Enter Tauros.
"That is one fat Tauros," Akiyama said, genuinely thrown. He'd never seen one like it.
"Charge in. Hit stuff. Whatever." Takeru couldn't be bothered with an actual command.
Tauros scraped a back hoof against the floor and came thundering forward.
Gardevoir went still and centered. Flame wrapped one hand; lightning crackled around the other.
When Tauros arrived, she caught both silver horns and held.
Those days out in the wild hadn't been wasted—training and battles both. The progress bar was down to 30, and the results showed. One element per hand, no hesitation, no fumbling.
She pinned the bull's head down and drove a Focus Punch straight into it.
Thud.
Solid skull.
The pressure wave rolling off the punch knocked the Poké Ball out of the air and dropped it neatly beside Takeru's hand.
Then she hit it again, and Tauros went sailing, hit the floor, and stopped moving.
The progress bar surfaced.
30 to 29.5.
Half a point? You're slacking off too?
Takeru recalled it and sent out another Tauros.
Same sequence. Same ending.
His third Pokémon was also a Tauros.
When it went down, the bar limped its way to 28.
Limped being the word, because it had apparently caught Takeru's condition and was now counting down from the decimal place.
The Twin Fist Badge came sailing over, and Gardevoir caught it and brought it to Akiyama, delighted.
She didn't care what the Gym Leader thought about anything. All she knew was that she'd helped.
Akiyama took the badge and reached up to rub her head.
Then he looked at Takeru. "A friend told me you had a pretty incredible run about twenty years ago. I was hoping—"
He didn't get to finish. Takeru's eyes were already shut, and he was snoring.
Actually asleep.
"Told you he wouldn't talk about it." The voice came from behind him.
Akiyama turned. Nanami was walking in.
"Uncle Takeru! It's me. Nanami. Of the Nanami family." She shouted it at the sleeping man.
His eyes opened, and for the first time all day he actually stood up.
"There's not much left of me that's any use to your family," Takeru said.
"I want to learn from you. Combat technique. Real battle experience."
He patted his stomach and laughed. "Fighting technique. From me?"
"Yes. You may not have battled in years, but there's nobody in the Seichu region better at this than you." She nodded, dead serious, and even shifted into the polite register.
Takeru thought about it, then nodded. "Fine. But I'm not paying back any favors to the Nanami family after this."
"Fine. Anybody comes asking, send them to me." She agreed instantly, like she'd personally stand in front of whatever came.
"Uh—could my Gardevoir sit in on that?" Akiyama put in.
He kept coming back to the fight against Hikaze's swapped-in Scyther, and how much Gardevoir's lack of experience and technique had cost her. If Nanami said nobody in Seichu beat Takeru, that was worth betting on.
"You—" Something moved across Takeru's face for once, and his brow furrowed.
"Let him come," Nanami cut in before the refusal could land. "Teaching one, teaching two, what's the difference."
Takeru nodded and let it go.
Akiyama gave her a grateful look.
She said, "After this, we're square."
He knew what she meant. The cruise. Nearly drowning.
He thought it over and nodded.
"Right. I'm going back to sleep. Tomorrow's Blossom Rest. Come back the day after." Takeru was done with both of them.
Neither argued. Akiyama took Gardevoir's hand and followed Nanami out.
Once they were clear of the building, he asked, "Is he actually the real deal?"
Nanami nodded. "If nothing had gone wrong back then, he'd have been the closest anyone came to those two Pallet Town rookies."
That got his attention.
Somebody like that existed?
He'd spent his whole life assuming his dad sat at the top of the mountain alone. Turned out there'd been a second monster of the same weight class the entire time.
"So the accident is what turned him into… that?"
"Yeah. Don't let the gut fool you. He used to compete in bodybuilding. Won." Nanami nodded again.
Akiyama clicked his tongue. "I honestly can't picture it."
Beside him, Gardevoir clicked her tongue too.
At the fork in the road, Nanami stopped. "I'm heading out of town to cut some wisteria. You?"
He considered it. "I'll come. I want some too."
Wisteria grew on long, trailing vines. Draped over the green trees outside Greenlight City, it turned the whole canopy a color it had no business being. The flower didn't grow anywhere else.
The vines were young and green, and you needed a blade to take them.
"So why do you carry a knife?" Akiyama asked, accepting a length of flowering vine from her.
Nanami pushed her sleeve back and showed him an arm covered in old scratches and scars.
"…" He had nothing.
Apparently the loud, reckless, charge-first Nanami wasn't nearly as uncomplicated as she performed.
He thought for a second and said, "Disinfect them. You don't want tetanus."
Lecture her? Nobody was stupid. If lectures worked, she'd have been fixed long before he showed up.
She blinked, caught off guard.
Then she put her head down and went back to cutting.
Akiyama measured what he had by eye and asked her for one more length.
....
"Gen… gar…"
Gengar drifted along at half speed with enough shopping bags hanging off his arms to bury him.
He could have just swallowed them, but Kadabra had vetoed that on grounds of drool.
Then he spotted matcha cake through a shop window and shot off like a bullet, scattering bags behind him.
Pedestrians looked up in alarm.
None of the bags hit the ground. They hung in the air where he'd dropped them.
Kadabra sighed and floated over to the little menace currently licking a glass display case.
He lifted him off it with Confusion and apologized to the girl behind the counter.
"Oh, don't worry about it—he's cute!" She leaned down, doting, at the Gengar who had been peeled off her display, then pulled out a slice of matcha cake and held it out to him.
Stars went off in Gengar's eyes. He took it and swallowed the whole thing in one bite, and the look on his face was pure bliss.
Thank you, Kadabra said, the words landing directly in her mind.
Then he bought several more.
When the balance came up on the register, the girl covered her mouth.
Gengar traveled on with matcha in his left hand and strawberry in his right, whipped cream to his ears.
Sweet.
Gen-gen-gengar—
He wiped his mouth and licked his palms clean.
Kadabra stopped walking. There was a large screen mounted above the plaza, and it was running a segment on Blossom Rest.
Including what it meant to weave wisteria into something small and give it away.
Look at this.
He pulled Gengar over.
Two Pokémon exchanged a glance, and both of them had the same idea.
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