Akiyama…
The voice came from somewhere under his ribs, soft as anything.
"Live," Akiyama said, and got a mouthful of seawater for it. It didn't matter. The word landed in her heart anyway.
Maybe it was the psychic link. Maybe it was something else. Right then, whatever ran through one of them ran through both.
The evolution light faded, and a pair of slender arms had him. He got one blurred look at the face above his, and then he was gone.
Kirlia had evolved.
The progress bar had accelerated her growth for weeks—and her determination to protect her Trainer had carried her the rest of the way, straight over the flaw she'd been born with.
"Aaah!"
The cry rolled out of Gardevoir's chest, and the broken horn there—the outward shape of her own heart—knitted closed with pale violet fantasy energy.
A column of light exploded up out of the deep and split the sky.
Fantasy energy spread out over the ocean in a thin, glowing skin. Psychic Terrain, laid down across open water.
For one long second, the entire chaotic battlefield went quiet.
"What is that? Is that—the head of the family?" Enomoto was the first to shake it off, and even she stood there a beat too long. She'd only ever felt fantasy energy on that scale coming off her father's Pokémon.
Out on the surface, Gallade stopped dead, staring into the light.
"There you are." Reiji spared it exactly one glance. He didn't care about fantasy energy in the slightest—and while the Jennys were busy gaping, a Tentacruel came swimming in under the crossfire with a crate on its back.
The column of light collapsed. Gardevoir hung in the air above the waves in a spotless white gown, Akiyama unconscious and curled small against her.
The rampaging Gyarados had no idea what it was looking at. It reared its head back and began charging Hyper Beam.
A Kadabra winked into existence at Gardevoir's shoulder, spoon raised.
Gardevoir swept one arm out, and Confusion tore loose from her—raw, enormous—with Kadabra's own Confusion right alongside it.
Gyarados was blasted off the water before the beam ever left its mouth.
I did it, Akiyama.
Her voice went into him and found no one home. No answer came back.
She smoothed his soaking hair off his forehead, gentle about it.
Somewhere in there, the two of them had traded places.
He was still out cold, and the progress bar was still counting down. Golden particles split silently into two streams and sank into Gardevoir and into Kadabra.
Across the water, inside the ring of Skarmory, Reiji got the crate up onto Wailord's back and opened it. What he lifted out, with both hands and real care, was a fossil.
The fantasy energy shrouding it was so dense that every scrap of Psychic Terrain on that ocean, added together, wouldn't have made a hundredth of it.
Then something in the fossil seemed to notice something. A thread of that energy peeled away and shot off across the sea.
The fantasy energy holding Gardevoir's heart together was visibly thinning out. She'd reached her limit, and she knew it—she pulled Akiyama in tight against her chest and started to fall.
The thread from the fossil arrived and divided. Half of it slipped into Akiyama's heart. The other half settled into a slow orbit inside Gardevoir's chest.
Kadabra had no time to wonder what was happening to his own body. He threw out Confusion, reaching to catch her.
Something else got there first. One flash of green, and Gallade had both Gardevoir and the boy in her arms.
He turned and gave Kadabra a long, wary look.
"Until next time, everyone!" Reiji tucked the fossil against his chest and spread his arms wide, like a man stepping out into good weather.
"You do all this and you think you're just leaving?"
"Not a chance!"
The Jennys' voices came from a dozen boats at once, and the Skarmory pressed in harder.
"Empoleon. Haze."
A powerfully built Empoleon appeared at Reiji's side and blanketed the entire Wailord in fog.
"Skarmory, blow it clear—now!"
Jenny reacted fast. It wasn't fast enough.
When the Haze finally tore apart, Wailord and Reiji were gone. All that was left on the water was floating wreckage.
That, and the passengers Miki Enomoto's psychic power had pulled out of the sea.
"Damn it. He slipped us again."
The nearest Jenny ground the words between her teeth.
