Where is this?
It felt like a lucid dream. In it Akiyama had no body at all—just a wisp of something drifting loose through the world.
Somewhere far off there was a warmth he recognized, so he drifted toward it.
A light came on.
Metal walls. A metal chair directly in front of him, so polished that the light lay across its surface like a mirror. The chair was enormous, and it wasn't furniture—it was set into the wall and the floor, part of the room itself.
A red carpet ran down from it.
No. Not a carpet. An enormous red cape, spilling over the arm of the chair and pooling on the floor.
"Coming in without knocking. Is that an old friend, come home?"
There was a figure in the center of the chair. Ancient, white-haired, thin to the point that the great cape swallowed him. But his eyes—there was fantasy energy turning over in them, constantly, like water that never stopped moving.
His voice was barely more than a breath, and it carried through the whole vast space.
Akiyama started to speak.
Another figure appeared beside the chair.
"Ah—"
The word stuck in his throat. He was looking at a Gardevoir.
At the broken heart on her chest. He would have known that shape anywhere.
"I think I remember this," the old man said suddenly.
"Garde…"
The Gardevoir nodded too.
And Akiyama understood something, or came close to it.
Three pairs of eyes met across a gap that wasn't made of distance.
"So you stayed with me. All the way to the end."
He left the question there and dissolved—waking up, probably.
His voice went on echoing in the metal room, meaning more than it said.
Tears came down that Gardevoir's face, fat and heavy. The Mega Stone hanging at her long throat pulsed with light, over and over.
Then a white-and-violet humanoid Pokémon appeared beside the chair.
Was that them? Coming back?
The old man shook his head.
....
Garde?
In Gardevoir's dream she was drifting too, toward something that felt like home.
A mountain rose in front of her, capped in white snow.
Then she was standing at the summit, and there was someone already standing there.
She knew, immediately, that it was herself.
Except the heart on that Gardevoir's chest was whole.
Two pairs of eyes, looking across the space between them.
Hold on to everything you have right now, the unbroken Gardevoir said, straight into her heart.
Cold wind came up the mountain face. Two white gowns lifted and swayed, and then both of them were gone.
She woke.
......
In another room, Nanami had curled herself into a knot on the bed, and the face that never showed anything had drawn tight.
"Kosei… Kosei…"
In the dream she was running, calling a name, and there was hate braided through the sound of it.
And something that wasn't hate at all.
She didn't get off as easy as Akiyama and Gardevoir. Everything in front of her was thorns.
The other figure seemed close enough to touch and impossibly far away at the same time.
"Gyarados—smash them!" she shouted at the partner beside her.
Gyarados swung an Aqua Tail and shattered the bramble.
And her heart went through with a spike of pain.
Gyarados got smaller.
Smaller again, until he was a Magikarp on dry ground, flopping helplessly through Splash.
Nothing happened.
Nanami went down with both hands pressed to her chest, and thin red lines opened across her wrists.
The distance between her and the figure hadn't changed at all.
But the figure came to her, walking over the thorns like they weren't there, and reached down to touch her face.
"Let it go. You lied to me, and I'm never going to forgive you for it, but you—"
"…Friendship is a pearl. Memory is a diamond."
"And when you're standing on the highest stage there is, in a gown, I—"
The sentence never finished. Out in the waking world, the green bubble burst.
The dream ended.
Nanami 's eyes opened under the blanket. She didn't move. She just cried, quietly, for a long time.
The thorns had never belonged to anyone else. She'd grown them herself, between herself and herself.
.....
"You dreamed too, didn't you?"
Akiyama and Gardevoir came awake in the same moment. Outside, the sky was going pale. Kadabra's eyes opened at the sound, but he didn't say anything—he just listened.
"Garde."
She nodded.
It had been a strange dream. That Gardevoir hadn't been like her, and yet she'd been absolutely certain it was her.
Hold on to everything you have right now?
Akiyama was everything she had. She held on to him every single day, every hour, every minute.
She didn't like that other version of herself. She realized that with some surprise.
Was that woman implying she didn't love him enough?
Because it was love. Not affection, not devotion, not loyalty. She could say the word to herself without flinching: the thing everyone in the world meant when they said love.
"I had a weird one too. A good weird, I think." Akiyama thought about that brief bright moment inside it, and his mouth pulled up at the corner and refused to go back down no matter what he did with it.
Gardevoir tipped her head at him from under the blanket, asking without words.
"I dreamed you and I made it all the way. Old and gray and still together."
Gardevoir went absolutely still.
Then joy came up through her like a wave breaking.
It wasn't a confession. It was better than every confession ever made.
A whole life. All of it. Together.
Up above the couch, Kadabra listened to this and heard, very distinctly, the sound of glass breaking.
Somebody knocked at the door.
Akiyama startled, got up fast, and pulled his clothes on. Gardevoir slid out of bed after him.
Only once he was decent did Kadabra open the door with Confusion.
Hikaze stood there with that mild smile.
"The report's in. I'm sorry. The growth came in too fast overnight—there was nothing left to find." He looked genuinely apologetic. Officer Jenny was still working the case; she'd just passed the word along.
"I figured. It's fine." Akiyama had already decided. "I'm leaving Greenlight City today. While Team Rocket still doesn't know where I am."
He said it out loud on purpose, watching Hikaze's face while he did.
He hadn't let go of his suspicion. It was too clean.
Hikaze had been handing out free mystery boxes the day they arrived. Hikaze had been the one to bring up the pink Butterfree legend. Hikaze specialized in Bug types. And it was a pink Butterfree that had walked Gardevoir out into the dark.
Too many coincidences in a row.
And nobody could tell him that in all his years as a Gym Leader, Hikaze had never raised a Heracross. This was Bug-type heaven. Heracross were everywhere.
As for Mega Stones—for Team Rocket, getting hold of one was nothing. If this world's Team Rocket had a Mewtwo in a tank somewhere, Akiyama wouldn't have blinked.
Hikaze's expression didn't shift by a millimeter.
"That's not a bad plan. I'd suggest traveling with someone, though. Alone is a risk."
"If the Gym didn't keep me tied down, I'd see you off myself."
I bet you would. Permanently.
Akiyama kept that one behind his teeth.
The door of the next room opened, and Nanami came out.
"Come with me, then. I've got business with Uncle Takeru in Frostvale City. You can ride along as far as it lines up."
A beat.
"And if it doesn't line up, I'll change my route."
Then she folded her arms and leaned against the wall, waiting for him to decide.
Her face was blank as ever, and Akiyama still got the distinct impression she'd bitten somebody this morning.
Somebody's in a great mood.
"Frostvale City's where I'm headed anyway."
Free muscle was free muscle. Only an idiot turned it down.
He glanced at the Mega Stone on her wrist and the five Dive Balls at her hip.
No mystery there. That was the insurance policy her family had sent her out the door with.
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