The knock came before his alarm did, which was how he knew it was Yao.
He opened the door. She was standing in the hallway in a carefully assembled outfit, up on her toes from the effort of reaching the door, and the expression on her face communicated that she had been awake for some time and considered this delay in answering unreasonable.
"The market's probably not open yet," Sieg said.
"It will be by the time we finish breakfast," she said, with the certainty of someone who had already done the math.
She was right. They ate, she talked about things at a pace that made following the thread optional, and when they emerged onto the street the morning vendors were setting out their stalls in the cool air off the harbor. Yao latched onto his hand and pulled him into motion.
The Slateport open-air market was one of the city's better arguments for itself. A wide outdoor space running along the waterfront, filled with the kind of sellers who either moved through every port in Hoenn on a rotating circuit or had specific access to goods that didn't move through regular supply chains. The kind of place where, if you knew what you were looking for and the timing was right, you could find something worth more than the asking price. The Contest Hall sat at the northern end, visible above the stall roofs.
Yao had no interest in market economics. She walked alongside him at whatever pace he set and was visibly happy with the arrangement regardless of direction.
Sieg took his time.
The first stall worth stopping at had a full run of stat boosters, Attack, Defense, Speed, Special Defense, Special Attack, and HP, a complete set. Brewer's label looked legitimate. A few hundred thousand Pokédollars for the lot was fair for what they were, and he noted it for a return trip later in the morning.
The incense vendor next to it was drawing a crowd that wasn't buying. The items were real, Lax Incense, Full Incense, the elemental variants that boosted specific type damage, but priced to deter casual buyers. The crowd was mostly trainers who wanted to look at things they couldn't afford. He watched one person in proper high-level trainer gear purchase a Wave Incense, paid without negotiating, and left. The rest kept looking.
Long-term investment in a team could take that form. He filed it.
Yao tugged his hand toward a toy stall three rows over, and he went with her, because objecting seemed unnecessary. She spent several minutes in serious comparative evaluation of the available Pokémon plushies, treating the selection with the gravity it apparently deserved, and arrived at her conclusion with conviction.
"That one," she said, pointing at the Torchic.
He bought it. She held it with both arms for the rest of the morning.
The Vigor Powder stall almost made him walk past it.
He had been scanning the herb and material section with the specific attention of someone who knew what he was looking for but had a low baseline expectation of finding it, because the good stuff was almost always under contract with the commercial buyers long before it reached a market like this. Someone had gotten lucky with their sourcing, or had stock they couldn't move through the normal channels, or was testing a price point.
He didn't particularly care which.
The stock on the shelf was modest, not deep inventory, no sign that this vendor had more in the back. He bought everything they had without negotiating on price, because negotiating took time, and if he didn't move immediately, it would be gone. The supply he had built up from the Lavaridge herb shop was nearly exhausted; this restocked the core materials he needed for the specialized Energy Cube formulations.
Yao watched this transaction with the polite interest of someone who had accepted that her companion was going to do adult things intermittently and had decided to be gracious about it.
He gave her the Torchic plushie to hold with both hands, and she forgave him.
The TM shop occupied a proper storefront rather than a market stall, permanent location, classified inventory, the kind of place that moved enough volume to justify fixed overhead. Sieg had been planning to visit it since before they left the Pokémon Center.
Inside, the inventory was organized by type across eighteen sections. He went to the Normal section first, found the Endure disc gone as expected, demand for that one had been high since the tournament, and moved to Hidden Power, which still had one copy.
He took it to the counter and used the shop's testing equipment on the spot.
Zorua came out of its ball, made a face at the unfamiliar environment, and cooperated when asked. A small test discharge, enough to read the type assignment.
Ice.
Several trainers nearby registered the result and said nothing, but the expressions were clear enough. Ice Hidden Power was genuinely exceptional at this particular moment in the meta, Dragon-type dominated the upper tier of competitive play, Ice was Dragon's clearest answer, and a Zorua that could hit Ice damage gave Sieg coverage that most Dark-type specialists couldn't access through their normal move pool. He recalled Zorua and paid without drawing it out.
The rest of the Normal section was a measured pass. Endure was gone, but he found the disc elsewhere in inventory and added it to Crawdaunt's permanent move set. X-Scissor from the Bug section for additional coverage. Sludge Bomb from Poison, which broadened Crawdaunt's offensive options into territory that opposing Water-types would not enjoy.
He stopped at Umbreon's needs next. The Trick disc was the obvious gap in its setup. Umbreon's offensive stats were not the point, but the ability to force an item swap with an opponent could neutralize held-item strategies cleanly, and that kind of utility had uses that didn't require raw power. He added it.
Then he reached the Psychic section and stopped moving.
Wonder Room.
He stood in front of it for a moment and thought through what he was looking at.
The mechanics were specific: the move created a field effect that swapped every Pokémon's Defense and Special Defense stats for five turns. Both sides, all participants, simultaneously. Most trainers who encountered it treated it as a situational curiosity, a move that could work in theory but required very specific conditions to be worth the moveslot.
Umbreon's base stat line was 110 Defense and 130 Special Defense.
In a Wonder Room, every Pokémon on the field would be running Defense 130 and Special Defense 110. Including Umbreon's allies. Including Crawdaunt, which had serviceable Defense but significantly weaker Special Defense and would benefit enormously from the swap. Including Honchkrow, which could absorb physical punishment considerably better, with Umbreon's numbers backing it up.
And that was before the rest of the support set was considered, Helping Hand to amplify outgoing damage, Wish for sustained recovery across multiple turns, the Synchronize ability passing status conditions back through to opponents, and turning defensive positioning into offensive leverage. Stack Wonder Room on top of that, and the entire concept of what Umbreon contributed to the team changed from "defensive anchor" to "platform that makes everything else dramatically harder to deal with."
He looked at the price.
Three million Pokédollars.
Priced to deter. It had worked on most people, clearly, because the disc was still here. He picked it up, brought it to the counter, and paid without particular ceremony. The cashier processed the transaction with the practiced neutrality of someone who moved expensive inventory regularly and had learned not to comment on it.
Outside, Yao was waiting on the steps with her Torchic plushie tucked under one arm, watching the market traffic with the patient, curious attention of a small child who found everything equally interesting.
"Done?" she asked.
"Done," he said.
She took his hand again, and they walked back into the market.
He thought through the tactical picture as they moved. Two functional team cores, now both properly equipped.
The first core was Honchkrow's Snatch tactic, steal accumulated buffs from allies, translate them into Brave Bird output, hit something extremely hard once, and deal with the consequences. Peak damage expression, short window, not sustainable for extended engagements.
The second core was Umbreon as a sustained platform. Wonder Room swaps its defensive profile across the field. Helping Hand elevating outgoing damage. Trick capable of neutralizing held-item strategies that threatened the setup. Wish and Moonlight are running the recovery cycle in the background. Synchronize as a passive deterrent against status. Any of his three main attackers, Crawdaunt, Sharpedo, or Honchkrow, that dropped into that support structure became substantially more durable and substantially harder to answer.
The two cores didn't compete with each other. They addressed different problems in different time frames.
Yao pointed at a food stall and looked at him expectantly.
He bought her something, and she was satisfied, and they kept walking.