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Dr. Matthews: How did you know what to do?

Theo: I didn't. I knew Annihilape's capabilities, and I knew what we had available and I knew how those things fit together tactically. But I've never planned a battle against something that could kill us before. The knowledge was there. I just had to trust it was right even though I couldn't remember where it came from or whether it had ever worked before.

---

Miyato came back with Ryuu at his side.

Not behind him. Not trailing at the old distance. Beside him, close enough that the space between them was a choice, and when Miyato stopped at the edge of the group Ryuu stopped too, which was not a thing Ryuu had done unprompted since Miyato received him three months ago.

Miyato looked at Theo.

"We've come to an understanding," he said. "A temporary one. Until we're out of this."

Theo looked at Ryuu.

Ryuu looked at the northern treeline with the attention of a Pokémon that had decided the situation was worth engaging with.

He updated Miyato on the plan quietly. Miyato listened. His jaw moved once but he didn't interrupt, and when Theo finished he nodded with the expression of someone who had understood and was choosing not to say everything he thought about it.

Victoria had been a ranger for six years and had planned operations under pressure before. She had coordinated responses to wild Pokémon incidents, route emergencies, and trainer rescues. She had worked with less.

She had not worked with a fourteen-year-old who had one badge and the tactical knowledge of someone three tiers above him and a red-haired boy from a lineage she had recognized from the moment she saw the cape, but had decided was not her business.

"Positions," she said.

Everyone moved.

The Drowzee spread to the perimeter as they had rehearsed, the ones who could withstand the proximity going to the closer positions, the rest to the outer ring. The Hypno took its place at the centre of the clearing, pendulum still, eyes closed, something that had committed to what came next. Staraptor dropped from the high root and landed at the front, wings settling, its eyes already on the northern treeline. Victoria moved to the front and center.

Gallade was far behind.

"When you're ready," she said.

The Hypno's eyes closed.

The barrier came down.

Victoria hit the beacon with her functional thumb. She heard Theo's click. She heard Miyato's. Three signals going out simultaneously into the open air, three confirmation lights blinking, three calls for support moving toward the ranger station.

The air in the clearing changed immediately.

Theo felt it the moment the barrier dropped.

Not physically. The air didn't shift, the temperature didn't change, but something in the pressure of the clearing released, and the forest came back in around them with the sounds and the weight he'd been tracking for days. His hand was on Zeus's Pokéball. Jupiter was on his shoulder, absolutely still, watching and waiting.

He knew what was coming.

Knowing didn't make him less afraid.

It just meant he understood exactly what they were about to face.

Then it appeared.

Not through the trees. It was simply there, at the northern edge of the clearing, arrived before anything that size should have been able to arrive.

Victoria had seen it from a distance before Gallade went down and had carried the image of it through everything since.

Seeing it again was different from remembering it.

It was enormous. Not Gyarados enormous, not a scale that removed it from the immediate world, but enormous in the way of something that occupied more space than its physical dimensions accounted for. The aura of it was ghastly in the old sense of the word, a presence that registered on the part of the nervous system that existed before language. The air around it pressed against the chest from the inside.

It opened its mouth.

The scream that came out was not a battle cry. It was the sound of something that had been in full rage for days and had found a target and intended to finish what it had been building toward since the barrier came down. Every Pokémon in the clearing responded before any of them had really thought about it. The Drowzee on the inner ring pressed back a fraction. Kiri made a sound against Miyato's neck. Zeus's ears went flat and came back up.

Miyato looked at Theo.

Theo was looking at the Annihilape.

The Hypno's communication moved through the clearing without sound, direction distributed through the psychic link to every Pokémon that could receive it, positions and angles arriving behind eyes rather than in ears. Victoria felt it land and watched her people respond.

"Ryuu."

Haze came off Ryuu in a slow rolling wave that crossed the clearing and washed over everything in it. The stat changes on the field cleared to nothing; the battlefield leveled before the engagement had properly started. Kiri followed without being told, Smokescreen crossing to the right, a second to the left, overlapping layers building until the Annihilape's sightlines were compromised and the clearing had become a different kind of space.

The Annihilape looked at the smoke and moved.

Staraptor was already crossing when the Annihilape committed, the Hypno's information keeping it ahead of the engagement, and Intimidate rolled out from the approach, and Annihilape's attack rose in response, Defiant converting the debuff the moment it landed. Then Ryuu pushed Haze again, and the boost vanished the moment it arrived.

Victoria watched the Annihilape process this.

The half-second of stillness. Something that hadn't been expected.

Staraptor kept moving. Not attacking. Drawing it. The Protect came up when Annihilape committed, and the blow deflected off the barrier. Staraptor banked sideways and the smoke covered while it repositioned, and the Hypno distributed the new position through the link before the Annihilape had finished tracking where Staraptor had gone.

Miyato watched from the far edge of the clearing with Kiri on his shoulder and Ryuu beside him and his jaw set. He was reading the Annihilape the way he had been reading it since it appeared. Looking for the thing that would make the plan not work. Finding several candidates and filing them in order of likelihood.

The Phantom Force started.

Victoria had been watching for it. The moment the Annihilape began to phase she called it through the Hypno's link and the Drowzee on the inner ring moved together. Not one at a time. All eleven of them, Disable coming off the coven simultaneously in a directed barrage at the fading form.

Disable did not work on opponents too strong for it.

However, there were eleven Drowzee.

The Disable held.

Annihilape came back into the visible world with the move locked out and what it did with that information was not adapt. It went further. The rage that had been past full for days found another gear.

Outrage.

Victoria braced.

The Dragon energy came off it in a wave that the smoke did nothing to slow. Outrage didn't need a target. It filled the space it found. Staraptor was already moving, reading the Hypno's directions and staying ahead of where the attack landed, and the Outrage swept through space twice. On the third pass, the Annihilape stopped swinging at where Staraptor had been and looked for where it was instead, but it couldn't find it in the smoke.


But Staraptor could not dodge everything.

The grab happened fast, faster than anything that size should have moved, and the slam into the ground sent debris flying through the air. Staraptor hit the earth and Victoria's chest pulled tight, the dread of watching something you'd raised go down hard.

Annihilape stood over it with Drain Punch, loading in its fist and the clearing understood what that meant before anyone could do anything.

Victoria looked at the Hypno.

The pendulum moved once. Side to side.

Not yet.

She raised Staraptor's Pokéball.

Then Mr Glutton moved.

He was the oldest Drowzee in the coven and the slowest, but the Grass Knot came from him at a speed that almost didn't matter. Annihilape's fist was descending when the move caught low and precise, binding the leg in the fraction of a second before the Drain Punch completed.

One half second.

The angle was everything. The leg gave and Annihilape went sideways, and the Drain Punch hit the ground instead of Staraptor. The earth took the impact and a section of the clearing floor did not survive the trade.

Staraptor wrenched free.

It got into the air and Victoria watched it and knew from the way the wings were working that it was done. Running on what was left. She looked at the Hypno.

The pendulum was still moving. Gallade behind the Haze line still preparing.

Not yet.

The Annihilape was on one knee, the momentum of the trip still resolving, and it was the stillest it had been since the barrier came down. Zeus and Jupiter had been holding at the far edge of the clearing, and this was what Theo had told them to wait for.

Two Thunder Waves crossed the clearing simultaneously.

