Inteleon came out of the ball into a room he'd never seen and instantly went on guard.
"Inteleon. Hyper Beam!"
Inteleon stopped dead.
What?
He turned his head and stared at her.
Hyper Beam.
Me?
"Seriously? You don't have it? I'm pretty sure you can learn that." Nanami looked honestly confused.
He could learn it. Nobody in the history of the world had ever gone out of their way to teach a Inteleon Hyper Beam.
Inside the wall, Gengar surfaced halfway out and rolled a Shadow Ball between his palms.
A push, and it came screaming across the room.
Inteleon caught the sound, threw a hand back over his shoulder, and pointed. Water-type energy gathered at his fingertip and blasted out in a torrent.
The Shadow Ball won that exchange easily.
BOOM.
It burst directly in front of him.
And out of the smoke came a column of white light.
Gengar sank calmly into the wall and disappeared. The beam hit stone and rang like struck glass.
When the dust cleared, Milotic had arrived.
The white column had been a Hyper Beam.
"See, Hyper Beam's just better," Nanami said, with total confidence.
Inteleon's whole face collapsed. There was nowhere to put the injustice.
Gengar attacked again from a new angle. Shadow Ball again.
With something to prove, Inteleon raised a hand and answered with Dark Pulse, knocking the sphere clean out of the air.
Nanami wasn't watching him. "Milotic. Be ready to fire on my call."
Inteleon's soul left his body.
The next Shadow Ball came right on schedule. He lifted a finger.
Dark Pulse.
Snipe Shot.
The sphere burst against the wall with that bright chiming crack—and Gengar was out in the open, more of him showing than he'd meant to.
Nanami 's eyes lit up. "Now!"
Milotic had been charging the whole time. Hyper Beam ripped across the hall.
No glass-chime this time. It hit—and did nothing at all, rippling across Gengar's body and dispersing.
Oh, damn it.
She remembered a beat too late.
A Shadow Ball arced out, burst against him, and that finally put something like pain on Gengar's face.
He vanished, and Nanami looked at Inteleon.
Inteleon lifted his chin, extremely pleased with himself, and let his silence say you're welcome.
"Right. Normal moves don't touch Gengar." She sighed at herself.
He'd been dodging everything, and it had made her sloppy.
Smart Gengar.
.....
"You'd train him for me? Really?"
The old man's eyes came alive. He reached across and gripped the hand of the man who wasn't there, grateful.
Then he sat back down and spoke half to himself.
"This late and he's off playing somewhere. Ah, well. That's what old age gets you—you can't keep up with a boy like that anymore."
Something in him gave way and he sighed again.
"Some days I hope somebody comes along and takes him with them. Lets him shine the way he's meant to, instead of wasting himself on a couple of old fools."
"We don't have much time left. And he hasn't seen a single thing past that treeline."
Akiyama had been scanning the room, and his eyes reached the doorway.
Gengar was there—half his body through the frame, both hands hooked around the jamb.
At those words, he went completely rigid.
The old man opened his mouth to say something more, and a series of hard cracks reached Akiyama's ears. Everything around him stopped.
Then split.
The illusion was coming apart.
"What now?" Akiyama frowned.
The room went thin and false, and he saw Nanami .
Not far from him at all. She clearly couldn't see him.
Inteleon's finger came up, and Dark Pulse caught Gengar the instant he surfaced.
There was nothing easy left in Gengar's movements now. Whatever he'd once known about fighting, the years had taken most of it.
Milotic followed with Disarming Voice, and the violet sound wave hurt badly enough that Gengar couldn't get his eyes open.
Crack.
Something else broke.
Gengar fell out of the air and hit the ground directly in front of Akiyama.
"He's gone?" Nanami was turning in place. He had vanished out from under her.
And the Nanami in front of Akiyama warped and dissolved. The illusion was pulling itself back together.
But the Gengar stayed.
Everything around them was still frozen. Gengar dragged himself upright and looked at Akiyama, wary.
Gardevoir moved to stand in front of him, just as wary.
Gengar backed off a few steps, taking in the room he knew better than anything in the world, and his chest went tight and sour.
Then he thought about what that woman had been doing to it, and the fury came surging back up.
He looked at the human standing in front of him and rolled a Shadow Ball between his hands.
Gardevoir watched it come and let everything she had rise up at once.
Focus Blast.
The two spheres met in midair.
And then the whole world went sideways.
They didn't collide. They didn't detonate. They stopped, hanging in the air.
"Garde?" She blinked.
"Gen?" Gengar's mouth fell open.
"Huh?"
Green particles were drifting out of Akiyama's chest.
He recognized them instantly. Mother Tree energy.
The dream hadn't burned all of it. Some had stayed inside him and inside Gardevoir, and now every last mote of it came pouring out.
Straight toward the old couple at the table.
And the two of them turned vivid.
That leftover power had built a dream that everyone in the room could see.
"That's enough. No more fighting." The old man stood and came toward them, pushing the wheelchair.
Gengar surfaced out of his daze. He watched them come closer, and closer, and the tears came off his face in fat drops.
He threw himself forward, into the old woman's arms, and wailed.
Gardevoir kept Akiyama behind her and watched it with no idea what she was supposed to feel.
"Go with him. Go be what you were meant to be. Stop standing guard over this place." The old man reached down to stroke his head, gentling him.
"Gen—gengar!"
He shook his head through the sobbing. Never. Not a chance.
"We're dead." The old man's face changed completely. Every trace of softness left it.
Gengar's crying cut off.
The old woman put out a hand and touched him very gently.
"I'm sorry we lied to you. I'm sorry we never took you out there. Be good, little Gengar. Leave this place. If you keep going forward, we'll see each other again someday. I promise."
That was how she apologized for breaking one promise—by making a brand-new one she couldn't keep either.
"Can we trust you?"
Whether there was simply nobody else, or whether it had been arranged a long time ago, the old man turned to Akiyama, and every line in that seamed face was serious.
Akiyama stepped out from behind Gardevoir and came closer.
"I won't do wrong by him."
From somewhere, the old man produced a battered red-and-white ball and put it in Akiyama's hands with both of his own.
"Don't break your word the way we did. Please—"
The rest of it never came. The green light went out all at once.
Everything went with it, and the only thing left was a Gengar sitting on a rotted floor, crying.
The old Poké Ball in Akiyama's hand was proof that not all of it had been a dream.
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