The gold particles vanished into Ralts, and she visibly firmed up—not bigger, exactly, but steadier, denser, stronger.
"So that's what you do," Akiyama murmured.
Understanding arrived the way it always did with the bar, dropping into his head fully formed. It accelerated a Pokémon's growth. It restored a little stamina. And it kept that growth in a state he could only describe as flawless—no wasted effort, no bad habits baked in.
Some instinct told him that wasn't the whole list.
But for where he was standing right now, it was more than enough.
He tossed a Frontier Ball underhand and bagged the fainted Oddish.
Then he walked over, lifted a very startled Ralts off the ground, and looked her over carefully.
Through contact he could read her—body and mind, clear as a page. That was the Miki gift, their birthright with Psychic-types.
Her condition was better than it had ever been. Before, touching her had been like touching a dying stalk of grass, dry enough that the next stiff wind would snap it. Now that stalk had some green in it.
There was even a thin trace of fantasy energy gathering around her. Drawn in, for once.
No question about it. This was good.
"Ral-lu?"
She had no idea what had just happened to her. She only knew that after she knocked down that Oddish, she felt stronger.
"Looks like the weather's finally turning for us, Ralts," Akiyama said, smiling.
"Ral-lu!"
She didn't understand a word of it. But he was happy, so she was happy.
He picked the Frontier Ball back up off the grass, tucked her against his chest, and headed deeper into the zone.
Neither of them noticed the Pokémon shadowing them the entire way.
A filthy little Abra.
It was still thinking. And for all the knowledge packed into that oversized brain, none of it gave it a way to understand affection, or bond, or family.
Its eyes narrowed to slits as it looked toward the tall hills in the distance. Then it teleported, and the spot where it had been sitting was empty.
Meanwhile, Akiyama had found their next opponent: a Caterpie hanging from a tree trunk by a thread of silk.
Ralts hopped down and swung a small fist straight at it.
The Caterpie hadn't been as asleep as it looked. It sensed her coming, cut its silk, and dropped.
Her punch sailed through empty air. She stumbled forward and nearly went down on her face.
The Caterpie's antennae flashed white. It launched itself off the ground and came at her like a battering ram.
"Ralts—jump back!" Akiyama shouted.
She trusted him, so she jumped, stiff and slow and awkward about it.
The Caterpie wasn't fast either.
Barely, she cleared it.
And landed flat on her butt in the grass.
"Ralts? You all right?"
He'd started forward before he caught himself. She was going to have to take hits sooner or later. Better she took them now, with him three steps away.
"Ral-lu." She looked back at him once, planted a hand on the ground, and pushed herself up.
The Caterpie came again, spitting silk this time, aiming to pin her feet.
"Ralts—try Fire Punch!"
Huh?
Her cocked fist froze mid-swing.
But she trusted him without conditions, so she reached for the lesson buried somewhere in all those hours of teaching machines—and flame roared to life around her knuckles.
The silk never reached her. It charred black in midair and dropped limp into the grass.
Ralts closed the distance in three steps and buried her fist in a Caterpie that hadn't finished being surprised.
The impact made a flat little pop. The Caterpie went over backward and stayed there, out cold.
"Ralts, that was amazing!"
He didn't hold back one word of it.
The bar surfaced in his vision again. It went from 99% straight down to 96%.
Gold particles poured into her.
He crouched and scooped her up, and this time the stalk of grass in his mind's eye wasn't teetering at all.
"You are so good," he said, scrubbing her head with one hand and using his shirt to wipe the dust off her arms.
She let her eye fall shut and leaned into his skinny chest like she'd been waiting all day for exactly this.
It took him a while to remember there was still a Caterpie facedown in the grass.
He threw a ball and caught it.
Ten left out of twelve.
"Okay. Keep it rolling, Ralts."
"Ral-lu, ral-lu."
Oddish. Caterpie. Metapod.
One wild Pokémon after another went down under her fists.
Twelve balls became four.
And the bar slid from 96% to 88%.
Which killed one of his working theories—one percent clearly wasn't one "level." Then again, this world didn't measure Pokémon in levels at all. It measured them by how well their Trainer raised them.
Akiyama brushed the dirt off her while he read her condition.
That withered little stalk had stopped feeling like something dead. There was actual life in it now, something reaching upward.
He pulled out a spray bottle of Potion and treated her scrapes.
Ralts held on to a fistful of his shirt, feeling every bit of how much stronger she'd gotten.
Ice Punch. Thunder Punch. Fire Punch. All three, on command.
She was ready for the Gym. She could handle a Geodude.
"Ral-lu, ral-lu!"
She chattered at him while sketching a round, lumpy shape in the air with both hands.
"Wait—are you telling me you want to go challenge the Gym?"
She nodded.
"Yeah, yeah, I know, you're a monster now." He laughed. "But we're putting in more work first. It's a Gym match. You're going to be fighting three of them by yourself."
Three?
Ralts looked down and did the math.
If they were like the Oddish out here, three was nothing. She could take six.
But if they were stronger than that...
Fine. She needed more training. A lot more.
Ralts was going to work. Ralts was going to get strong.
They pushed on deeper into the zone until Akiyama's legs started complaining, and he angled toward a hill up ahead, aiming for the open flat at its base. Clear sightlines all around—nothing bold enough to jump them without being seen first.
That was when a Nidoking came tearing out from behind the hill in a blind rage.
Its eyes were red. It slammed into the hillside and the hillside came apart.
Akiyama's head snapped up at the sound. Above him, a wall of broken rock was already falling.
He didn't think. He folded Ralts against his chest, turned, and ran.
There was too much of it coming down, and he wasn't fast enough. Stones caught him across the back and shoulders, and none of them were small.
One cracked him square on the top of the skull, and the world went soft and gray at the edges.
Something in Ralts snapped taut.
Her Trainer was hurt—and at the sound of her will, the fantasy energy that had ignored her all her life came flooding in, wild, frantic, all at once.
"Ral-lu!"
Evolutionary light swallowed her whole.
Another stone dropped toward Akiyama's head and shattered against a small white fist.
Kirlia's fist.
She had evolved.
Her clean white skirt cut a pale half-moon through the air as she turned.
Kirlia looked out toward the hills—and saw only a flash of white.
The Abra had made its move. One finger swayed back and forth.
Metronome.
A pillar of dead white light erupted from nothing.
Hyper Beam.