They found the Annihilape on one knee, and the paralysis from both sources arrived at the same moment and settled into it before it could generate the movement needed to shake either off.

And then it pushed through it.

The Thunder Wave slowed it. It did not stop it. It crossed the remaining distance with its legs fighting its own nervous system and Rage Fist loading heavier than it had been at any point in the battle and the clearing understood what was coming.

Staraptor came off the root.
She had nothing left. Victoria had known that since the slam, and Staraptor knew it too.

Not struggling for lift this time. Wings tucked, body angled, diving directly at the Annihilape with everything she had left in her. It looked like Brave Bird. It looked like a decision.

Annihilape met the charge without moving. The Rage Fist came up and connected with Staraptor mid-dive, full force, every hit from the entire battle sitting in that one weapon.

Victoria had the Pokéball raised before the impact was completed.

The beam caught Staraptor before she hit the ground.

The clearing went very still.

Annihilape's ghostly aura raged wildly as Victoria recalled her partner. The paralysis still working in it. Rage Fist heavier than at the start of the fight, the compounding damage from every hit it had absorbed since this began sitting in that one weapon. It looked at the rest of the clearing.

At Zeus and Jupiter.

At Miyato and Kiri and Ryuu.

At the Drowzee on the inner ring.

At Theo.

Theo's hand was on his Pokéball.

Victoria said nothing.

Annihilape took one step.

"Attack!" Victoria called. "Everyone, now!"

The Drowzee on the inner ring hesitated.

One full second, twelve sets of eyes flickering between Victoria and the Annihilape, the plan running in all of them and the problem with this instruction running louder. Rage Fist. Every hit makes the next one worse. They had built the entire plan around not feeding it.

The Annihilape took another step.

"Now!" Victoria said.

They moved.

Twelve Drowzee, Confusion coming off the coven in a directed wave that hit the Annihilape from every angle simultaneously. The psychic energy from twelve working in concert was not nothing. Against a weaker opponent, it would have been significant.
The Annihilape walked through it. The Confusion wave crested and broke and Annihilape came out the other side still standing, Rage Fist heavier than it had been at any point in the battle.


Zeus stepped forward.

Jupiter stepped forward.

Miyato's hand found his Pokéball, fingers unsteady. He put the command through anyway. Kiri dropped from his shoulder, hit the ground, and looked up at the Annihilape without moving back.

Ryuu was already moving.

No instruction. No command. He moved to the front line beside Zeus and Jupiter and Kiri and stood there with the full committed attention he had withheld from everything since Miyato received him and had decided to partake for now.

Theo looked at Victoria.

Victoria was looking at the Hypno.

The pendulum had stopped.

The eyes were bright and steady and the communication that came through the psychic connection was not words. Just readiness, full, something that had built everything it had into one moment and was telling her the moment was here.

The Annihilape took one more step.

"Now," she said.

The Hypno did something.

She had built the plan around a capability that no Hypno on record could demonstrate. She had done this because the tactical logic was sound and because she had looked at this particular Hypno and formed an assessment that it was not like Hypno on record.

She was still surprised when it worked.

Gallade and Hypno appeared behind the Annihilape.

Not traversed. Not ran. There. Somewhere else and then here, in the space between moments.

Annihilape's reflexes were extraordinary.

It turned.

The paralysis from the Thunder Wave chose that moment to fire.

The window was small. Gallade had it and used it and Psycho Cut came off its hand with everything Sharpness did to slicing moves and everything that stacking behind the Haze line had built into it, Focus Energy and Swords Dance maxed and finding an Annihilape that had turned toward it but had not finished turning.

The super-effective hit connected.

Underneath the impact was a sharp, clean crack. Distinct from everything else the battle had produced. The sound that meant one thing and meant it clearly.

Victoria had been a ranger for six years. She had seen significant damage in battles that had gone beyond training. She had not seen a hit move something the size of Annihilape the way this one did.

The Psycho Cut carried Annihilape across the clearing and into the tree line with a force the strength differential between Gallade and an Elite rank Pokemon should not have permitted. Annihilape hit the trees. One of them did not stay standing.

The clearing was silent.

Then Miyato made a sound somewhere behind her.

Then someone else.

The recognition beginning to come through in stages —

The scream came from the trees before anyone had finished feeling relief.

A different scream.

Not the scream of something that had found a target. The scream of something that had absorbed a critical hit at full power, in a fight that had been feeding its Rage Fist since it began, and was still here. Still here and worse than before. The sound of something that had been pushed past what should have been its limit and had found that its limit was further out than anyone had accounted for.

Annihilape came out of the trees.

It came out faster than it went in.

The Disable had run its course while it was in the trees.

It was there, and then it wasn't.

Gallade had half a second to register what was happening and did not have half a second to respond to it.

The Rage Fist carried every hit from every Pokemon across the entire battle, the Confusion waves, the Psycho Cut, Grass Knot, Staraptor, all of it . in one weapon, and it found Gallade before Gallade could clear the space.

Gallade went down and formed a crater in the floor below as rocks and dust kicked up across the clearing

Victoria's hand was already on the Pokéball. She recalled it. No words. Just the motion of someone who understood that the calculation had just changed and was already looking for the next calculation.

The clearing understood what had just happened before anyone said it.

Then the Annihilape's aura unfurled.

Not a move. Not a status condition. Just the presence of it, fully unchecked now, broadcasting outward from something that had been fed and sustained and refused for days and had finally reached the other side of refusal.

The wrongness that had been in the air since it first appeared found a new register.

Every Pokémon in the clearing felt it simultaneously.

The Drowzee stopped moving. All twelve. They didn't run, didn't scatter. Just pressed back, eyes wide, the psychic link flooding with something that was not a plan.

Kiri made a sound as it stepped back to Miayato.

Ryuu's tail went still.

Zeus's ears were flat against his head.

Jupiter had moved back to Theo without noticing and was pressed against him.

Theo's hands were not still.

He was running exits and finding none.

He had built everything around Gallade. Every piece of the setup; the paralysis, Haze, Disable and Teleport, had been to create a window for Gallade. The window had worked. The hit had landed. The hit had even been a critical.

And it had gotten up.

No version of his knowledge bridged this gap. He knew type matchups and move mechanics and ability interactions and strategic frameworks and none of it answered what happened when everything correct had been done and the thing in front of you had simply decided that what was correct was not enough.

He looked at Annihilape standing in the clearing where Gallade had been.

Knowledge failed here. Strategy failed here. He understood now, with complete clarity, that understanding what something was capable of and having the tools to match it were two different things, and he had only ever had one of those.

The Hypno stepped forward.

Not fast. Not with any particular ceremony. One step, pendulum still, eyes open and bright. The communication that came through the link arrived in Victoria and Theo at the same moment.

Go. Take the trainers and the coven and go. I will buy what time I can.

"Wait--!" Victoria said.

The Hypno's eyes held hers for a moment
It teleported.

Not to escape. To the far side of the clearing, between the Annihilape and the tree line where the coven was. Placing itself. The Psychic came off it immediately, not the stacked precision of the battle plan, just the Hypno giving everything it had right now, full and immediate, psychic force finding the Annihilape with everything in it.

The Annihilape took it and came through it.

The Hypno teleported again. Repositioned. Refused to stand still, refused to give it a fixed target. Psychic again. The attack found the Annihilape mid-step and pushed it back and the Hypno was already somewhere else.

It was working.

For four exchanges, it was working.

