Thunder split the sky.
That was a heaven-splitting—
Wrong genre.
The lightning got there faster than Hydro Pump did.
Thunder.
There was a crack, and everything in Gyarados's body went numb at once.
He couldn't hold the Whirlpool. It collapsed into a spreading puddle.
Gengar dropped to the ground and pressed the advantage.
Thunder again.
RRROOOAAAR—
Gyarados went down howling and hit the mud hard enough to throw up a wave of dirty water.
"Thunder. That's just unreasonable." Nanami took off running across the soaked ground toward him.
"You were awesome, Gengar," Akiyama said.
At the end there even he had figured it was finished. He'd had no idea Gengar was sitting on Thunder.
Gardevoir looked at the Gyarados sprawled in the mud and her opinion of Gengar shot straight up.
Getting along with Nanami and Gyarados was one thing. Payback was another. That Gyarados had nearly drowned Akiyama.
The progress bar flickered across his vision for the first time in a while and ticked quietly down to 37.
Gengar felt the change move through him, startled, and turned to look back at Akiyama.
Akiyama had no idea how to explain it, so he just released Kadabra.
Kadabra took in the fallen Gyarados and the confused Gengar and understood instantly.
This is Akiyama's own psychic ability. It makes us stronger after a battle.
His voice reached only Akiyama and Gengar. Nanami heard nothing.
Gengar turned a look of pure worship on Akiyama.
Akiyama tossed Nanami a Potion, then glanced back at Kadabra. "Translate for me, would you? I'm pretty sure he's got more than what we saw."
The two Pokémon talked it out.
When Gengar finished, Kadabra nodded and relayed it. Mean Look. Shadow Punch. Reflect Type. Destiny Bond. Perish Song…
The list ran long.
Basically everything a Gengar could learn, this Gengar had.
He wasn't young, and he'd been through one round of serious training under Ash. A move pool that deep started to seem less impossible.
"You're something else, Gengar." Akiyama didn't hold back on the praise.
Gengar scratched the back of his head, embarrassed.
Hee hee hee…
All that time he'd been waiting for his Trainer to come back, he'd also been waiting for a chance to fight.
He'd never been like the other Ghost-types, the ones who only cared about pranks. He wanted to battle. He used to go pick fights with Pokémon far out of his league, and one of those fights left him half-dead in the grass, which was how his old Trainer had found him.
After that came the little farm, and safety, and no more chances.
So he waited. He honed his moves alone, year after year, and waited.
This had been his first real fight—fair, square, and his.
And he'd won it.
A Max Potion had Gyarados back on his feet quickly.
He was visibly unwilling to leave it there. He wanted a rematch.
Nanami kicked him lightly. "Sunny Day. Now. My clothes are soaked."
His enormous eyes filled with a small, wounded protest, but he used it anyway. The rain broke apart and the sun came back twice as fierce.
Her clothes were dry inside a few minutes.
"You can't beat him. What, are we going to Mega Evolve over this?" Nanami climbed back up onto his head and folded her legs.
She had some shame. Going Mega here would just be bullying.
"Hey," she called down. "Quit being cheap. Head to Frostvale City in a few days and pick up a couple of Mega Stones. Once your Gengar can Mega Evolve, we'll run it again."
"There's an auction in Frostvale City?"
"Spring auction in April. Word is there'll be Mega Stones. Worth a look."
"April, huh." Akiyama did the math. Today was March twenty-third; seven days to the month. "Not sure I'd make it in time."
"It won't be the first of the month. You'll make it—assuming you don't insist on walking the whole way there on your own two legs." Nanami grinned down at him.
"Then I'd have to swim," Akiyama pointed out, perfectly serious.
"Fine. Sure. Whatever." Nanami gave up on him and turned forward, urging Gyarados on.
She could tell he was picking at her on purpose.
Kadabra drifted alongside them and started to explain what Mega Evolution meant.
Gengar already knew.
Then Gengar mentioned Dynamax and Z-Moves, and Kadabra went silent for a moment.
He put the question to Akiyama.
Akiyama nodded—yeah, he knew about those—and walked Kadabra carefully through both battle systems.
Nanami's eyes opened. "What the heck is Dynamax?"
She had genuinely never heard of it.
Akiyama laughed. "The day Eternatus comes down out of space, you'll find out."
There was no sign of Eternatus in this world yet. Maybe it was still drifting out there somewhere.
Then again, maybe one day it wouldn't be.
"Space? The only things I know of with a space connection are Clefairy and, supposedly, Rayquaza."
"Not much of a scholar, are you, prodigy of the Nanami family? Solrock and Lunatone are both supposed to have arrived on meteors."
Personally, the extraterrestrial Akiyama remembered most vividly was Deoxys.
That was the end of the conversation, and they put their heads down and made distance.
Gengar was noticeably livelier after the battle, that ghostly body wandering all over the place. At one point he picked up Akiyama's backpack, apparently testing the weight. Then he went and poked Gyarados as he traveled and got a faceful of roar and spit for it.
Gardevoir covered her mouth and laughed. She'd decided the little guy was fun—about as far from Kadabra as a Pokémon could get.
Gengar, not watching where he was going, flew face-first into a mass of leaves and came away with a mouthful of them, shaking his head to clear it.
A few green leaves came loose and settled onto a puddle, rocking gently on the surface.
Something in him had been sitting still for a very long time, and it moved a little.
Away from that house, away from all of it, Gengar was opening up. The chains were coming off him one link at a time.
Grief shrinks in the presence of freedom, whether you notice or not.
The sunlight after rain came down hard, cutting through the canopy and landing across him, and it made him look almost luminous.
He clapped both hands over his mouth, and every one of those white teeth showed anyway.
Heeheeheehee—
He dropped out of the air, and Gardevoir threw a Grass Knot together beneath him to make a trampoline. He hit it, bounced, and sailed straight at Akiyama, catching one of the backpack straps and hanging there like an oversized keychain.
Nanami watched him with narrowed eyes, and felt something uncomfortably close to envy.
When do I get to cut through the thorns in mine?
.....
"So the little guy's moved on."
A figure came up to the old Western-style house and closed his eyes. Everything in front of him redrew itself in his mind as blue lines.
He read the traces people had left, and which way they'd gone.
"Sounds like he found himself a good Trainer." He opened his eyes and looked off in the direction Akiyama had taken.
"I hope we get to meet! Give me something to be shocked about when we do!" He balled up a fist and bumped it lightly toward the horizon, as if reaching across the distance to the Trainer and the Gengar both.
"Let's go, Pikachu. Next stop, Twin City!"
"Pika-pika."
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