He spent the whole morning in those bleachers watching Dagan work, and the whole morning running simulations behind his eyes.
Kirlia could win. That much he believed.
The problem was the one-versus-three.
Dagan's anchor was almost certainly that Onix, and by the time Kirlia got to it she'd be running on fumes. Coin flip at best.
So there were two roads open to him.
Catch another Pokémon. Or keep cheating.
Honestly, he wanted the Abra. He wanted it badly—a Pokémon that could pull a Hyper Beam out of Metronome was too good to leave floating around a public park. The catch was that catching it might be impossible.
The other option sat down in the southwest corner of the city, in the water that ran toward Frostvale. Staryu.
He knew that line. He knew it well.
Starmie was part Psychic, after all, and in the Miki family, Psychic was the family business. In the Seichu region, if a Psychic-type dropped a coin on the sidewalk, that coin's last name was Miki.
Okay. Maybe not literally.
He ate a quick lunch at the Pokémon Center, took an hour to get his gear together, and then took Kirlia out to the frontier again.
Partly on the off chance he'd run into that Abra—he had a feeling it lived out there. And partly because the progress bar had been very good to him lately, and honestly, winning felt great.
....
Across town, the Rock Gym closed its doors early that day.
Dagan went out the side entrance alone and walked to the tower at the center of Bedrock City.
It took three separate security checkpoints to reach the top floor.
The automatic doors slid open on a laboratory built entirely out of steel and glass. Ancient stones sat submerged in culture tanks along the walls, and researchers in white coats moved between them with clipboards.
"Is all of this really necessary?" Dagan asked. Three checkpoints had put him in a mood.
"Not my call." A middle-aged man came over to meet him, pushing his glasses up his nose. He looked like he hadn't slept properly in a week. "You have no idea how busy Team Rocket has been lately. They're all over these fossils. Like a pack of dogs at a screen door."
Dagan snorted and walked past him to the culture tank at the very center of the room.
Something pink sat inside it. A crystal, small enough to hold in one hand.
He didn't know why. But he stood there and let it take him apart.
The researcher came up beside him and looked at the same faint glow, and didn't say a word until Dagan came back to himself.
"So." Dagan cleared his throat. "Why the sudden summons? You out of funding again?"
"No." The man shook his head. "The head of the Miki family came through here right before you did. He's decided that his son getting hurt at the frontier was our doing. Deliberately."
"That's garbage." Dagan's jaw tightened. "I've never even met his kid. What does he take us for?"
Anywhere else, he'd have spat on the floor.
"Doesn't matter. When a man like that makes something up, we agree with him and thank him for his time. And the kid really did get hurt, so." The researcher spread his hands. "The best I could do was cut a deal in your name."
Between Team Rocket on one side and Masaki on the other, he was getting kicked from both directions—and everyone had figured out he was the soft target.
"My name?" Dagan pointed at his own chest.
"Your name. Per the agreement, you owe him a favor next year."
Dagan's eyebrows went up. "What's he after?"
"Starfall Valley."
The researcher said it slowly, watching his face the whole time.
Dagan was quiet for a moment. Then he showed his teeth. "That's a hell of an appetite he's got."
The man opened his mouth to say something else—and sparks burst across the ceiling.
Steel gears bit down through the concrete, cutting a wide circle. A section of the roof let go and came down with a boom.
"Who's there?"
"You dare—"
The lab dissolved into shouting. Alarms went off, high and needling, and figures dropped through the hole in white uniforms with a big red R across the chest.
"Team Rocket?"
The researcher's pupils shrank, and he took two very quiet steps backward, until Dagan was between him and them.
"That's right. Us." The one in front sent out a Beedrill, a mean, glossy specimen that hummed in the air like a chainsaw. "And we'll be taking those fossils off your hands."
His people scattered across the room, releasing Pokémon and shattering culture tanks, scooping fossils into cases.
"You've got some nerve." Dagan hurled a Poké Ball, and the fury in his voice was real.
Dust boiled up out of nothing, and the Tyrant of the Sandstorm stood in the middle of it.
Tyranitar.
Grit swirled through the air. For about two seconds, nobody in that room made a sound.
The Rocket squad leader recovered first. "Beedrill—Twineedle!"
"Tyranitar! Hyper Beam!"
Tyranitar started drawing power, and the whole floor began to vibrate.
The researcher's eyes went huge.
"No—no, it'll bring the building down on us!"
Dagan ground his teeth. "Damn it. Tyranitar—straight up! Fire into the sky!"
There was suddenly a second large hole in the laboratory ceiling.
And Tyranitar, locked in mid-attack, ate the Twineedle without being able to defend itself. Its condition dropped hard.
"Hmph. That's the Boss's own Beedrill. Consider it an honor." The Rocket leader was already scanning the room. "But you're not what we came for today."
The fossils were nearly all boxed up.
His gaze snagged on the pink crystal behind Dagan, and for a heartbeat he clearly wanted it. Then Dagan pulled a second Poké Ball off his belt, and the man decided he'd had a productive afternoon.
Weezing filled the floor with smoke, and by the time it cleared, they were gone.
The researcher let out a long breath—and only then reached inside his coat and drew out a fossil of his own.
Fantasy energy hung thick around it, dense enough to see.
....
None of which had anything to do with Akiyama yet. He walked into the capture frontier that afternoon and stopped dead.
Every one of those distinctive hills was gone. Cleared, flattened, hauled off.
"Now that's efficiency," he said, and got on with his day.
The Pokémon inside hadn't changed. Same Oddish, same Caterpie, same Metapod.
Back when Kirlia had been a Ralts, some of them could have given her a real exchange.
Now it was a formality. Every one of them was experience and technique practice with legs.
Kirlia leapt, spun, and kicked three times on the way down. A charging Caterpie went spiraling off like a top, slammed into a tree trunk, and slid down it unconscious.
Gold particles sank into her, and the bar in Akiyama's vision ticked down again.
"Seventy-seven percent."
He tossed a Frontier Ball and bagged the Caterpie, then crouched, opened the case, and offered it to her.
Kirlia pinched out an Energy Cube and popped it in her mouth, and her whole face lit up from the inside.
While she was busy being blissful, he walked over to the tree, picked the ball up, shrank it, and clipped it to his pack.
Two unused Frontier Balls left.
"Keep it up, Kirlia."
He took the case back when she handed it over.
"Kirl!"
She was going to keep getting stronger. That was decided.
They spent the last two balls, the bar slid down to seventy-four, and the day's training wrapped up as cleanly as he could have asked for.
Back at the ticket office, he checked the redemption board—and found that the Energy Cubes he wanted had dropped drastically in price.