Blue-white light erupted in a hundred blazing streams.
Origin Pulse.
Jellyfish went down in sheets and washed out with the surf.
The Trainer who'd been marveling at Second Sister stood there with his mouth open.
That's a Kadabra?
An Infernape wreathed in fire had stopped moving entirely.
In that whole stretch of coastline, the swarm quit crawling toward shore. Even they seemed shaken.
Akiyama's group wasn't in much better shape.
Kadabra sagged where he stood.
One Metronome had squeezed him dry.
It had also drained half the progress bar.
To Akiyama's eyes, the gold particles had become something like a river.
Kadabra's stamina climbed back steadily, and his power grew in a way you could actually watch happen. Gengar and Gardevoir each took a share of the flow as well.
"I imagine the Head of the House would think very highly of you," Second Sister said.
Kadabra nodded tiredly and sat down on the sand.
"You've done more than enough. Get some rest."
Kadabra agreed, and Akiyama recalled him.
"Garde..."
Gardevoir came back to herself, and there was something like awe in the way she was looking at that Poké Ball.
Incredible.
Out on the water, the stalled swarm started moving again.
"All right! Let's go to work!"
Akiyama was genuinely fired up.
Grinding spots like this didn't come along often.
....
Greenleaf Town. The Miki estate.
A crowd of Ralts wandered the lawn, playing with no particular purpose.
For reasons none of them understood, the Demon King had not appeared today.
They could do whatever they wanted.
They could walk however they wanted.
"Ral-lu!"
One Ralts flopped onto its back and paddled its arms in slow circles like it was doing the backstroke, picking up grass clippings and not caring in the slightest.
Like kindergarteners on the first day of summer.
Normally that Ralts would already have been lifted off the ground by Confusion and marched straight into a bath.
Proper etiquette for a great house. Nobody felt like learning any of that today.
"Kir?"
A dozen or so Kirlia came out into the back garden, saw the Ralts sprawled in the grass, and stopped, uncertain.
Weren't they afraid of getting hauled off and spanked?
A Ralts trotted up to the nearest Kirlia and said something.
The Kirlia's eyes lit up.
The Demon King was out of the house!
A little later there were considerably more Kirlia on the lawn.
The Demon King, of course, being Second Sister.
"Garde?"
By noon, Gardevoir had started showing up—the ones who had never wanted to leave the Miki family. Word reached them, and they came and sat cross-legged in the grass to enjoy a rare afternoon of peace.
None of them were really under her authority anymore. The childhood scars were another matter.
She had been terrifying.
That day, the Ralts of the Akiyama manor were livelier than anyone could remember. You couldn't turn a corner without finding one lounging somewhere.
The Gardevoir in maid uniforms saw all of it and elected to see none of it.
A few even set their work down and joined in.
Maybe Second Sister's departure was good news for everybody.
Drawn by the noise, an Eevee poked its head out of a hedge, eyes wide. It swung its head around, confirmed that Second Sister was nowhere in sight, and immediately went to round up its friends.
A whole pack of Eevee joined the game.
By degrees, half the estate was playing.
The afternoon wore on.
Elsewhere, Big Sister released Second Sister from the ball that had just come back through the transporter.
I assume they ran wild while I was gone, Second Sister said, already walking.
Big Sister hesitated. They had a wonderful time.
She fell in beside her and went on. Honestly, sometimes I think—
Second Sister glanced back at her.
Big Sister. I know. But they'll be leaving the Miki family, all of them. They need advantages their new Trainers' other Pokémon won't have.
And if this estate held nothing but easy, happy days, they'd never believe anywhere else could be better. That would create real problems.
Most Ralts chose their own Trainer using that peculiar emotional sense of theirs, then grew up traveling with them.
Somebody had to play the villain and teach a Ralts to want the freedom outside these walls.
When she'd finished, Confusion carried her out.
She hovered above the back garden, looking down at the Pokémon still playing below.
She didn't interrupt. She just watched.
One day off won't hurt them.
That was what she thought.
......
The shore at Frostvale City.
Akiyama sent Second Sister home and got ready to board his ship out of Frostvale City.
The swarm was gone, carried off somewhere by the current.
Gengar lay draped across the top of his head with his tongue hanging out, doing an excellent impression of a corpse.
Gardevoir wasn't much better.
There had been so, so many.
That first black blanket across the water had only been the opening act. There had been far more behind it.
The progress bar he'd woken up with full was empty again.
They rested on the sand, and after a while a few Officer Jennys who had finished their work came over.
"On behalf of the citizens of Frostvale City, thank you for your service. This is a commemorative badge they had made for the volunteers."
Officer Jenny held out a small box.
Inside sat a badge shaped like a block of ice.
Something worth keeping.
Akiyama didn't bother with polite refusals. He took it. He'd earned it.
Soon ships began sliding into port, one after another—freighters, passenger liners, cruise ships, more than the eye could track.
After a day like that one, though, the sight of that many hulls made him a little queasy.
That was when the Comfey around Gardevoir's neck woke up.
Aside from a few Helping Hands and a Floral Healing during the fighting, she'd slept through the entire thing.
Her fragrance spread out, and Akiyama felt his stomach settle by degrees.
He never wanted to see a jellyfish again in his life.
Gardevoir felt the same. She'd lost count of how many Tentacruel and Tentacool her fists had launched, and they'd burned through Antidotes one bottle after another.
His ship docked shortly after. He showed his ticket, boarded, shoveled down whatever the dining room put in front of him, and went straight to his cabin to sleep like the dead.
Gardevoir wasn't far behind. She lifted Comfey off her neck, set her on the nightstand, crawled under the covers, and passed out next to him.
Neither of them could be bothered to shower.
With Comfey around, nobody was going to smell anything but flowers anyway.
Best sachet in the business.
Gengar landed on the bed and didn't have the energy left to get under the blanket.
Akiyama woke the next morning still short on energy. Gardevoir wasn't up yet, so he went back to sleep.
He hadn't been out long when the ship began to roll. His stomach turned over, and he came awake and sprinted for the bathroom, where he got both arms around the toilet and let go.
Gardevoir woke to the noise, confused, climbed out of bed, and found him hunched over the bowl.
"Garde!"
You can't be that hungry!
It took getting closer to see he was throwing up.
She started rubbing his back.
He felt marginally human once his stomach was empty.
Yesterday's jellyfish had been too much. His sanity meter had bottomed out entirely.
"Attention, passengers. We apologize for the turbulence—the vessel clipped the edge of a whirlpool. We have now cleared the area. There is no cause for concern."
The announcement crackled out over the speakers.
The words had barely finished when the ship pitched again.
Akiyama threw up again.
"Our apologies. Radar failed to detect a submerged whirlpool below the surface."
He lifted his head, gray as ash.
"Son of a—"
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