On the fifth, the Annihilape had tracked the intervals.
The grip closed around Hypno's neck before the teleport could complete.

The Hypno couldn't move.

The clearing held. Nobody had anything left. The Drowzee were pressed against the perimeter. Theo and Miyato stood with their Pokémon in total stillness. The Annihilape stood in the center of what remained and the wrongness in the air had nowhere left to go.

Then a voice cut through the tree line.

"Air Slash!"

The compressed blade came off a Pidgeot's wings fast and clean and hit before anyone in the clearing had processed where the voice had come from. The Annihilape flinched. One sharp involuntary jerk, the grip opening for just a second.

Hypno dropped free and teleported.

Gone before it hit the ground.

A Ranger came through the canopy on his Pidgeot, already calling his next move, and behind him two Rangers broke through the tree line. One of them was on a Fearow, moving fast, and as the Fearow banked hard, the ranger stood in the saddle and jumped off.

The Fearow spun into Drill Peck.

The attack caught Annihilape square and the rotational force carried it backward, the great body tumbling across the clearing floor and into the root system at the far edge. Trees shuddered with the impact.

Everyone in the clearing was already staring.

Annihilape came back to its feet.

The scream it released was not a retreat. It was a declaration. It turned toward the rangers, Rage Fist loading, the full weight of everything it had absorbed across this battle sitting in that weapon, and it stepped forward.

The paralysis from the Thunder Waves fired.

Half a second. Its legs fighting its own nervous system.

"Hurricanes!" The lead Ranger called. "Both of you! Now!"

Two Pidgeots released simultaneously.

The wind that came off them was like a weather event. The Hurricanes hit the clearing from both angles and merged into something that nobody standing in it had words for. Theo's arm came up across his face before he knew he was doing it. Miyato turned his shoulder into it and bent forward. The Drowzee pressed against the earth. Even Victoria, on the ground with her arm already compromised, had to drive her functional hand into the soil.

The Annihilape went back.

Not stumbling. Flying. Both Hurricanes found it at the same moment and the combined force carried it into the tree line with a crack that reached the far edge of the clearing.

The wind died.

The clearing was still.

Then Annihilape came back out of the trees.

Slower. The legs carrying it differently. The presence still wrong, the rage still broadcasting, but the body had finally found the floor of what it could absorb.

It screamed once more.

The rangers tensed. Yusuke's Pidgeot's wings were already rising.

Annihilape's legs gave.

One knee. The other. Then the great body fell, and the presence diminished as it landed, the ghastly quality of the air around it reducing by degrees as the rage that had sustained it for days finally ran out of body to sustain.

Victoria threw the Ranger Ball.

It hit. Caught. The sequence completed, and the ball went still and the clearing was very still around it.

Then Victoria sat down because her arm had been in severe pain for the last three hours and the decisions she had been making about not addressing that were no longer holding.

One of the Rangers landed beside her. His Pidgeot folded its wings.

He looked at the Ranger Ball. At the Hypno and the Drowzee. At Staraptor's Pokéball on Victoria's belt. At Theo and Miyato.

"Victoria," he said. "What exactly happened here?"

"I'll brief you, Yusuke," she said. "Get me something for this arm first."

Yusuke was already signaling the other rangers.

Theo looked at the Ranger Ball in Victoria's hand.

"We almost had it," he said. Honest, not wounded.

Victoria looked at it too. "You almost had it," she agreed. She said it the way she said things that were simply true. "The plan was good. Execution was good. Annihilape just had more in it than any of us budgeted for." She glanced at him sideways. "Don't take it personally. There are things in the world that don't go down because you're clever at them. Sometimes you just need more firepower."

"The Hypno and Gallade—"

"Did what they could. So did you." She turned the ball over in her functional hand. "The abilities. The Phantom Force call. The Thunder Wave timing. That was good work. "A pause. "None of us died. That's a result, with what was in this clearing."

Theo said nothing.

"Where does a fourteen-year-old with one badge get that depth of knowledge?" she said.

He looked at his boots. "I don't know."

Victoria looked at him for a moment.

"Not my business," she said. "The more I know, the more I write in the report, and the report is already going to be a bother."

Miyato made a sound from behind them that might have been a laugh.

Victoria looked over her shoulder at him.

"Dragon Clan," she said.

Miyato went very still.

"The cape," Victoria said pleasantly. "I grew up in Mahogany Town. Spare me." She looked back at the tree line. "Not my business. Not going in the report. What is going in the report is that two trainers contributed significantly to the resolution of a serious wildlife incident and conducted themselves with more sense than most of the adults I work with." She paused. "You can quote me on that."

Theo looked at his boots.

"You're very direct," he said.

"Complaining about it?" Victoria said.

"No," he said.

"Good."

Yusuke crouched beside her and looked at her arm and his expression did something she appreciated him not saying out loud.

"The short version," she said, "is that there's an Annihilape in that ball that has been in a full rage state for days. My Pokémon needs medical attention immediately, and these two," she looked at Theo and Miyato, "need to be escorted back to the outpost and their sponsors contacted."

Yusuke looked at Theo.

Theo looked back.

Yusuke looked at Miyato.

Miyato was standing with Kiri on his shoulder and Ryuu beside him, very still, with the expression of someone who had spent everything they had and was running the calculation of what remained.

Yusuke looked at Victoria.

"You're going to need to brief me in detail," he said.

"I know," she said. "Arm first."

---

Miyato sat down.

Not gradually. He was standing and then he was on the floor of the clearing with his back against the great tree's root and his legs out in front of him and Kiri in his lap and the expression of someone whose body had made a decision without consulting him.

He was shaking. Not the fear-shaking from earlier. Something with a different quality, the full-body tremor of something that had been held under pressure for a long time and released.

His mouth was doing something that wasn't quite a smile and wasn't quite anything else.

"We did that," he said. To Kiri. To no one in particular. "We actually did that."

Theo looked at him.

Something happened that he had not expected.

It started in his chest and came up through him and arrived on his face before he had decided what to do with it. Not the controlled version. Not the corner of the mouth movement he had learned to manage. The real kind, coming out of him the way things came out when they had been kept somewhere too long. It lasted longer than he expected and had more in it than he could account for. When it finished, he was standing in the clearing with Miyato looking up at him from the floor. Zeus pressed against his left leg. Jupiter on his shoulder with the smug satisfaction of a Pokémon that had never doubted the outcome.

Miyato's not-quite-a-smile resolved into the real thing.

"Yeah," he said.

Theo looked at the clearing. At the great tree and the coven. At Victoria, being helped up by Yusuke.

His chest had a quality to it he recognised.

Not the anxiety from the dock. Not the noise he had been managing. The other thing. The thing that had been in the gym when it was right, at the table with the pancakes and the people who had made room without discussing it.

Not being alone in a thing.

He looked at Jupiter.

Jupiter looked back with the complete confidence of something that had never doubted the outcome.

Zeus pressed against his leg once.

Theo put his hand on Zeus's back and stood in the clearing, letting himself feel it.

All of it.

Dr. Matthews: What does safety feel like after a situation like that?

Theo: Strange. We reached the ranger outpost and I should have relaxed but I didn't for hours. My jaw stayed tight, my hand kept going to my Poké Balls even though nothing was wrong. It's like my body didn't believe we'd made it. I know what adrenaline does physiologically. I know the stress response cycle. Knowing didn't make it stop faster.

