"Gyarados. Rain Dance."
Reiji's voice came flat and cold off Wailord's back.
Across the wrecked deck, the rampaging Gyarados went still. His Trainer's face lit up—she got half a word out—and then Gyarados threw his head back and roared, and water energy began stacking up in the sky above them.
The sunlight the Ninetales had called was already gone. Black clouds rolled in and smothered what few stars had been left.
"Wailord. Hydro Pump. Everything you've got."
For a second the deck was dead silent.
Then people felt it—that horrible pressure building out over the water—and the silence broke. Poké Balls snapped shut, passengers scattered in every direction, and some of them just went over the rail.
BOOM.
The Hydro Pump hit amidships. Hull material built to shrug off anything the ocean could throw at it split down the middle like a block of tofu.
The liner cracked in half and started to go down.
"Kirlia, hold on to me!"
Akiyama got a grip on her and threw himself off the tilting deck.
He came up on the surface, floating—entirely thanks to the pack strapped to his back.
"You've gotta hand it to a bunch of psychic freaks," he muttered. "They don't do anything small."
He started kicking away from the wreck, awkward as a dog in a bathtub, the backpack riding behind him like a giant balloon with no intention of sinking.
"Just don't get noticed. Get far enough out, wait for backup." He set his teeth. "Somebody called the Jennys. Somebody had to."
The jump had startled Kirlia badly, and she had both fists knotted in his collar.
He glanced back over his shoulder mid-stroke. The maddened Gyarados was out in the open water now, swinging Aqua Tail at nothing in particular, scattering chunks of floating hull.
Then he stopped swinging at debris and fixed on the nearest living thing in the water.
Akiyama.
"Of course. Of course." He hauled harder, arms burning.
But there was no version of this where a kid out-swam a Gyarados.
The shadow stretched toward him, longer and longer. He caught it in the corner of his eye and looked. Not far. Not far at all.
"Kirl."
Kirlia's voice pushed at him, tight with panic.
"It's okay. We're okay." Akiyama stopped swimming and started working the straps of his pack loose, slow and careful.
He didn't have long. Gyarados was already on top of them, tail rising, water spiraling around it.
Aqua Tail.
Akiyama looked up at that enormous tail. One hand reached back for Kirlia, and lingered there. He pulled in a breath.
"Listen to me, Kirlia. When I let go, you take the pack and—"
"Kirl!"
She tore out of his grip, planted both feet on his shoulder, and launched herself into the air.
At the top of her arc she looked back down at him, floating there in the black water. Then electricity crackled and wrapped around her fist.
"KIRLIA!"
The word came out of him as something closer to a scream.
It ended the way it had to end. One collision, one instant, and the tail swatted her out of the sky and into the sea.
But it wasn't for nothing. The Aqua Tail went wide. It hammered the water beside Akiyama instead of through him.
"Catch it, Kirlia!"
He put everything he had into hurling the backpack across the swell.
It wasn't much. The pack made it halfway and dropped into the water.
Floating there, it cut across part of her line of sight. Through the gap, she saw the ocean close over Akiyama's head.
Then Gyarados's Hyper Beam struck the same patch of sea.
Something lurched behind her eyes. The world smeared, and Kirlia grabbed her head with both hands.
Fantasy energy came pouring into her all at once, more than she'd ever felt—and then jammed against something inside her, unable to move, unable to do anything but pile up.
She couldn't swim. She began to sink.
The only thing left on the surface was a floating backpack.
Far off, faint, she thought she heard sirens. And shouting.
"People first! Get the people out!"
"Arcanine, Sunny Day—burn off this rain!"
"Everyone, to me! My name is Miki Enomoto! Starmie, pull them in!"
Backup had finally arrived, late. Speedboat after speedboat swung wide and closed a ring around Reiji's Wailord.
An Officer Jenny in uniform threw a Poké Ball. Not the usual Arcanine—every last one of them sent out Skarmory.
Enomoto wore a cropped shirt under a white jacket, the Miki family crest at her breast. Wrapped in a shell of pale violet Confusion, she stood on the surface of the ocean like it was pavement.
"Gallade!" She snapped out a Poké Ball, and a broad-shouldered Gallade appeared on the water beside her.
She flicked a hand. Confusion sheathed him too, and his feet found the sea and held.
Starmie worked without pause, Confusion flaring again and again, hauling one person after another out of the swells.
"Where's my brother?" Miki scanned the faces of the rescued, and the one she wanted wasn't there. Her voice sharpened. "Gallade—find him. Go."
Gallade swept the water once from where he stood, cut around the Wailord that the Skarmory were battering, and vanished from her sight.
.....
Forget it, old man. Not a chance.
Down in the dark water, Kirlia saw the day they left home.
And then the rest of it, all eight short days, sliding past her like a wheel spinning too fast.
"Ralts…"
"Ralts…"
"Kirlia?!"
Ordinary days, the two of them. Brilliant as a meteor and about as long-lasting.
Other things came with it. Looks. Voices.
"A dud like that—you'd be coming out ahead and you know it."
That stranger's voice rang through her, tearing the bright pieces apart as it went.
If I could just use a Psychic move—
Akiyama… I didn't protect you…
And in that moment, the fantasy energy that had ignored her her whole life came rushing in like something gone wild.
Kirlia's going to be fine. She has to be.
Akiyama's eyes were closed.
The Hyper Beam had missed him. He'd already been under.
But he still couldn't swim.
He sank without a sound while his lungs burned down toward nothing.
If he opened his eyes he might see her. He couldn't make himself do it.
One week away from home and I'm already on near-death experience number two. Great record.
It's fine. As long as she's out of the water.
He'd meant to shrug off the pack and throw her clear with it. She'd beaten him to it.
The thought pulled the corner of his mouth up.
Not a bad run.
That was when he heard the heartbeat.
Thud.
Thud.
Louder. Louder still.
Not imagining it, then.
But he couldn't hold on to the thought long enough to finish it.
And then there was a voice somewhere close by. His own voice, maybe.
"You're not a Gardevoir yet. The day you evolve, you'll knock him flat—"
Warm light swallowed him whole. His eyes cracked open on a field of pure white.
Something in him understood, and he pulled that white light into his arms.
Two separate heartbeats slid into one.
He felt the small green sprout inside him surge—and then burst, and the darkness above him opened into a whole sky of violet stars.