"That's the first time in my life I've ever hated Teleport."
Akiyama pulled up short in front of a very empty patch of ground.
"Kirl?"
The Kirlia on his shoulders peered down at him, puzzled.
"Nothing. Come on. Let's get to the park—I want to see what you can do now."
The Abra hadn't gone far. It hovered in midair a few blocks off, still turning over the memory of that light, the brilliance of evolution burning behind its eyelids.
Then—
Its eyes cracked open a little wider, and it turned toward a tower at the center of Bedrock City.
Something psychic had detonated in there. Invisible, enormous, rolling outward in every direction.
Down at street level, Akiyama's steps stuttered. He looked at the same building.
"Was that something? Or am I imagining things?"
The park was already in sight, so he let it go.
The flat ground there had a classic battlefield chalked onto it in white, complete with a Poké Ball painted at center court.
He found an unoccupied one and lifted Kirlia down off his shoulders.
"Evolving should've opened up your move pool. Right?" He asked it carefully.
She nodded, bouncing a little on her toes. She'd been waiting for this.
"Show me, then." He dug the last of the punch boards out of his pack, grinning in spite of himself.
Kirlia nodded again.
Electricity crackled up around her fist. She drove it through a board and the board came apart in two clean halves.
"Thunder Punch. That's my girl."
She squirmed, pleased and mortified at once.
Then she plucked a fresh board out of his hand and tossed it up.
She jumped, spun, and struck three times before she landed. The board didn't break so much as disintegrate—confetti drifting down onto the chalk.
"Was that Triple Axel?" He hadn't seen that coming.
"Kirl!" She touched down and nodded proudly.
She kept going, move after move, and by the fourth one Akiyama's expression had started to do something strange.
Fire Punch. Thunder Punch. Ice Punch. Triple Axel. Zen Headbutt. Knock Off. Fling. Shadow Sneak.
All physical. Every single one.
Not one special attack in the bunch. The Gardevoir line's entire specialty, its whole reason for existing competitively, and she had none of it.
She didn't even have Confusion. She didn't have Teleport.
The closest thing to psychic power in her arsenal was Zen Headbutt, and Zen Headbutt was a physical move.
If she hadn't been female, he would have been genuinely worried about waking up to a Gallade.
"Kirl?"
Kirlia was watching his face change, growing smaller by the second. Her hands twisted together. Did I do something wrong?
Before the thought could finish forming, a hand settled on her head and ruffled her hair.
She looked up. Akiyama was smiling at her, and there wasn't a single hard edge in it.
"Nothing's wrong. You just know way more moves than I expected, that's all. You caught me off guard."
That was all it took. She threw herself against his chest, making small happy noises into his shirt.
He used the contact to read her while she wasn't paying attention.
He was certain now: her Ability was Telepathy. Which also meant that voice in the dream had been exactly what he'd thought it was.
So why couldn't she touch fantasy energy at all?
If it means protecting its Trainer, it will burn out its entire psychic power to create a small black hole.
He'd read that entry a hundred times in another life. He'd read all of them—every generation's take on the Gardevoir line.
Somewhere in all that text, an idea was starting to take shape.
"Okay. Today we drill until these feel automatic," he said. "Tomorrow we go scout the Gym."
"Kirl!"
She clenched her fist. No problem at all.
She had never felt like this. Strong—actually strong. Strong enough to take the Rock Gym for him. Strong enough that the next time something came out from behind a hill, she'd be standing between it and him.
She held on to that all afternoon, running her moves over and over until the sun went orange again and Akiyama finally steered her back toward the Pokémon Center.
She was still holding on to it in her sleep.
The next morning she woke early.
Akiyama had woken earlier.
"Morning." He heard her stirring and reached for the glass on the table. "Here. Still warm."
Kirlia took it in both hands and drank in tiny sips.
While she worked on it, he opened the Energy Cube case and held it out—and she finished the milk at almost exactly the right moment.
Once she'd eaten and he'd packed up, they headed out.
The Rock Gym sat in the northeast corner of Bedrock City, backed up against a mountain range, right at the outer edge of town.
Supposedly something lived in those mountains. A "tyrant." Years ago it had been a full-blown urban legend, the kind of story kids repeated at sleepovers, and then the current Gym Leader—Dagan—had taken over and the stories had quietly dried up.
Akiyama had his own guess about what the tyrant was. It started with a T and it ended in a sandstorm.
"Somebody's already challenging."
The Gym's heavy granite doors were shut, and an assistant stood out front, which was a good sign—the assistant only came out to queue up the next challenger while a match was running.
He explained why he was there, and the assistant led him around to a side entrance and down a narrow passage that felt less like a hallway and more like a mine shaft. At the end of it, stairs climbed up to the spectator seats.
He took a bench with a few other kids around his age.
Down on the field, a "brutal" battle was already underway.
The Gym Leader was impossible to miss: Dagan, built like a load-bearing wall, shirt off, brown muscle gleaming under the lights. His first Pokémon was a very small Geodude.
The challenger had a Staryu.
"Staryu, Water Gun! Finish it!"
Staryu took Geodude's hit without flinching and answered with a jet of water straight from its core. Geodude went flying, hit the dirt, and stayed down.
"Somebody's been raising that Staryu right," Akiyama thought, watching it float back to center, barely winded.
His cousin, Miki Enomoto, had a Starmie. He'd spent enough time around her to know the line well.
"There's a channel southwest of the city that runs toward Frostvale. Staryu live in it. Might be worth trying my luck."
While he was thinking it through, Dagan recalled Geodude and sent out a Bonsly.
The Bonsly went about the way you'd expect—one Swift, and it was airborne.
The third ball held an Onix, and it was a big one.
By then the Staryu had nothing left. Bind wrapped around it in two seconds, and the squeeze did the rest.
"Come back, Staryu." The challenger recalled it, then bowed to Dagan. "I lost. But I'll be back."
Dagan grunted. He didn't rub it in.
"You raised that Staryu well," he said. "But one Pokémon against three is a hard road. I'll be looking forward to the rematch."
The Rock Gym ran three-on-three, but it never required challengers to bring three Pokémon of their own. Show up with one, and they'd still take the match.
Which was exactly why Akiyama had picked it as his first stop.