---

The ranger outpost was a single-storey building at the northern end of a cleared section off the maintained path, stone-and-wood construction with the look of something built to outlast the people who used it rather than impress them. A common room with a long table and mismatched chairs. A small kitchen area behind a counter. A corridor running to the back with bunk rooms for travellers, two beds each, wool blankets folded at the foot. A duty room where the on-call ranger was working through paperwork. A medical room where Victoria had been since they arrived.

Theo stood in the common room with his bag on the floor and Zeus, Jupiter and Kiri in various stages of introduction to the new space.

Jupiter located the kitchen area within forty seconds of entry, moved behind the counter, opened a lower cabinet, assessed the contents and closed it again with the expression of a Pokémon that had conducted a survey and formed preliminary conclusions. He then went back to Theo's side and looked at him.

"I know," Theo said.

Zeus had gone to the corridor and was moving along it methodically, nose working, the same perimeter assessment he had done on the route applied to the enclosed space with the same unhurried thoroughness.

Kiri was on Miyato's shoulder investigating the noticeboard with both fins extended toward the paper.

The on-duty ranger whose name was Pemba had been doing outpost overnight shifts for three years and had seen travellers arrive in various states, and had thought he had a comprehensive picture of what an eventful evening looked like.

He reconsidered this while watching a fifteen-year-old with a Horsea on his shoulder go through the outpost kitchen's supplies with the focused efficiency of someone conducting a professional assessment.

"You don't have to," Pemba said.

"I want to," Miyato said. He had found the dried goods shelf and was making decisions. "The rations you have here are —" He stopped. "They're functional," he said, charitably.

Pemba looked at the rations.

"Right," he said.

What came out of the outpost kitchen twenty minutes later used the same ingredients that Pemba had been preparing in various functional combinations for three years and produced results he had not previously associated with those ingredients. Miyato moved through the process with the particular ease he had when he was doing what he was best at.

The on-duty ranger ate his portion in silence.

Jupiter had positioned himself at the end of the table earliest and had communicated his requirements through his attention toward the section of the counter where the pancake mix lived. Miyato had found it and obliged without being asked, which Jupiter accepted with the grace of someone whose expectations had been confirmed rather than exceeded.

Zeus ate his dinner with the methodical quiet he brought to everything.

Kiri ate from Miyato's plate since she had decided this was the arrangement.

Ryuu accepted a small amount of food when Miyato put it on the floor near the door. He did not acknowledge him but the bowl was empty when Miyato checked it.

Miyato noted this and said nothing.

They were still at the table when Miyato set his cup down and looked at the surface of it for a moment.
"I should tell you something," he said.

Theo looked at him.

"I'm scared of bugs," Miyato said.

Theo waited.

Miyato turned his cup around in his hands. "That's — I mean, that's true. That's a real thing. But it wasn't — I didn't tell you because of that. I told you because —" He stopped. His jaw moved. "I should have told you earlier. About the clan."

Theo said nothing.

"The Dragon Clan of Blackthorn," Miyato said. He was looking at his cup. "The cape. The Dratini as a starter. I was — I wasn't trying to deceive you, I just —" He stopped again. "I'm not exactly what the name suggests and I didn't want to —" He looked up. "I'm sorry."

Theo looked at him.

"I know," he said.

Miyato went still.

"The cape and hair," Theo said.

"How long?"

"Since you said your name."

Miyato looked at him for a moment.

"And you didn't say anything," he said.

"You were getting to it," Theo said.

Miyato pressed his hands flat on the table. He looked at the cup again.

"I'm related to Lance," he said.

"I assumed," Theo said. "How?"

Miyato was quiet for a moment. "He's family," he said. It wasn't an evasion exactly. More like the boundary of what he was prepared to say right now.

Theo accepted it without pushing.

"I didn't know that this journey would be — I didn't know it would go like today went," Miyato said quietly. "I wasn't ready for it."

He said it the way people said things that were true and had other things behind them that they weren't saying. Theo heard the other things without being able to name them. He didn't try.

"No one is ready for an Annihilape in a forest" Theo said.

Miyato's mouth moved. Not quite a smile. Something adjacent.

"No," he agreed.

---

Theo's phone rang while Miyato was in the corridor bathroom.

He answered it and all four of them were already there.

"Theo." That was Kadan. Immediately. The tone of someone who had been waiting to ask and was not going to delay. "Are you injured?"

"No," Theo said.

"Your team," Kadan said.

"Fine.."

"And the situation is resolved."

"The Annihilape is captured. Victoria the ranger caught it."

"— THEO!" That was Kalea, who had apparently been exercising restraint and had run out of it. "Surge called us and said your beacon went off and we had no idea what was happening and I have been —"

"I'm fine," Theo said.

"You went OFF ROUTE. In unmanaged territory. With a wild Annihilape—"

"It's resolved," Theo said. "I'll tell you everything."

He told them everything.

He did not abbreviate it or manage it the way he would have managed it with strangers. He told them about the Gyarados, the kids, getting separated, the circles, the beacon failing, the Hypno and the coven, Victoria, the barrier, the plan. He told them about Miyato and what Miyato had contributed without going into who Miyato was.

The silence when he finished had the quality of four people processing simultaneously.

"The Gallade behind the haze line," Kadan said. His voice had a quality Theo hadn't heard from him directed at himself before. "The Swords Dance maintaining through the haze effect because of the positioning."

"Victoria planned it," Theo said.

"You gave her the pieces," Kadan said. "The abilities read. The Phantom Force identification. The Rage Fist warning. Without those the plan has nothing to build on." A pause. "What I taught you about ability interactions. You applied it under pressure against an Elite rank Pokemon."

Theo said nothing.

"I'm —" Kadan started. Stopped. Started again. "That's good, Theo. That's genuinely good."

Theo looked at the wall.

Dale's voice came in. "You know what they say about trainers whose beacons go off on day two of their first circuit."

"What," Theo said.

"They're electrically charged." A beat. "Get it. Because—"

"Dale," Kalea said.

"I'm just saying the journey has started."

Kalea said. "Who is this Miyato?"

"Someone I met on the route," Theo said. "He helped."

"He," Kalea said. "Is he—"

"Kalea," Kadan said.

"I'm just asking."

Theo looked at the ceiling.

"He's good at cooking," Theo said. "That's what I know."

---

He was at the table with the dimensional bag open when Miyato came back and stopped in the doorway.

Theo had the egg out.

It sat in his hands in the outpost light with the same warmth it always had, the iridescent markings catching the generator light differently than they caught daylight, and Miyato looked at it from the doorway with an expression Theo hadn't seen from him before.

"Can I?" Miyato said.

Theo held it out.

Miyato came to the table, sat and took the egg carefully in both hands and held it. He was quiet for a moment. His eyes were focused but in a way where he wasn't paying attention to something that wasn't sound or sight.

"Dragon energy," he said.

Theo looked at the egg.

"Dragon Clan," Miyato said. "We're sensitive to it. There's a signature—" He turned the egg slightly. "It's not a standard signature. It's not any dragon type I've encountered." He looked up at Theo. "What is it?"

"I don't know," Theo said. He meant it.

Miyato looked at the egg again.

"It's strong," he said. "For an egg." He turned it once more. "And it's mixed with something else. Something I can't identify either."

They both looked at it.

The egg was warm, and the markings caught the light and offered nothing further on the subject.

