Deep inside Silver Crown Mountain.
Gold particles beyond counting had pooled into an ocean.
No one had ever set foot here. No one had ever found it.
As though something had reached them, a portion of those particles rose from the mountain's roots and drifted off in a single direction without a sound.
....
Early the next morning, Akiyama woke up in his bed feeling sharper than he had in weeks.
"Huh?"
The progress bar hanging in his vision was full again.
100
Bright and unmistakable.
It looked exactly the same as before. And yet Akiyama had the nagging sense that something about it had changed.
Like two identical antiques side by side—one made last week, one three thousand years old. Same shape, same aging, same everything you could point at. Pick them up, though, and they were not the same object.
That was the feeling.
What exactly was different, he couldn't say.
He let it go and started making breakfast for Gardevoir.
A few minutes later, someone knocked.
He went to the door, puzzled. With Nikozo gone from Frostvale City, he didn't know a soul in town.
He opened it to find an unusually large Chansey standing there with a flyer in hand.
"Chansey!"
The Chansey pushed the paper at him, then moved down the hall and knocked politely on the next door.
Akiyama walked back inside reading it.
There were pictures of Tentacruel and Tentacool. The word RAMPAGE took up most of the page in huge type, with smaller print underneath.
"Sharp swings between hot and cold water don't agree with Tentacool and Tentacruel, so every so often the whole population goes berserk?"
He raised an eyebrow.
That was a new one.
On the back was a call for help. They wanted Trainers to come down and get the swarm under control. If it wasn't dealt with by nightfall, ships wouldn't be able to dock.
Kadabra floated over silently and read along.
"Might as well go," Akiyama said. "Our ferry tickets are for tonight."
Kadabra nodded.
He set the flyer down and went back to the stove.
Booking passage last night, he'd wondered why so many ships were scheduled to put in at once. Now it made sense. More people buying tickets meant more people willing to pitch in, which meant that no matter how big the swarm got, Frostvale City would keep running.
Breakfast was ready before Gardevoir was willing to get out of bed.
The Gym had wrung her out. That ice field had been miserable for her.
As she shuffled toward the table, still half asleep, Akiyama let the rest of them out.
Gengar burst free grinning and shot straight to the table.
Then came Slowbro.
"Wa-woo, wa-woo, wa-woo?"
He looked around the room with utterly transparent eyes.
Gengar froze mid-motion, head swiveling toward the Slowbro like he'd just spotted an endangered species. He drifted over with one finger extended, aiming for the Slowbro's cheek—
Confusion clamped down on both of them.
Sit. Eat.
Second Sister's cool voice rang through everyone's skull.
Gengar, thoroughly bewildered, was hauled back into his chair.
He was gearing up to protest when he noticed that Akiyama, Kadabra, and Gardevoir were all sitting bolt upright and eating with painful correctness.
Gengar cranked his head around toward the Slowbro with visible effort.
"Gen... gar!"
Roughly: Why doesn't he have to sit right?
He can't help it. What's your excuse?
Gengar found himself pressed flat to the table by Confusion. Apparently she'd seen enough of the flailing.
She didn't release him, either. She used the Confusion to feed him bite by bite, like a toddler, while she sat down, picked up her own knife and fork, and sampled Akiyama's cooking. On the side, she floated a few Energy Cubes over to the Slowbro's mouth.
She had more than enough experience with this particular job.
All thanks to that idiot Miki Chodo.
When the plates were clear, Akiyama got ready to head down to the shore and help with the swarm.
"Second Sister, do you want to come?"
She nodded without hesitating. I'm not comfortable letting you face a rampaging swarm on your own.
They washed up, recalled Slowbro, and set out.
The whole way there they passed Trainers heading in the same direction.
The beach, when they reached it, was noticeably emptier of tourists. Two days ago the sand had been packed shoulder to shoulder with swimsuits. Now it was mostly Trainers with Pokémon out.
And offshore, a layer.
That was the only word for it—an entire layer of jellyfish spread across the water like a black curtain laid over the sea.
"That's way too many," Akiyama said, scalp prickling.
"Garde."
Gardevoir was thinking that Greenlight City handled the relationship between people and Pokémon a lot better than this.
"If people don't put them down, they'll eventually turn on each other. It used to happen constantly, way back before Frostvale City even existed."
He was quoting the flyer. They'd probably included it to take some of the weight off the Trainers doing the cleanup.
Let's begin. I'm on a schedule, Second Sister said, her voice cold in all their minds.
Confusion wrapped around her, and she lifted off toward the water.
She hung there in the air while countless white particles, shot through with violet, streamed into her body.
Calm Mind.
And she wasn't finished.
Calm Mind.
Calm Mind.
Her eyes opened. Her arms spread wide.
Dazzling Gleam.
Psychic.
Rainbow light swept out and drove a huge swath of Tentacool and Tentacruel down under the surface. Psychic hauled another whole section up out of the water, and just like that a piece of the black curtain was simply gone.
The maddened jellyfish seemed to have forgotten how to fight back. All they knew how to do was push toward shore.
Second Sister's hand closed in the air, and they came down in a long, dripping rain.
At the same moment, the progress bar in Akiyama's vision began dropping fast, gold particles no one else could see pouring steadily into Second Sister.
Hm? She looked down at him where he'd come to the water's edge.
Before Akiyama could open his mouth, Kadabra floated up and handled it—the same explanation he'd given Gengar.
Second Sister listened and nodded, unbothered.
The Miki family had precedent for males wielding psychic power. If one of them woke up with something odd, that was hardly worth a second thought.
Although... this is a considerable amount.
She could feel it. Her own strength had genuinely gone up.
The commotion had drawn the other Trainers' attention.
"That Gardevoir is incredible."
"She wiped out half the swarm in one shot."
"I feel useless all of a sudden."
A Trainer with a Charmander looked openly demoralized. His Charmander was trading blows with a single Tentacool, more or less evenly, while somebody else's Pokémon cleared acres at a time.
Second Sister paid the praise no attention.
Combat wasn't her specialty. But with several Calm Minds stacked, she could bring plenty of it to bear anyway.
"All right, our turn. Gardevoir, Hyper Beam!"
"Kadabra, Metronome."
"Gengar, Thunder!"
The dead-silent beam lanced out, and an entire row of jellyfish sank. Gengar's Thunder came down and traveled a long way through the water.
Kadabra's finger stopped. Blue points of light began appearing all over the air above the shallows.
An enormous mass of Water-type energy came rushing in from everywhere at once.
"Wait—is that Ori—"
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