The Abra stared at the newly evolved Kirlia, and something clicked into place behind those narrow eyes.
Whatever it was, it broke over the little psychic like a wave.
The hill had come apart with a roar loud enough to carry all the way back to the ticket office.
By the time the attendant arrived, riding in on a Staraptor, the Nidoking was already flat on the ground—and the sight of it stopped him cold.
The Abra took one look at the man and teleported. Where it went, nobody could have said.
"Dammit—how did a Nidoking get in here?"
Then, at the foot of the shattered hill, he spotted Akiyama sitting in the rubble with both hands clamped over his head, eyes glassy.
And beside him—
A Kirlia.
"Staraptor, get us down there, now!"
....
"Your son's going to be fine, sir. Nothing serious. You can relax."
Nurse Joy handed the report across to Masaki, who sat on the waiting room couch with a shiny Gallade standing at his shoulder, spine straight as a bodyguard's.
He took the papers and read them through, and the storm on his face eased a few degrees.
"The capture frontier is supposed to be a starter zone. A gift to rookie Trainers." He looked up. "So explain to me how this happened."
"I'm very sorry. There was an oversight. An injured Nidoking got inside and concealed itself, and for reasons we're still investigating, it attacked." She paused. "We also found traces of a Hyper Beam at the site that couldn't have come from the Nidoking."
She passed him two more things: a chart of the species stocked inside the frontier, and photographs from the scene.
He went through them. Baby Pokémon, top to bottom. Nothing on that list could have fired a Hyper Beam.
"Metronome," Masaki said. "Is that possible?"
"It's... not impossible," Nurse Joy said carefully. "But the odds are almost nothing."
"Mm. Understood."
His eyes went dark, and whatever he was thinking, he kept to himself.
Nurse Joy handed over one last report.
"Compared to her readings as a Ralts, the Kirlia has improved across the board. The one exception is her fantasy energy. Honestly, it presents like a premature birth. Or severe malnutrition." She stopped there, letting the rest of it sit unsaid. "Though I'd assume a family with the Miki gift would never—"
"She has never wanted for anything." Masaki was looking at the photo attached to the report: both of Kirlia's red horns, snapped partway down. "Her condition isn't your concern. The fact that she evolved at all is a miracle."
He remembered every number on Ralts' old charts. He knew exactly what kind of miracle it was.
"Of course." Nurse Joy nodded. "Would you like to look in on your son before you go?"
"No need. He's fine. That's enough. I have work." He shook his head and stood.
It looked cold. And only the Gallade beside him knew how fast the man had traveled through the night to get here, and how little he'd said the whole way.
....
"Time to get up, young master."
A row of Gardevoir in maid uniforms pushed the door open and beamed at the boy sprawled across the enormous bed.
"Where am I?" Akiyama blinked at the ceiling, then at the maids, and got exactly nowhere with either question.
They didn't wait for him to catch up. Confusion lifted him upright, washed his face, dressed him, and set a breakfast in front of him that had clearly been made with love and an eye on his cholesterol.
"Where's Ralts?" he asked around a mouthful.
And the world stopped.
The quiet came down so heavily that he raised his head.
Every Gardevoir's face had gone smeared and indistinct, like a photograph left out in the rain.
Then, while he was still trying to make sense of it, they bowed in unison and swept aside, opening a path down the middle of the room.
Ralts stood at the end of it, crying.
Evolutionary light poured over her, and out of the glow stepped a Kirlia with broken horns.
"Aki... Akiyama..."
A girl's voice, caught on a sob, soft as anything—and it didn't come through his ears. It rang inside his chest, gentle and enormous at once, the way a temple bell sounds when someone swings a beam into it.
His heart shook.
"Kir—Kirlia?"
Everything around him collapsed. Only she remained, walking toward him, tears running down her face, calling his name over and over.
Then he woke up.
White ceiling. Curtain track. A hospital room.
And the broken-horned Kirlia from the dream, standing right there at the edge of his bed, crying.
The second she saw his eyes open, she launched herself at him.
"Kir-liaaa~"
She wrapped both arms around his and buried her face against it.
The last day came back to him in pieces. The attendant calling it in, the ride back to the hospital, and then his head going soft and heavy until he'd dropped straight into sleep.
That voice in the dream. That had been her. He was almost sure of it.
He looked at her broken horns, and a theory started assembling itself in the back of his mind.
But the thing he felt most clearly, holding her, was that the withered little stalk of grass was gone. Whatever she was now, she wasn't going to snap in the next breeze.
He sat up, pulled her into his lap, and thumbed the tears off her cheeks.
"Hey. Hey. I'm not going anywhere. I'm fine. Nothing's going to happen to me."
The word happen set her off worse than before.
It took a long time, and a lot of patting, before she finally wound down to hiccups.
"See? Good as new." He swung his legs out of bed and stood to prove it. "Strong enough to train you today, even."
In his old world, a knock like that would have meant six weeks of taking it easy and a lot of unsolicited advice from relatives.
Here, nobody would even blink at it.
Nurse Joy could put a collar and leash on Death himself. Fate says you're supposed to die at midnight? She'd keep you breathing until noon just to make a point.
The door opened and Nurse Joy came in, entirely unsurprised to find her patient standing on the floor.
"Because you're a registered rookie Trainer with the League, your stay is fully covered—you won't be paying a thing." She gathered up the empty IV bottles as she talked. "The frontier also wants to apologize for your injuries. They're compensating you with points equal to thirty thousand League coins."
"And I want you to know that this will never happen again. You have the Joy family's word on it."
Akiyama glanced down at his wrist. The Frontier Balls were gone—collected while he was out.
"Thanks. Really."
He was done with hospital beds, though, and said so. They discharged him that morning.
One problem became obvious the second they hit the sidewalk: Kirlia was too big to carry against his chest anymore.
"Look at you. All grown up," Akiyama said, grinning.
Kirlia ducked her head and fidgeted with her skirt like a girl who'd been told something embarrassing in public.
Being bigger didn't mean there was no solution, though. He reached down, hoisted her up, and set her on his shoulders.
Within about four steps, the two of them were officially one of the sights of Bedrock City.
On the walk toward the park's training fields, his mind kept circling back to that white pillar of light.
Another Pokémon had saved him. He was sure of that much. If it hadn't fired when it did, "concussion" would have been an optimistic diagnosis.
Then, at the edge of his vision, something moved in the shadow of a big stone sculpture.
A yellow Pokémon, floating a foot off the ground.
An Abra.
Every instinct he had said: that's the one.
He broke into a run.