Theo took it back and settled it in the bag's compartment and closed the seal.

Neither of them said anything about it for a while.

Later, Theo was reading the PokéNav's route notes for the next section when Miyato came out of the bunk room and set something on the table with the quiet efficiency of someone completing a routine.

Several things.

A surprising number of things, given the size of the bag they had come out of. Small containers, a few larger ones, arranged in a specific order. Miyato sat down and began working through them with the focused calm he brought to cooking, which was to say the particular ease of someone doing something they were good at.

He was aware Theo was looking.

He did not look back for a moment.

"What?" he said.

"Nothing," Theo said.

"It's a routine," Miyato said. His ears had gone pink. "Dragon Clan culture places emphasis on—" He stopped. "I've had it since I was twelve," he said, which was more honest. "It's just a routine."

Theo looked at the array of products.

"What's the order for?" he said.

Miyato looked at him. "The order?"

"You laid them out in a specific sequence."

Miyato's expression did something. The pink was still there but underneath it something else, someone discovering that a person they'd assumed wasn't paying attention had been paying attention the whole time.

"There's an application order," he said. "You have to layer them correctly or they don't work." He looked at the products. "Most people ask what they are."

"I can see what they are," Theo replied.

He started explaining.

The conversation went on for a while. Theo asked questions that were curious and real. Miyato answered them, his ears pink for approximately the first four minutes, then not. By the time they moved on to something else the table had the comfortable quality of people who had found an unexpected shared rhythm.

Later that night, Theo pulled out the Pokédex Oak had sent. He'd been meaning to properly explore it since receiving it, but between training and the journey north, he hadn't had the chance.

The device was sleek. Deeper red than standard issue, with Oak's signature on the back. He opened it, started browsing through the database.

The information was... extensive.

He pulled up Electrike. Not just basic stats and typing, complete movepool breakdowns. Every move and TM compatibility. Habitat data across multiple regions. Breeding groups. Ability development timelines.

He switched to Dratini. Same thing. Migration patterns for wild populations. Historical data going back decades. Cross-references with other Dragon-types.

"Is that—" Miyato's voice cracked. "Is that an Oak Dex?"

Theo looked up. Miyato was staring at the device in his hands like Theo was casually holding a legendary Pokémon.

"Yeah. Oak sent it after watching my gym battle."

"That's—" Miyato's hands came up toward his face, stopped halfway. "Theo, that's—do you know what that IS?"

"A Pokédex. Oak gives them to starting trainers every year in Kanto. The professors do it in every region."

"No." Miyato sat down on his bed heavily. "No, that's not—that's not a regular Pokédex. That's the Oak Dex. The actual Oak Dex."

Theo looked at the device in his hands. Back to Miyato.

"There's a difference?"

"There's a HUGE difference!" Miyato's voice went up. "Oak gives out regular Pokédexes, yes, but the Oak Dex—the one you're holding—he only gives those to trainers he sees real potential in. Exceptional potential."

Miyato's hands were shaking slightly. "There are maybe thirty of them active worldwide. Maybe. The exact number isn't known because Oak doesn't announce it, but it's rumored he gives them to Champions and some Elite Four members who contribute to research."

Theo looked at the Pokédex again. It looked... normal to him.

"It's got complete data from all regions," Miyato continued, words tumbling out faster. "Not just Kanto. Every region. Full movepools including unreleased combinations. Real-time updates from Oak's research network. It connects directly to his lab. You can query him about Pokemon nobody else has documentation on."

He leaned forward. "I recognized it because I saw Lance's a little while back. Most people wouldn't know what they're looking at, but—Theo, that's not something regular trainers get. That is something potential champions carry."

Miyato paused, then continued. "The most famous Oak Dex holder—he completed the entire Kanto circuit in one year. Destroyed Team Rocket's operations. Won both the rookie tournament and the main tournament in the same season. Then he challenged the Elite Four and the Champion and won. Became Champion himself, though he only held the title for a very short time before—"

"You mean Red," Theo said.

"Yes, Red, no one knows where he is now," Miyato said softly. "He just... disappeared. Some people say he's still training somewhere. Others think he's doing research for Oak. No one's seen him in a while."

Mt. Silver, Theo thought. But he didn't say it out loud. Didn't know how he knew it or why the name of a mountain came to him with such certainty.

Theo looked at the device. The deep red casing. Oak's signature on the back.

He knew what a Pokédex was. Knew Oak was the foremost Pokémon researcher in Kanto, maybe the world. Knew the professors gave them out to catalog Pokémon for research purposes.

But he hadn't known there were two kinds. Hadn't known this one was special.

"I didn't realize," he said.

"Most people wouldn't," Miyato said. He was still staring at it. "Most people have never seen one."

Theo closed the Pokédex carefully. Oak had seen something in him. Something worth giving him a tool that apparently only Champions carried.

He didn't know if he deserved it.

But he'd make sure he earned it.

---

Victoria appeared in the doorway at half past nine.

Her arm was properly bandaged, the ranger station's medical supplies having done what they were there to do. Staraptor was behind her. She looked at the outpost common room with the expression of someone noting that things were as they should be.

"Still awake," she said.

"Yes," Theo said.

"Good." She produced two envelopes from her jacket and held them out. "Contribution to a resolved wildlife incident involving civilian trainers. Standard protocol. Sign the form inside and keep the rest."

Theo took his. Miyato took his.

Victoria looked at Jupiter.

Jupiter had pancake syrup on the side of his face and regarded her with complete dignity.

"Don't spend it all on pancakes," she said.

She looked at the room once more. At Ryuu near the door, still there, not inside but not outside either.

"Good instinct on the Haze sequencing," she said to Miyato. "That was yours."

Miyato's chin came up slightly.

"And you," she said, to Theo. "I've been a ranger for six years. What a bother you were to have in this situation."

Theo looked at her.

"An exceptionally useful bother," she said. "Get some sleep."

She left before it could become anything more than that.

Theo was almost asleep when something awoke him.

Not something. Jupiter.

He opened his eyes. Jupiter was sitting on the floor between the two beds with a paper cup from the outpost kitchen in front of him. The paper cup had been there when they came in. Jupiter had positioned himself in front of it at some point after the lights were lowered and was now looking at it with the most focused attention Theo had seen from him outside of a battle.

His cheeks were not sparking.

That was the thing. Jupiter's natural state involved electricity, the low ambient discharge that had been present since Theo first met him in the gym at three in the morning. Right now there was none. Whatever Jupiter was trying to do with the paper cup it was not electric in nature.

The cup did not move.

Jupiter's eyes tightened incrementally.

The cup remained stationary.

"What are you doing?" Theo said quietly.

Jupiter looked at him. Then back at the cup. Then at Theo again with the expression of a Pokémon, conveying that the situation was under control and did not require commentary.

Theo thought about the coven. About the moment they were leaving, the rangers moving through with their assessments and Victoria being helped to the outpost by Yusuke, and the Hypno standing at the edge of the great tree's root system.

It had not approached Theo.

It had approached Jupiter.

---

The Hypno had come to Jupiter directly, which was unusual enough that Theo had noticed and stayed close. The pendulum had slowed and the meaning had arrived not behind Theo's eyes but with the quality of something directed at Jupiter, not him, and Jupiter had gone still in the specific way he went still when something had his complete attention.

