Akiyama's expression didn't improve. He pulled out his phone, opened the contact saved as Old Geezer, and typed out a text.
It showed as read within seconds. No reply.
Petty old man.
Back by the rail, the woman bent and picked up the crest. Whatever she saw stamped on it drained the color right out of her face, and by the time she went looking for him, he was long gone.
At the very top of the ship, Akiyama set Kirlia down on a low platform. She hadn't made a sound in a while.
He rubbed her head, gentle about it.
"You're just a little different, that's all. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me."
Kirlia lifted her face. Her eyes were bright and wet.
"Hey. Look out there."
He pointed at the water.
"Kirl?"
She turned, confused.
Somewhere along the way the liner had left Bedrock City's waters behind and gotten out onto real ocean.
Corsola were breaching in schools, and the spray they kicked up hung in the air in a hundred tiny rainbows. A Gyarados launched itself clear of the surface, roaring, as if it were trying to clear some invisible gate in the sky. Whole rafts of Tentacruel and Tentacool slid past as the ship overtook them.
Every minute the water offered up something new.
While she was still lost in it, Akiyama scooped her back into his arms. The sea air smelled like salt and fish. Kirlia smelled like frosting and clean laundry.
They stretched out on one of the long deck chairs. A Pelipper crossed the sky, headed somewhere far off.
Whatever had been sitting in her chest seemed to loosen and let go.
They lay there like that, counting the few white clouds overhead, and before long they were both asleep.
It was the cold evening wind that woke them.
Grrrrrl…
Kirlia was still rubbing sleep out of her eyes with the back of one hand when Akiyama's stomach made its opinion known.
"Right. Food."
He swung her back into riding position and took the elevator down to the main deck. The doors opened and the smell hit them both at once.
The hall was bright and vast, table after table draped in red, every one of them loaded and constantly refreshed by waitstaff moving through the aisles.
Free. All day.
When they'd eaten most of what they could hold, Akiyama pulled out the Energy Cubes.
The fantasy energy coming off them was thick enough that the Starmie at the next table drifted over.
He didn't mind. Kirlia didn't either—she was more than happy to share, and she flicked a few cubes over with the ease of long practice.
Pale purple light closed around them, Confusion holding them steady in the air. The Starmie pushed a wave of gratitude toward them, then floated off with its prize.
.....
He collected the clean, auto-dried clothes and packed them away. Then he and Kirlia sprawled out on the big bed, and even with the deck shifting under them, their eyes started closing.
The ocean rocked like a cradle. They'd slept most of the day away and they were both yawning anyway.
"Weird," Akiyama mumbled, pulling Kirlia in closer. "Figured I'd be too wired to sleep tonight."
He was out a moment later.
Outside, the sky was clear. A handful of stars sat low on the horizon.
The liner cut a quiet line across the water. On the bridge, a crewman stared at his instruments and yawned, unaccountably heavy-eyed.
Below the hull, something huge slid in and out of visibility.
Then several somethings, drifting closer from different angles.
Nobody saw a thing.
Late hours. Good weather for murder.
BOOM.
The shadow broke the surface and hammered into one corner of the ship.
"What the—!" The half-asleep crewman jerked upright and slammed the alarm.
The captain came off his desk with no idea where he was.
Down in the cabins, passengers came awake all at once.
BOOM.
The second impact came right behind the first, and there was nothing to do but cut the engines. The great liner sat dead on the water like a leaf.
The third strike tore an open wound in her side.
The alarm kept howling. When the passengers came pouring onto the deck, none of the glamour from dinner was left—most of them were in pajamas.
"Ladies and gentlemen! From here on out, this ship belongs to Team Rocket!"
In the thin moonlight, a Wailord rose into view, fifty feet of it, riding alongside the hull.
In the corners nobody was looking at, Tentacruel beyond counting were dragging themselves up the ship's flanks.
"Team Rocket? Out here?"
"These parasites again!"
"Goddamn Rocket pricks."
The muttering was thin and scattered. People were too rattled for much else.
"Enough with the theatrics!" Someone hurled a Poké Ball. "Ninetales, get out here—bring the sun!"
Light bloomed like a sunrise, and suddenly the whole deck was bright enough to see by. Bright enough to see the man standing on the Wailord's back.
"Reiji?"
Several faces changed all at once. They knew that name. One of Team Rocket's Three Generals.
"Why does it have to be him." Akiyama's teeth came together hard, and he started backing up with Kirlia, putting bodies between them and the rail.
There were lifeboats hanging along the stern. Maybe there was still a way off this thing.
Fighting was out of the question. He had a lot of years left in front of him, and he wasn't planning to end up fish food over a cruise ticket.
Nobody knew who ran Team Rocket at the top. The man never showed his face. It took someone like Akiyama, running on half a god's-eye view of this world, to put the pieces together and land on a name: Giovanni.
The Three Generals, though—they were the cards Team Rocket played face-up.
Reiji was one of them.
"Now, if you'd all be so kind as to get off my ship."
"Wailord! Hydro Pump!"
An enormous mass of water pressure gathered, and the deck reacted.
"Gyarados, Hyper Beam!"
"Ninetales, Hyper Beam!"
"Venusaur, you too—Hyper Beam!"
Wailord wasn't a species anybody associated with raw power, but nobody on that deck was willing to take this one lightly. Pokémon came out one after another, and beam after brilliant beam slammed into the Hydro Pump.
Attacks detonated against each other and left drifting sparks hanging in the dark. Reiji stood on Wailord's back with his arms folded, and nothing in his face moved at all.
"Nice Gyarados," he said, and smiled with too many teeth. "He's mine now."
Water energy gathered at his side and vanished.
On the deck, that huge, armored Gyarados went rigid. The Hyper Beam cut off mid-charge.
"Hey—what's wrong?" His Trainer looked up at him.
Gyarados didn't move. The whites of his eyes flooded blood red.
He held still for a heartbeat. Then, without a command from anyone on that ship, he swung an Aqua Tail.
If the man beside her hadn't shoved his Trainer clear, she'd have gone through the deck with the wreckage.
"Your Gyarados snapped! Run—don't just stand there!"
"That's not possible! That's my Gyarados!"
She screamed it, and it didn't matter. The evidence was right in front of her, tearing into every Pokémon on the deck it could reach.
Gyarados was only the start. More and more Water types went the same way, and the deck came apart into chaos.
"Damn it. This is bad." Akiyama saw the first Tentacruel haul themselves over the side and kept retreating. Three steps from the railing now.
He watched the berserk Water types while he moved, and something started to add up.
It had happened too many times to be coincidence: Water-type Pokémon that stood against Reiji turned on their own Trainers. Some kind of psychic ability, most likely.
Something a lot like what ran in the Miki family.