Enomoto took Gardevoir from Gallade, floated the pair of them out in front of her, and went over them carefully—while she was at it, she used her power to force the seawater back up out of Akiyama's stomach.
"That's strange," she murmured. "That's very strange."
Where had a Gardevoir gotten the leverage to move fantasy energy on that scale?
Never mind that. By everything Enomoto knew, this Kirlia shouldn't have been able to evolve into a Gardevoir at all.
"Maybe it was her determination to protect her Trainer."
Kadabra had been hovering off to the side, easy to overlook, and he reached out and put the thought directly against her mind.
He'd had a front-row seat for both of Gardevoir's evolutions. One of them had happened by his own hand. He understood it better than anyone else out here.
"Her determination to protect her Trainer?" Enomoto blinked.
She looked at the boy and the Pokémon lying on the air in front of her, and found she couldn't argue with it.
"Ma'am. Thank you for your assistance out here tonight."
An Officer Jenny brought her boat alongside. Behind her, the rest of them were still working the wreckage.
"It's the least I could do. My brother was one of the victims." Enomoto shook her head.
Jenny looked at the unconscious boy and saluted.
"We're going to salvage what's left of the ship and process everything out of Unity City—it's the closest port with facilities." She hesitated. "May I ask where you're headed?"
Kadabra had been hovering off to the side, easy to overlook, and he reached out and put the thought directly against her mind.
He'd had a front-row seat for both of Gardevoir's evolutions. One of them had happened by his own hand. He understood it better than anyone else out here.
"Her determination to protect her Trainer?" Enomoto blinked.
She looked at the boy and the Pokémon lying on the air in front of her, and found she couldn't argue with it.
"Ma'am. Thank you for your assistance out here tonight."
An Officer Jenny brought her boat alongside. Behind her, the rest of them were still working the wreckage.
"It's the least I could do. My brother was one of the victims." Enomoto shook her head.
Jenny looked at the unconscious boy and saluted. thought about it. "The nearest coast, then the nearest Pokémon Center. I'll decide once my brother wakes up. Knowing him, he'll want to take on the Gym at Greenlight City, since it's closer."
Greenlight was closer than Unity City, that much was true. Greenlight also had its own particular set of problems.
Jenny wrote it down. "Understood. Thank you for your cooperation. We'll be in touch."
She capped her pen, tucked the notebook away, and gunned the boat back toward the wreck. They needed every pair of hands.
"And you?" Enomoto turned to Kadabra. "Coming with us?"
"I'm going with him," Kadabra said, with no hesitation at all.
His spoon pointed at Akiyama.
"I see. Then keep up." She nodded and recalled Starmie and Gallade as they swam in.
Her power lifted Akiyama and Gardevoir off the surface, and the three of them rose into the night sky. All the Jennys below saw was a ribbon of pale violet light crossing overhead.
Kadabra kept pace.
"How is it that you can use this kind of power?" he asked. Meaning hers.
Enomoto glanced over and took a moment with it. "Everyone born into the Miki family can reach out and touch fantasy energy the same way a Pokémon does. The talent runs stronger in the women of the line, so it's natural for us to wake up psychic abilities eventually."
"Mental strength, psychic power, even some Dark-type power—at the bottom of all of it, it's the same thing. Accumulating fantasy energy and learning to use it."
Kadabra nodded slowly, turning that over.
She seemed to catch that he'd never been raised by a Trainer, and kept going. "Take your species. Kadabra don't have the Telepathy Ability. And yet here you are, holding a conversation with me. That's a use, too—you're just applying what you've built up."
"My Starmie can't do that. She hasn't accumulated enough, and her primary type is Water. That matters."
She kept at it the whole way, explaining fantasy energy and the ways of channeling it. By the end it was less a conversation than a lesson.
The coastline came up out of the dark ahead of them.
"We're here," Enomoto said.
And she gave Kadabra one more look, complicated in a way she didn't explain.