The Hypno had taken Jupiter to the side, literally, two meters from the group, and had done something that Theo could not fully see. Jupiter had sat and the Hypno's pendulum had moved and the communication between them had been directed and private in the way that the Hypno's communication with Theo had never been.

They had been like that for four minutes.

Jupiter had come back like he had been given new information and was in the process of storing it.

He had not told Theo anything about it.

Theo had not asked.

---

He watched Jupiter stare at the paper cup.

The cup sat there.

Jupiter's ears were slightly forward and his expression had the intensity of genuine effort, not the smug confidence he brought to things he already knew how to do. This was different. This was something at the edge of his reach, possibly past the edge, possibly not, and Jupiter was not the kind of Pokémon who accepted "possibly not" without investigation.

The cup moved.

Not much. A fraction of an inch, sideways, and Jupiter exhaled in the way of something that had spent significant effort on a small result and was assessing whether the result justified the effort.

He looked at Theo.

Theo looked at the cup. At Jupiter. At the cup again.

However, he was too tired to think of the implications.

"Okay," he said, very quietly.

Jupiter's cheeks sparked once with the satisfaction of a Pokemon that had been keeping something to itself and had now shown it to the right person at the right time.

He climbed up to his usual position near Theo's shoulder and closed his eyes and the paper cup sat on the floor in the dim room and did not move again.

Theo stared at the ceiling for a while.

Then he went to sleep.

---

Two figures entered Route 6 from the south at the Vermilion gate.

They came on foot. Trainer bags. The clothes of people who had left somewhere difficult and were moving toward somewhere quieter, which was what most people coming through that gate were wearing this season.

The ranger marker logged their entry the way it logged all entries. Two trainers, adult, heading north.

Neither of them looked at the marker as they passed it.

The taller one looked at the route ahead. Not reading a map. Not checking a PokéNav. Just looking north the way someone looked at a direction when the direction was the only information they had.

"Last confirmed here," they said.

"Weeks ago," the other said.

"Still the last confirmed."

The other looked at the route guide board. At the notation about the incident. At the distance marker to Saffron City.

"The circuit goes north from here,"

They started walking.

The route was quiet around them. The maintenance lights at their intervals. The grass dark on either side. The night sounds of things had returned to normal.

They were following a lead.

That was all it was.

But it was the best lead they had, and they were already on the road.

Dr. Matthews: How do you feel about having someone with you now?

Theo: Better than I expected. Worse in different ways. Miyato asks questions about things I know - Pokemon, battle theory, type matchups - and I can answer them immediately and completely. Then if he asks where I'm from or what my family was like and I have nothing. The gap between what I can explain and what I can't explain about myself gets more obvious when someone's there to notice it.

---

Miyato had been a stuttering mess since before the lights came on.

He dropped the spatula twice. Started explaining something about the dried seasoning stores and abandoned it halfway through. Set a bowl down in the wrong place, moved it, moved it back. Kiri kept watching him from his shoulder with the focused concern of a Pokémon who had taken note of a pattern and was monitoring it.

Even Ryuu, who normally conducted himself with the composed indifference of something with better places to be, turned from the doorway and hissed.

Miyato froze. Looked at Ryuu. Looked at the pan.

"I know," he said.

Ryuu looked at the ceiling.

Theo drank his tea and said nothing. Whatever Miyato was building toward, pressing on it would not help it arrive faster. Zeus ate methodically beside him. Jupiter was working through his pancakes with the focused reverence he brought to them, regardless of context or location.

What came off the stove was still better than anything the outpost had probably produced in years. Pemba came through for his shift handover, looked at the table, looked at Miyato, and left with his portion without comment, which was probably the right call.

Victoria appeared in the common room while they were still eating, arm in a proper sling, moving with the unhurried ease of someone who had decided the arm was not going to change her morning plans. She took in the room in the time it took to cross it, which was about two seconds; decided it was manageable and pulled out a chair.

"I am leaving today," she said, taking Miyato's tea without asking and drinking some.

Miyato blinked at the empty space where his cup had been.

"The Annihilape," she said. "Since you were involved, you should know. Evaluation first. If the rage state was situational, it goes to managed off-route territory. If it's embedded," she tipped her head slightly, " A strong trainer will handle it. Not my call." She put the cup back. "Either way, handled."

"What do you think?" Theo said.

"I think it went into the ball without fighting it." She turned the cup in her hand. "That means something, usually. But I've been wrong before." She said it with the complete equanimity of someone who had factored being wrong into her general worldview long ago. She produced her PokéNav and set it on the table. "Contact. Both of you."

Miyato fumbled his out. Theo took care of the exchange while Miyato was getting his operational. Victoria received both and put hers away and stood.

"What a bother," she said, pleasantly. "All of this over a Gyarados." Staraptor appeared behind her and pressed against her side, and she put her functional hand on its head. "Good luck on the circuit. Try not to end up off route again."

She left before it became a moment.

---

They set off at eight. The route had the feel of somewhere recovering from something; the bird sounds were thinner than they should have been but present, and the grassland was doing its ordinary morning things. Theo set his pace slightly below where he'd pushed on the first day, which was already better than the first day had been, but Miyato had no reference point for what correct pacing felt like and was moving with the energy of someone who had decided to outpace their own anxiety by walking fast enough.

Twenty minutes in, Theo said nothing but shortened his own stride and eventually Miyato matched it without noticing.

They walked. Ryuu moved alongside them closer than the old distance. The cape was still on Miyato, and Theo looked at it once at the first ranger marker.

"The cape," he said.

Miyato looked down at the border stitching.

"If you actually want people not to recognise the clan," Theo said.

Miyato was quiet. Then he took it off, folded it into his bag and kept walking. His posture had changed in a way that was not quite right. Not worse, exactly. Just different in the way someone who has removed something that was part of how they carried themselves and hasn't yet found the replacement.

At the forty-minute mark, MIyato started a sentence.

"If —" He stopped. Kiri adjusted on his shoulder. "The circuit," he said. "I wanted to ask if you were open to travelling together."

His hands had gone to his sides in the way they did when he was managing something and doing a middling job of it.

"I can cook," he said. "Every day. And there's Pokemon grooming that I know how to do properly, and logistically it makes more sense than two people covering the same —"

Theo laughed.

Miyato stopped.

"Yes," Theo said.

"You don't have to —"

"Miyato. Yes."

Miyato looked at the path ahead, and the tension in his shoulders went somewhere else. "Right," he said. Then, very quietly: "Good."

Kiri made a sound, and Miyato's hand came up to hold her without the rest of him acknowledging it.

Ryuu made his position clear before noon.

He had been watching Zeus since breakfast with the interest of someone who has decided on a course of action and is simply waiting for the correct moment. At some point in the mid-morning stretch he moved from beside Miyato, slithered across the path directly to Zeus, stopped two feet from him, and hissed.

Not aggression. The syntax of a challenge, delivered plainly.

Zeus looked at him. Then at Theo.

"Here?" Theo said.

Ryuu moved to the flat section without being asked. He positioned himself and faced Zeus across the open grass and the attention in his eyes had shifted from the watching he'd been doing all morning to something else entirely. He was in it now.

Zeus looked at him.

His ears came forward once and stayed there. He read the stance, the forward lean, the way Ryuu's whole body was pointed like something about to be released. The ear didn't move again. He already knew what was coming.

"Twister," Miyato said immediately. "Open with Twister, keep your distance—"

Ryuu drove forward.

