Night, in undeveloped woodland.
They found an open patch and set up the tent.
"Can you cook?" Akiyama asked.
"You want tomato and egg noodles?"
"Sure, sure, sure." Akiyama laughed.
One day on the road and he'd already picked up her verbal tic. Three cheerful sures meant I'm not answering that.
Which meant nobody was cooking but him.
"Did you bring food for your Pokémon?" He nodded at the Poké Balls on her belt.
He'd been dying for a chance to see what she actually had.
"…No." She said it like the thought had just occurred to her.
"Are you and your Pokémon strangers?" Akiyama pressed a hand to his forehead.
"Except Gyarados." Her eyes closed. "The rest of them are recent gifts. From my old man."
She'd never carried food in her life. She didn't even carry a bag. When Gyarados got hungry he went and ate straight out of the river, fresh and dripping. When she got hungry she chewed on a couple of Berries.
Cooking. Sure.
"What types?"
"Water, "
Akiyama gave up on her, built a fire, and got a pot going. He dug out the Berries he'd been collecting along the trail.
Good thing one of us plans ahead.
He let Kadabra out.
"Do you know how to make Energy Cubes? Never mind. You don't. Watch me."
He realized halfway through the question how stupid it was.
"Every Berry has a different flavor profile and different nutrition, so the whole game is combining them efficiently—getting each one's strengths to carry over."
"Swap one Berry for another and you get a completely different result."
"With a machine it's easier. But we've got no power out here, so we do it by hand. More work."
"Roast, melt, reduce, blend. Then into the mold to set."
Kadabra listened, and a door opened onto a world he'd never considered.
So that's where the cubes I eat come from.
"Just so you know, this method only makes ordinary cubes. Same with the machines. The top-tier stuff you and Gardevoir eat takes different steps entirely."
"You couldn't manage those yet. I'll teach you later."
Kadabra nodded, then watched Akiyama's hands with total concentration.
He had it inside twenty minutes.
Before long it was Kadabra doing the work with Confusion while Akiyama supervised from the side.
The blended liquid went into the molds, and blue cubes began to set, one after another.
Akiyama used the time to put together a Berry salad—dinner for himself and Nanami .
When the cubes were fully hardened, Kadabra lifted one with Confusion and examined it closely.
There were flecks of violet suspended in the blue.
Something clicked.
So higher-grade cubes require gathered fantasy energy?
Akiyama's hand jerked mid-plating.
"You are going to keep surprising me, aren't you."
Kadabra popped one in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. The flavor was nothing special, and it did absolutely nothing for him.
"Those are standard Water-type cubes," Akiyama said, reading the confusion. "Water Pokémon like them best, and Nanami 's got a whole team of them."
"Basic is fine. Almost any Water type will eat them, and there's not much nutrition in there anyway. They fill a stomach. That's it."
I see.
Kadabra turned it over in his mind. He was learning a great deal tonight.
Off to the side, Nanami had checked out somewhere around the word reduce and was now sitting with her head down and her hands over her ears.
Gyarados, meanwhile, was staring at the cubes with naked hunger.
"Dinner."
That got Nanami 's head up. She came over practically bouncing, took the bowl and chopsticks without a word of thanks, and dropped straight down cross-legged in the dirt like a farmhand at lunch.
Akiyama opened his mouth, closed it, and silently pulled a folding table and chairs out of his pack.
By the time he had them set up, her bowl was empty. She let out a satisfied belch.
"Okay, credit where it's due. That's good."
"My sisters taught me." Akiyama thought about a lot of things and sighed.
By sisters he meant, of course, Gardevoir. All of them. Taught to the letter, by the book, without a single deviation. Of course it was good.
"Let your team out, would you," he added between bites. "Gyarados is about to start crying."
"Right." She finally remembered, took the balls off her belt, and expanded them in her palm.
Red light bloomed and a very elegant sea serpent settled onto the grass. The fan of her tail was red and blue, and pink whiskers trailed to the ground. Her skin had a damp, faintly viscous sheen that practically invited you to reach out and find out how smooth it was.
Milotic.
The pride of the Shuiyi family.
Akiyama shoveled salad into his mouth and made a quiet mental note.
Second ball: a blue seahorse. Kingdra.
Third was bigger, four-limbed, with something like a shell across its back. Blue all over.
Lapras.
The fourth was bigger still, spread out like a great black cloak.
Mantine.
And then—
Akiyama paused at the last one.
The moment it appeared it was scanning the treeline, wary. A lizard shaped uncomfortably like a person, left index finger raised in front of its mouth like the barrel of a pistol.
Inteleon.
"Well? Not bad, right?"
"Not bad at all. But your dad knows you're planning to go after Reiji, and he hands you five Water types—"
"You two not close?"
While he talked, Kadabra used Confusion to divide the cubes evenly among all five Pokémon. When Nanami didn't object, they ate—carefully at first. The tension in the clearing eased a little.
The question caught her flat.
"Sure, sure, sure." She laughed, and answered nothing at all, and looked off at something.
Akiyama wasn't idle. He was measuring, comparing, adding it up.
That's a big gap.
Payback for the shipwreck was going to have to wait a while.
Standard practice for a rookie Trainer out of the Miki Group was a Metagross, at least until the Ralts reached its final form. His situation was unusual—but if he asked, he'd get one. He was sure of that.
He thought it over and dropped the idea.
Because Gardevoir would get ideas of her own.
He looked over at her, working through a cube of her own, and smiled.
No rush. There'll be time to flatten that Gyarados later.
He had her. What else was he supposed to want?
"Garde?"
She tilted her head, puzzled by whatever was on his face.
"Nothing."
He cleaned up, buried the disposable dishes, and stretched out on the grass to look at the sky.
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