"That's a strong Larvesta," Akiyama said, getting there first.
"Ah!" She snapped out of it. "Your Gardevoir is really pret—"
She stopped. She'd seen the broken heart on Gardevoir's chest.
"She is," Akiyama said, smiling, picking the sentence up where she'd dropped it. "The prettiest Gardevoir I've ever seen."
The girl nodded, a little dazed.
"Let's start over. Miki Akiyama." He stepped forward and put out his hand.
"Reika."
Her hand was small in his.
"Miki, huh? I feel like I've heard that somewhere." She squinted, thinking.
Akiyama withdrew his hand without making a thing of it. "I get that a lot. Coincidence. Anyway, you look familiar to me too."
"Oh?" Her mouth made a small round o.
"Back in Bedrock City. There was a girl with a Pikachu who plowed into me in the park and knocked a whole box of Energy Cubes out of my hands."
Akiyama's eyes narrowed with amusement.
"I'm so sorry!"
Reika folded into a ninety-degree bow without a second's hesitation.
Now Akiyama was the one caught off guard. He'd only meant that she resembled the girl. He hadn't expected to have found the actual culprit.
She straightened up, voice dropping. "I'd been chasing leads on a Larvesta forever, and that day I finally got one, so I was in a hurry. I'll pay you back for them."
"Forget the money. Battle me instead. Call it even."
Beside him, Gardevoir perked up at the word battle.
I have to show Akiyama how strong I am now!
She'd picked up so many new moves when she evolved.
"Oh! Yeah, sure. But I need to patch these guys up first." Reika had no reason to say no.
He nodded, and she released her new Butterfree and her Pikachu and started spraying them down.
Akiyama took one look at the purple bottle with the white grip in her hand—a plain Potion—and held out something else: a blue transparent bottle in a metal casing.
"Use this. Works better."
Reika eyed the very expensive-looking thing. "Wait, that's a Max Potion. Isn't that way too—"
He waved her off, and she took it.
"Pi?"
The spray hit Pikachu and he twitched, feeling his body slam back toward full. They make this stuff?
Butterfree took even less. A couple of pumps and it had its energy back, wings up, airborne again.
Nothing like the games, where a bottle vanished after one use. A Max Potion here was good for a lot of applications.
Reika tried to hand it back. Akiyama told her to keep it.
Then they got on with it.
"Go, Pikachu."
"Gardevoir. You're up."
"We'll take the first move, then. Gardevoir—Fire Punch, close the distance!"
"Pikachu, Quick Attack!"
They met in the middle of a blink. Pikachu ran his head straight into Gardevoir's burning fist and went flying backward.
Gardevoir didn't move an inch, though her whole arm buzzed with the impact.
Pikachu hit the grass, shook his head hard, and beat out the little flame in his fur.
"Pikachu, Agility, then ram her!"
"Gardevoir, Triple Axel."
White light wrapped Pikachu and he became a streak.
Gardevoir left the ground.
At the exact moment they closed, Reika called it: "Pikachu, Iron Tail!"
His tail sheathed itself in metal, and with all that Agility behind him he spun in midair, loading the strike.
Akiyama was drawing breath to counter when white light flared over Gardevoir—and over Pikachu at the same instant.
The tail stopped dead, halfway through the swing.
Disable.
He recognized it on sight.
Then Triple Axel came anyway, and Pikachu, pinned in place in the air, got kicked out of it.
Only two hits landed. Not a clean sweep.
"Well," Akiyama said, laughing. "Looks like evolving got you a whole new toolbox. Fight this one yourself, then."
Gardevoir glanced back at him and nodded once.
"Pikachu, you good?"
He shook himself off and gave her a look that said obviously.
"Okay! Then let's keep going—Thunderbolt!"
"Pika! Ka! CHU!"
Lightning ripped across the clearing and sent a flock of Spearow up out of the far trees.
Akiyama's hands closed into fists. He swallowed.
Gardevoir didn't move. She raised one arm, braced it forward, and a transparent dome came up around her.
The Thunderbolt broke on the outside of it.
"That's Protect!" Akiyama couldn't keep it in.
She looked back at him and nodded, unmistakably pleased with herself.
The dome faded. She lowered her arm just as the Thunderbolt died out.
Then a brown aura rose off her, swelling like something about to blow, and she lifted both hands overhead and gathered it.
"Pika—?!"
Pikachu saw what came screaming at him and threw himself sideways in raw panic.
He was a fraction too slow. The Focus Blast clipped him, detonated, and launched him along with a spray of dirt and turf.
"Pikachu!" Reika shook off her own shock and ran forward.
He was flat on his back with all four feet in the air and swirls where his eyes should be.
"That was a Focus Blast." Even Akiyama was staring. "That's… something else."
She kept doing this to him. Every ten minutes, another surprise.
The progress bar in his vision ticked down again—from 60 to 59.
That wasn't the number it had been before he'd blacked out. So the cheat had kept working right through his coma. Good to know.
Gardevoir felt the shift in her own strength and looked back at him.
Akiyama has psychic powers too. He has to.
Akiyama is amazing.
Reika recalled Pikachu and pulled out a different ball.
"Go, Butterfree."
It was in the air before it had fully materialized, moving like something that had never been in a ball at all.
"Still got it in you?" Akiyama asked.
Gardevoir didn't answer. She answered with her hands—the aura roared back up around her and another Focus Blast began to form.
"Butterfree, dodge!"
Butterfree tilted into the breeze and slid out of the way like the attack had been an afterthought.
"Bet you don't have an answer for something that agile," Reika said, grinning. "Butterfree, Stun Spore!"
It climbed until it was directly overhead and let the powder fall in a thick, drifting curtain.
Gardevoir didn't dodge. Didn't shield. She swung a fist with everything she had and kicked up a gust of wind.
No.
Not wind.
Akiyama's eyes sharpened. He knew the move.
That was the Focus Blast.
The entire cloud of Stun Spore reversed direction and went straight back up.
Butterfree flew right into its own attack, wings still beating, too surprised to correct—and breathed the whole thing in.
Its wingbeats slowed. Slowed more. Then its body locked up.
It dropped out of the sky like a stone.
Gardevoir was already waiting for it, fist cocked and burning.
Butterfree flambé.