let it go.
He checked the time. A little past seven. The liner wouldn't dock for a while yet.
Not that he'd forgotten. The ticket to Frostvale City was for today.
It took him until almost eight to get the floor clean, and everything went into the little trash can by the door. That thing could swallow more than anything else in the building.
Honestly, if a rookie Trainer couldn't afford an expanded-space backpack, stealing one of these cans would do the same job. And Nurse Joy would almost certainly decide she hadn't seen a thing.
In the bathroom, the mirror showed a streak of frosting still dried on his cheek. He thought back to last night and figured it had come off Kirlia's face when she'd fallen asleep against him.
Once he'd scrubbed it off, he went back to the bed and dug an unopened set of clothes out of his pack.
He'd looked up the incoming ship last night. One of the Nick Company's luxury liners—the outfit that supposedly had never once had an accident at sea in its entire operating history.
He tore the bag open. Black formal wear, with the Miki crest pinned at the chest.
Perfect for a ship like that.
The crest was shaped like rays of sunlight, with green worked into the center. It always reminded him of something from his old life: the pendant a certain Champion wore in the anime, the one that Mega Evolved her Gardevoir.
By the time he had it on, Kirlia was stirring.
The first thing she did was sit up and look around for him. When she spotted him standing behind her, she relaxed all at once.
Then she looked down at the badge case in her lap and immediately held it up for him again, practically bouncing.
It hit him that this was exactly what it looked like when a kid came home and shoved a school award at her parents.
He laughed and rubbed her head.
They ate a quick breakfast. He bagged the dirty clothes, buried them in his pack, and headed for the harbor with Kirlia on his shoulders.
They stepped off the Arcanine cart with time to spare.
The port was as quiet as it had been the other day, except now there was a dot out on the water, growing.
"More passengers? Or cargo?" Akiyama squinted down the pier, where two Machamp were hauling a massive crate toward the boarding ramp.
He didn't think much of it and started walking the same direction.
Maybe it was his imagination. But as he got closer to that crate, something in it seemed to tug at him.
The dot on the water kept growing. By the time it slid up against the dock, you had to tilt your head back to take it in.
Not many people boarded. A handful, scattered.
The two Machamp went first, and nobody checked anything—they just walked the crate up the ramp and disappeared with it into the ship.
Akiyama followed. The crew on deck looked over each boarding passenger, and their eyes lingered longest on the kid in formal wear.
He didn't flinch from it. He smiled, gave them a nod, and went looking for the cabin number on his ticket.
The room was simple once he got the door open. A bed, a nightstand, a bathroom with the shower walled off from the rest. No kitchen, but nobody needed one—the buffet ran all day and all night.
He tossed the dirty clothes in the washer and headed back out with Kirlia.
"Want to go watch some battles?"
"Kirl." She nodded.
He rubbed her head again and took the stairs up to the deck.
Bedrock City was already sliding away behind them, and looking at it, he got the sudden urge to lean over the rail and shout something dramatic at the shoreline, the way people always did in the anime he'd grown up on.
Back at the Bedrock City docks, someone was watching the liner shrink into the distance too.
The deck was enormous. You could have set two or three Pokémon Centers on it and had room left over, and the battle courts were up here as well.
At the moment, they were packed.
"Gyarados, Aqua Tail!"
The shout pulled both of them around.
A Gyarados whipped its water-wrapped tail across the court and caught a Ninetales that had nowhere left to go. It hit the deck and didn't get up.
Its Trainer, a middle-aged man, came scrambling out to check on it.
His opponent was a young woman in a plain white shirt. She walked over and handed him a Potion without a word, and the Gyarados—the species with a reputation for going off like a bomb—came and settled quietly behind her.
"Think you could take that Gyarados?" Akiyama asked, half joking, the wind off the bow pushing at them as the ship came up to speed.
Kirlia held up one finger, then another, measuring herself against the Gyarados. Then she seemed to pull up the Onix from the Rock Gym and measure that too.
Her shoulders dropped. She shook her head.
"Kirl…"
She couldn't.
"That's fine. That's a fully evolved Pokémon, and you're not a Gardevoir yet." He lifted her off his shoulders and set her on a raised platform beside the rail. "The day you evolve, you'll knock him flat."
Standing up there, she was almost his height. He reached around from behind and hooked an arm across her middle. There was a railing, sure, but behind that was open ocean, and a fall meant coming out of it soaked at best.
"Actually, she wouldn't even have to evolve. There's a way you could beat that Gyarados right now."
Heels clicked on the deck. Akiyama and Kirlia both turned.
A woman in a bikini and stilettos was coming toward them.
"And that would be?" He raised an eyebrow, curious in spite of himself.
She flipped her hair back over one shoulder and squared up in a way that clearly meant to add weight to her offer. "Trade with me. My Lilligant is strong—more than strong enough to—"
"No thanks. Have a nice day."
He didn't have the patience to let her finish. Some part of him had gone straight past irritated into allergic.
He picked Kirlia up and walked off like he was getting clear of a contagious disease.
She stood there blinking. Then her expression soured.
"You realize the only reason I'd trade for that thing is that I've never seen a Kirlia with broken horns before."
"What, you think I can't afford a Ralts?"
"And let's be honest. Yours probably can't even get a move off."
She wasn't loud about it. She didn't need to be. Akiyama stopped walking, and in his arms, Kirlia went stiff, both hands tightening on his shirt.
When he turned around, something about it apparently pleased the woman.
"See? A dud like that—you'd be coming out ahead and you know it."
His face went flat and cold. He dug into his pocket, pulled out the family crest, and tossed it so it landed at her feet.
"You're an idiot."
"You can say all that to my father."
It hit the deck with a clink.