"NO—!"
Akiyama lunged for the Shellder, horror all over his face.
Too late.
The Shellder had already bitten down on the Slowpoke's tail.
The Slowpoke lit up with evolutionary light.
It's over.
The color drained out of Akiyama's face.
"Wa-woo, wa-woo, wa-woo?"
The light faded, and the Slowpoke had become a Slowbro.
Its voice had changed, too.
Now it sounded like a siren.
"Wow."
Akiyama turned his head stiffly toward Nikozo.
That one had come from him.
"Two for the price of one?" Nikozo didn't know what else to say.
"Wah-wah-wah!" That one was Akiyama.
He sat straight down in the sand and stared in despair at the wa-wooing Slowbro.
The Miki family had reached the absolute pinnacle of the Psychic-type field, and Slowbro was the one place they'd repeatedly fallen on their faces.
You mostly couldn't communicate with them.
Look at those brilliant eyes. How was anybody supposed to train that?
Gardevoir patted his head sympathetically.
"Wa-wah? Wa-wah?"
The Slowbro shuffled two steps forward and pointed at its own mouth.
Apparently hungry.
"Feed it. Just feed it." Akiyama waved a limp hand and flopped backward onto the sand.
Done. Finished.
He was flipping through everything he knew about raising Slowbro.
It was not much.
Because the Miki family genuinely could not stand these overachievers.
"I'm cooked," Akiyama said, dragging both hands through his hair.
Fighting down a laugh, Gardevoir pulled an opened case of Psychic-type Energy Cubes out of the bag and offered a few to the Slowbro.
"Wa-wah, wa-wah..."
Even the noise had changed after evolving.
The cubes melted on its tongue, and the Slowbro slowly began to drool.
Tasty.
Heh heh. Tasty.
The drool traveled all the way down onto Akiyama's foot.
Let it all burn. He was tired.
Akiyama stopped thinking entirely and buried his foot in the sand.
"Akiyama, you are so much more fun like this." He got himself under control and coughed twice.
"There was an uncle in my dad's generation who refused to believe it and raised a Slowbro anyway. Man came out of it slow. They fixed him up eventually, and he still drools."
Akiyama's voice carried across the sand.
"Miki Chodo? I think I remember him," Nikozo said.
"That's the guy." Akiyama pushed himself upright. "Kept insisting a Slowbro could get as smart as a person. Then it got him instead."
"Sounds like they met in the middle," Nikozo said without missing a beat.
"That's dark."
Akiyama studied the Slowbro in front of him, trying to determine whether there was any hope at all.
He let Kadabra out.
"Go on. See if you can communicate with him."
Kadabra had no objections and reached out with his psychic power.
A moment later he turned a deeply reproachful look on Akiyama.
Communicate?
Me?
"See? Even Kadabra can't do it."
"Wow." Nikozo clicked his tongue. "So there's really no saving that kind of Pokémon?"
"That's not it. Some Slowbro are monsters in battle. And with a King's Rock, they evolve into Slowking, which is unbelievably intelligent—"
"But Slowbro happens to be one of the very few blind spots I've got."
Nikozo nodded like he'd learned something.
He knew a great deal about money and markets. About Pokémon, he still had a lot of ground to cover.
Anyway, it was done. Complaining wouldn't change it.
The Slowbro was his Pokémon now, and that made it his responsibility.
Akiyama walked over, threw an arm around the Slowbro's shoulders, gave it a couple of pats, and said with theatrical warmth, "Stick with me, buddy. I'll see you eat well."
The Slowbro didn't appear to have caught any of that.
Akiyama was about to repeat himself when it opened its mouth.
"Wa-woo, wa-woo, wa-woo—"
Like a squad car.
Five Pokémon and not one normal one in the bunch.
Gardevoir couldn't use Psychic-type moves.
Kadabra had gone down the Breeder path and never looked back.
Gengar scrubbed backs like a career bathhouse attendant, frighteningly good at it.
Comfey slept twenty-three hours a day.
And now he'd added a wailing college kid.
"You're still one short. Want to try your luck again?" Nikozo asked.
Akiyama shook his head hard.
"Nope. No. I am never trying my luck again."
He recalled Slowbro and Kadabra and got off that beach as fast as he reasonably could.
It was too frightening out there.
At that moment he felt a deep, personal kinship with Nanami's Inteleon.
"Achoo!"
Far away, in Phoenix Landing City, Inteleon sneezed and stopped what he was doing.
"Hey. Hey. No slacking off during study hours," Nanami said instantly.
Inteleon gave her the long-suffering look of a wife who'd endured decades of this, and went back to his Breeder textbook.
Nanami was lying in midair. Beneath her sat something like a wind tunnel, and the column of air it pushed out held her up on an invisible bed.
She'd only stayed in Greenlight City two days longer than Akiyama before racing straight to Phoenix Landing City.
The plan had been to take on the city's Balance Trial.
Then she'd figured out the Balance Trial wasn't a fit for her, so she'd stretched out on her air bed and clocked out for the day.
While Inteleon developed a side career.
Except Inteleon occasionally slacked off.
Inteleon: ...Excuse me?
Back at the Pokémon Center, Akiyama got in touch with the Pokémon Center in Greenleaf Town.
He explained what he needed, then sat down to wait.
"I'm honestly curious what they'll send you," Nikozo said from the couch.
"Metagross, probably. It's the standard issue for rookie Trainers in our family." Akiyama said it with confidence and zero anticipation.
There were only so many species the family kept on hand.
Gardevoir. Metagross. Espeon.
Actually, laid out like that, that was a decent lineup.
....
At the Akiyama manor.
A Gardevoir in a maid's uniform received the message from the Pokémon Center.
She was the current head of the manor's maid staff.
Little One needs Pokémon?
Once she'd finished reading, she made her way to the vault where the Miki family stored its Poké Balls.
Confusion flared, and the balls lifted off their racks.
They floated in a slow orbit around her while she considered which would suit.
Each one had a unique name engraved on it.
Most belonged to Pokémon raised by the family's elders, retired from battle and living out their days on the estate.
The head maid first floated the ones marked with Miki Chodo's crest back onto the shelf.
Then she began sorting carefully through the strongest of the rest.
While she was still deciding, another Gardevoir in a maid's uniform came in.
Her walk was more precise than the head maid's, more elegant, and her expression didn't allow for a single wasted motion.
I'll go.
....
Not long after, Akiyama got the notification while sitting on the couch. He set an empty Poké Ball on the transfer machine, and moments later it had been replaced by a ball bearing the Miki family crest.
He released the Pokémon inside without a second thought.
"Wait. You're—"
One look and the world went dark at the edges.
Akiyama's own Gardevoir scrambled to her feet.
Stand up straight. Is that the posture I taught you?
The Gardevoir in the maid's uniform delivered it directly into Akiyama's mind, ice cold.
~~
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