Low and committed, all momentum, and Zeus broke right before Ryuu had covered the ground between them, Quick Attack carrying him sideways fast enough that the first lunge found nothing. Ryuu corrected without breaking pace, turning on his own axis and firing Dragon Breath at close range, a thick billow of dark force that Zeus ducked under by dropping flat, the breath passing over him, and Zeus came up on the other side already repositioning.

"Thunder Fang," Theo said. "Cut behind."

Zeus closed from the rear and the crackling bite found Ryuu at the base of the neck before Ryuu had tracked the new angle. Not a clean hit, Ryuu turned into it and took it on the side of his neck rather than centre but Ryuu registered it and turned on Zeus immediately and fired Dragon Breath again.

Zeus rolled under it.

The breath passed over him for the second time, and Theo was already reading the pattern. Ryuu was choosing close-range Dragon Breath every time he had range available. Not out of ignorance. Out of preference, the preference of something that had always won by pressing forward and had no interest in changing that.

"Twister! He doesn't have an effective reach if you stay back—"

Ryuu launched into Slam.

The full-body commit went forward hard and Zeus sidestepped it clean, the move carrying Ryuu two steps past where Zeus had been. Zeus pivoted and fired a Shock Wave into Ryuu's exposed side as he passed. the electric pulse connected before Ryuu had straightened and Ryuu took it without having braced, stepping sideways from the impact.

He turned back.

His eyes hadn't changed. He looked at Zeus the way something looks at a problem it has decided is worth solving regardless of the cost

Theo watched him and understood something. Miyato was right about the range. Ryuu's Twister spread wider than Zeus could cleanly sidestep through and the Dragon Breath at distance left no window to close in before the next one fired. At range this was a different fight. Ryuu wasn't giving him that fight and wasn't going to.

"Charge Beam," Theo said. "Hold where you are."

Zeus fired and Ryuu sent Dragon Breath to meet it and both moves crossed toward each other and collided in the air between them with a sharp crack and a wash of outward pressure. Both cancelled and the dissipation pushed heat in both directions and neither moved. The Charge Beam boost had settled into Zeus regardless of the cancel. It was doing its work.

"Ryuu—" Miyato again, and Ryuu was already moving.

He came in from a new angle this time, cutting wide before closing, and Zeus read the arc and broke to create the perpendicular but Ryuu had anticipated that and the Dragon Breath fired from just feet away on the new angle and Zeus couldn't fully clear it. The breath caught Zeus across the chest and drove him back before he found his footing.

He stood. Shook himself once.

The fur across his chest was darker where the breath had found him. Theo noted it and kept it. Zeus was favoring the right side slightly now, the stride not quite what it had been.

"Thunder Fang," Theo said. "Come in low."

Zeus closed and the crackling bite found Ryuu's flank this time. real contact with real damage and Ryuu pulled against it and broke the grip by force and answered immediately with Dragon Breath at almost no distance at all, point-blank, but Zeus was already clearing the area and the breath clipped his rear leg rather than hitting the center.

Zeus's ear moved once. He was recalculating. Ryuu was faster than he'd been giving credit for and the close-range exchanges were narrower than they should have been.

Theo felt it too.

"Charge Beam," he said. "Second one."

Zeus fired and Ryuu sent Dragon Breath again and the beams met in the air. This time the first boost was behind the Charge Beam and the Dragon Breath folded slightly before they cancelled, the point where they met had shifted toward Ryuu before the whole thing came apart. Not through. Not yet. But moving.

"He's building off of it," Miyato said quietly. He was talking to Ryuu. "Every time you feed him a target, he— Ryuu, please, Twister from back there and you reset everything he just—"

Ryuu dashed in .

He came in low under Zeus and got inside the escape window, and the coiling grip established before Zeus had time to avoid it, closing around Zeus's midsection with the full commitment of something that had been trying to do exactly this since the first exchange and had finally found the moment. The constriction began and Zeus was held.

Theo had the Ice Fang call ready.

He didn't use it.

He wanted to know something first. Ryuu had been ahead of everything Miyato asked from the start, doing the opposite of every instruction not out of malice but out of a complete and total certainty that he already knew better. And Miyato was right, the range work would have changed this battle. Zeus was too quick for Ryuu to reliably pin down, the Wrap had been luck as much as timing, and Miyato had seen that from the start. Theo wanted to know whether there was a wall Ryuu would hit that made him reconsider. Whether pressure and accumulated damage would make him take the advice that was actually correct.

Worth finding out.

"Bite," Theo said instead. "Break the grip."

Zeus bit into the coil itself before Theo had finished saying it.

Not a response to the command; the command had barely reached him. Zeus had already decided to find his own way out, teeth finding the tightest point of the hold and grinding in, trying to create leverage before anything else arrived. He'd felt the grip and made a calculation and acted on it without being told to and Theo felt something that wasn't quite surprise.

"Ice Fang," Theo said. "Same point. Dead on."

The cold came up the way it always came, reached for rather than made and Zeus had almost no room to aim it. The Wrap had him mostly locked, his head the only part of him with any real movement, and he drove the Ice Fang into the nearest point of the coil and let the frost spread from there outward through the grip. Ryuu felt it find him and the hold loosened and Zeus pushed his way out through the loosening and put distance between them fast.

Both of them reset.

Zeus's chest still showed the Dragon Breath from earlier. The stride was compensating slightly. He'd been in the hold long enough for it to register. He was still reading correctly, but the exchanges had stacked on him and his positioning was more deliberate now,each step placed more deliberately than before

Ryuu had taken Thunder Fang, Shock Wave, Charge Beam, and the Ice Fang through the grip. His scales showed it.

"Ryuu," Miyato said. He wasn't frustrated anymore. Something else had taken over. "I know you're not listening. But he's stacking that beam. The next one's going to come through. If you'd just—"

Ryuu used Twister.

Not from the range Miyato had been asking for. From too close, from the wrong position, not aimed with patience but fired with everything behind it, a grinding rotating column of wind that Zeus ran through the near edge of rather than around; the rotation catching him and pulling him sideways a step before he recovered. Not a full hit but solid enough.

Miyato's hands came down from where they'd been at his jacket pockets.

Then Ryuu was coming forward again and Theo saw where the battle was going.

"Thunder Wave," he said. "Low and wide."

Zeus fired flat along the grass and the arc spread outward and found Ryuu mid-stance before he'd released the Dragon Breath he was preparing, the paralysis settling into him and locking his nervous system. Ryuu went rigid.

Theo had known Shed Skin before he ever met Ryuu. He knew the ability. Watching it was different, the translucent layer peeling from the base of Ryuu's tail forward in a single unhurried motion, impossibly thin, carrying the paralysis out of him as it went, dissolving against the grass before it had fully separated. Ryuu stood clean on the other side of it and shook himself once.

He looked at Zeus.

There was more in his eyes than there had been at the start.

"Charge Beam," Theo said.

Zeus fired and Ryuu sent Dragon Breath to meet it and the two beams crossed toward each other, and this time the third Charge Beam had two boosts sitting behind it and when the Dragon Breath found it the breath didn't fold. The beam held and then moved forward and the Dragon Breath gave way along its own line and the Charge Beam came through and hit Ryuu in the chest.

Ryuu went tumbling backwards.

He caught himself.

He looked at the space where the beams had met and something settled in him, not resignation, just the acknowledgment of a new fact.

Miyato didn't say anything.

