Kirlia forced her arm up through the ringing in her skull, dragged just enough cold around her fist to matter, and punched.
The rock burst apart with a crack—but the shrapnel tore past her on its way out, and it cut.
"Onix. Bind."
While she was still dealing with the debris, the tail came in.
She stood there in place, chest heaving, and looked up at all of it. All that mountain of stone.
Can I actually do this?
Time stretched out thin, and for one second, she doubted.
"Now! Kirlia, get on the tail—run up it!"
His voice hauled her back.
She ducked the sweep, jumped onto the tail halfway along its length, and started climbing at a dead sprint.
"Onix, Screech."
Against something that fast and that small, a move with no power at all was the best tool on the list. Sound didn't have to aim.
Onix began working its segments together again, winding up for that awful noise—
Akiyama's mouth curved. "Kirlia—jump! High as you can! Fire Punch that sprinkler over Onix's head!"
"What?"
For half a beat Dagan just stood there, an old memory surfacing behind his eyes.
He didn't get the time to finish remembering it. Kirlia's fist melted straight through the sprinkler's seal, and she kicked off Onix's skull on the way back down.
Water came out of that ceiling like a Water Gun with the pressure cranked to the top, and it did not stop.
The only creature under it was Onix.
"Kirlia, Zen Headbutt—stay on it!"
"Triple Axel! Don't let up!"
"You've got this—I know you do!"
Their nerve had synced up somewhere in the middle of it, Trainer and Pokémon breathing on the same rhythm, and Kirlia's attacks came down one after another while the water hammered Onix from above. Then, with a boom that shook the floor, the great body toppled.
The spray that hit Dagan in the face was what finally snapped him out of it.
He recalled Onix and stood there staring at the ball in his hand.
The referee's flag swept out. "Onix is unable to battle! The winner is Akiyama, of Greenleaf Town!"
"You did it, Kirlia!"
The bar dropped from 70 to 67.
Akiyama came charging out onto the field, hit the standing water at a full run, and went down flat on his back because he was too excited to watch his feet.
Kirlia sprinted over and got a faceful of muddy spray for her trouble, then threw herself into his arms anyway, half convinced none of this was real.
The two of them sat there in the mud like a couple of little kids, soaked and filthy and not caring even slightly how it looked.
Dagan watched them for a while, and something in his chest went soft and complicated.
"Masaki," he said, "your son's a hell of a lot like you."
He flicked something across the arena. A badge, turning end over end through the air, and it landed neatly in Kirlia's lap.
She flinched, looked down at the Rock Badge, and immediately started wiping it with a hand that was dripping wet.
It didn't help. It didn't matter either. Under the water it still looked like it was giving off light.
"Ki—Kirl!"
She held the little thing up. It wasn't as clear as the window glass she used to press her face against as a child. It wasn't half as pretty as the jewels the estate kept around purely for decoration.
But this one she had won. For him. The first one.
She had really, actually done it.
The tears came down one after another, and by then there was no telling what was rain from the ceiling and what wasn't.
Akiyama pulled her in tight.
"You know something?" Dagan said. "There was another Trainer who beat an Onix by breaking a sprinkler line. Only it was a Pikachu doing the punching. That kid's gone a long, long way since then."
"Something tells me she might pass him one day."
He said it like a man looking a long way backward.
He'd come into today intending to teach the Miki boy a lesson on account of that "agreement" with Masaki. Instead he'd sat through half a lesson himself.
Akiyama knew exactly who he meant. An old friend he'd known for decades and never once met, and never once been known by in return.
Maybe someday that would change.
"We're done taking challengers for the afternoon," Dagan told the referee, then folded his arms and headed for the back door.
"Come on, Kirlia. Let's go celebrate," Akiyama said, gentle, still holding her.
She nodded and got her arms around his neck, though they'd gone rubbery, and let him hoist her up onto his shoulders.
Both hands stayed clamped around that dark gray Rock Badge.
Long after everyone had cleared out, up in the shadows above the arena, a pair of narrow eyes closed in silence.
A moment later, evolutionary light bloomed in the dark.