"Bite," Theo said. "Keep him moving. Don't let him reset."

Zeus kept breaking angles, teeth finding the rear as Ryuu passed and releasing and repositioning before Ryuu had turned. Dragon Breath fired and Zeus was already somewhere else and the breath hit grass. Ryuu launched into Slam and Zeus went under it the same way he'd gone under all of them, measured, every time, the footwork that Ryuu had been running into all afternoon without finding a consistent answer for.

Zeus landed from the dodge and looked at Theo.

One beat.

"Ice Fang," Theo said. "Drive through."

Zeus came in on the angle the Slam had left open, the one Ryuu kept creating every time he committed fully forward, the opening that had been there all battle and Ice Fang found Ryuu's side clean. The cold went through and the shiver it produced was visible all the way down and Ryuu went down on a slump

He stayed there.

His head was up.

Zeus stood where the Ice Fang had ended. His breathing was visible. He didn't press forward.

Theo said "enough," and it was over.

Miyato came to the edge of where the battle had been and stopped some feet short of Ryuu. He waited. Ryuu's head turned toward him and neither of them said anything.

Theo stood back with Zeus at his left and let the moment be what it was. What he'd watched was a Dratini absorb twenty exchanges of accumulated damage and keep pressing forward on pure decision. He'd also watched a Dratini with the kit to win a different version of this fight — the Twister, the Dragon Breath at range, the spread that Zeus couldn't fully avoid — spend all of it on the version of the fight he preferred instead.

The gap wasn't in the ability.

"Good battle," Miyato said quietly.

Miyato came toward Ryuu slowly. Crouched. Put his hand against Ryuu's side and Ryuu's head turned and looked at the hand and then at Miyato and then at the grass in front of him.

He didn't move away.

"You were supposed to stay back," Miyato said.

Ryuu looked at the grass.

"You're a Dragon type," Miyato said. "You have range. You have Twister. There was no reason to —"

Ryuu made a short sound.

Miyato stopped.

After a moment, he just kept his hand where it was and didn't say anything else and Ryuu allowed it and the field was quiet around them.

---

The trainer battles came through the afternoon, spread across the midsection of the route the way they always were on routes people traveled regularly. Three of them approached. Miyato sent Kiri for two and won one and lost one and Kiri took both outcomes with equal equanimity, returning to his shoulder each time having clearly enjoyed herself regardless of the result.

The third was a Gliscor.

Theo sent Zeus. Saw the Ground typing. Knew the electric moves were useless before the battle started. Worked around it with Bite and tried twice for Ice Fang under pressure and the Gliscor was faster than Zeus could account for and Acrobatics accumulated and Zeus went down.

He didn't talk about it until they were walking again, twenty minutes later, with the camp site ahead.

"Ground types," Miyato said.

"The Ice Fang," Theo said. "It almost landed both times."

"He was fast."

"He was." Theo looked at Zeus walking beside him. "The gap between almost and actually is where we are right now."

Miyato was quiet for a moment. "Kiri loses to things she shouldn't and wins against things I don't expect her to win against," he said. "I'm not sure how to account for that."

"She's reading the other Pokémon," Theo said.

Miyato looked at Kiri on his shoulder. Kiri looked back at him.

"Is that what she's doing?" he said.

They made camp at the flat section past the next ranger marker. Both of them put up tents.

Theo's was better than day one. Meaningfully. The lean was minor, the corners were close to level, it went up in a reasonable amount of time and stayed where he put it.

He stood back and looked at it. The relief was quiet and entirely his.

Miyato's tent held a structural philosophy that was difficult to identify. It stood, which was the charitable description. One side had decided on its angle that the other side had not been informed of, and both had committed to their respective positions.

"You can —" Theo started.

"It's fine," Miyato said.

He went inside with Kiri, and Ryuu followed, and that was that.

They ate Miyato's food, much better than anything the route should have produced from trail supplies, and the fire settled into its ordinary rhythm and the route was quiet around them in the way it was quiet when it was genuinely recovering rather than pretending to.

"The storm," Miyato said, after a while. His eyes were on the fire and he had the tone of someone who had been thinking about something and had decided to say it. "A few weeks ago. It was everywhere in the news. The energy readings from it apparently registered all the way in Blackthorn, which doesn't happen with ordinary storms."

"I was there," Theo said.

Miyato turned to look at him. "You were actually there? The Zapdos event?"

"Standing on the dock when it started," Theo said. "I didn't know what was happening at first, just that the sky had gone wrong and the harbour was empty and the storm was coming in from the water at a scale that didn't feel like weather anymore. Then Zapdos came through the cloud cover and everything got louder and brighter than it had any right to be." He looked at the fire. "Surge got his team out. The gym Pokemon. Everyone who was there did what they could but Zapdos at full force above a harbour is not something you counter, it's something you manage until it leaves."

"I heard Lance appeared," Miyato said.

"He did," Theo confirmed. "He came in on his Dragonite and the whole dynamic of the situation changed in about thirty seconds. That's the most honest way I can put it. Before he arrived it was controlled chaos. After he arrived it was something being handled by someone who knew how to handle it." He paused. "I was on the dock for most of it. Got close enough to understand exactly how outclassed everything around me was."

Miyato was quiet for a moment, turning this over. "That must have been terrifying," he said, not in the way people said things to fill silence but like he actually meant it.

"It was," Theo said. Then, because it was also true, "It was also something I'm glad I saw."

The fire shifted between them and Theo looked at it and then at Miyato.

"What's it like?" he said. "The Dragon Clan. Actually, like, day to day."

Something happened to Miyato's posture. Not much. Barely visible in the firelight. But the chin came up a degree and the quality of his voice shifted in the way it shifted when he was about to say something he considered legitimate.

"The records go back further than anyone knows," he said. "The Elders say the Clan was in Blackthorn before the city was. Before the routes." He looked at the fire and the chin was still up. "Every major Dragon type in Kanto, we have some relationship to. The knowledge is passed down. Training methods, bond techniques, lineage histories going back centuries." He paused. "There are things in the library that aren't in any League archive. First-generation records." He said it the way someone said things they believed deeply and had not been given many opportunities to say to someone who wasn't already inside the world those things came from. "Day to day it means something different than it sounds from the outside. It's early mornings with the dragons before anything else. It's sitting with the Elders learning things that aren't written down anywhere. It's understanding that the bond between a Dragon type and its trainer is—" He stopped. The chin came back down about halfway. "Different," he said, more quietly. "From what most trainers experience."

Theo looked at him. "Better?"

Miyato thought about Ryuu. "More demanding," he said. "And potentially more than that. But that part you have to earn."

Miyato stopped.

"Lance is my uncle," he said.

He said it the way someone said something they had decided to say and then had to live with having said. The chin came down. He looked at the fire. "That's why I understand it so deeply. Not because I'm particularly suited to it. Because I've watched it my whole life from a distance that had never quite closed.

Theo looked at him.

Miyato's chin had come up with the mention of Lance, the automatic pride of it surfacing before he could decide whether to show it. "Don't look at me like that," he said. "I know I don't exactly match the family profile at the moment."

"I wasn't thinking that," Theo said.

"You were a little."

"A little," Theo said

"Fair," Miyato said, without any particular heat behind it as he threw a stick into the fire.

The fire settled, and neither of them said anything for a moment, and it was the comfortable kind of nothing that had started to develop between them over the course of the route.