The voice that rang out over the stadium barely snapped Myst out of his spiralling thoughts. He jerked his head toward the darkness where the sound had come from, blinking as his mind scrambled for footing.

  He should switch out Rei—

  Kids had gotten lost—

  How was he going to beat Lairon when—

  “Sorry, but I’m going to have to pause the match. An emergency’s come up. I ask everyone to remain calm and please exit the stands in an orderly manner.” Byron’s voice rang out, loud and clear.

  Myst forced himself to pause, to breathe, to organize the chaos in his head.

  Right.

  First things first, his entire dilemma about what to do against Lairon could be tossed aside, at least for now. It didn’t matter anymore. Not when there were apparently kids who had gotten...

  Myst blinked, his thoughts catching up to the words that had been shouted a moment ago.

  How the hell had kids gotten lost in the mines?

  ...And why, unhelpfully, did part of him want to say it was because children yearn for the mines?

  A scream rang out from the stands. Apparently, the crowd had processed the same thing he just had and Myst forced himself to discontinue that thought too. Instead, he let his gaze flick upward toward the inky darkness, frowning as the low rumble of shuffling bodies began to rise—then start to move.

  In what felt like a split second, the shuffling gave way to hurried footsteps. And, even at a walking pace, dozens of people moving across solid stone echoed sharply against the stadium walls. It didn’t sound like a stampede, at least not yet, but the way things were escalating, if the crowd had been any larger, it might have turned into one.

  Byron seemed to agree, he raised an arm and pointed sharply toward the stands.

  “Lights!” he barked.

  Myst didn’t even have time to shut his eyes. The floodlights roared to life with a searing intensity that felt almost physical. One moment the stands were cloaked in shadow; the next, they were drowned in blinding white. He hissed and slammed his eyes shut, hand coming up too late to shield them.

  A beat passed.

  Slowly, he cracked one eye open, squinting through the glare, then forced the other open, blinking hard as the scene came into focus. The crowd had surged forward towards the railings, and at the center of the chaos stood an older woman, her face pale as chalk.

  Myst’s instincts kicked in, he opened his mouth to shout for Rei, but paused, caught between half-formed commands as he saw a red light erupt from behind the crowd.

  “Roselia, help her!” Cynthia’s voice rang out.

  A swirl of green shot through the air. Leaves, razor-sharp and impossibly precise, whipped around the woman, weaving themselves into a barrier that pushed the crowd back. Before the woman could even react, the foliage coiled tighter, forming a protective cage.

  And then the woman screamed—

  Because the entire thing started to move.

  Myst stared as the leaf-formed structure lifted her clean off the ground, hovering like a makeshift elevator as it floated smoothly over the railing and began its descent to the arena floor. The sight of it made him glance toward the source of Cynthia’s voice, and he found Roselia standing calmly atop the railing, one arm extended, eyes narrowed in concentration. The leaves swayed gently under his control, guiding the cage down as though it weighed nothing, a perfect display of grace and precision.

  Cynthia stood beside him, poised, her expression unreadable. She gave the descending cage a subtle nod as it touched the ground, then grabbed the railing and—

  Jumped.

  For a second, Myst forgot to breathe.

  Her blonde hair flared out around her like a halo, catching the Gym’s harsh light and scattering it into something soft and iridescent.

  What the—

  But Roselia was already reacting. Two ropes of leaves lashed out behind her, catching her shoulders mid-air and slowing her fall until she landed in a crouch. She barely paused, just brushed a few stray leaves off her jacket and jogged forward toward the older woman, who had collapsed to her knees.

  “Sorry, was in a bit of a rush!” Cynthia called out, already helping the woman to her feet.

  Myst let out a slow breath, but didn’t move. Instead, he just let the tension bleed from his shoulders, letting himself think, actually think, for the first time in what felt like an hour.

  He regretted it almost instantly.

  Because the moment he gave himself space to breathe, one truth settled in his chest like a stone.

  He could have lost.

  He stared blankly at Cynthia, who was still trying to calm the older woman, her posture awkward under the weight of continued scolding.

  If Cynthia had been the one battling Byron with just Riolu and Roselia she wouldn’t have lost. Maybe it would be hard fought, maybe it would be close, but he couldn’t actually imagine her losing.

  So the knowledge that he might have?

  Well, it highlighted something he already knew.

  She was just better than him.

  He’d tried his hardest in the battle. Spent hours planning how Rei would handle the matchup, how to compensate for Navi’s poor type coverage. And the result?

  Mistake after mistake.

  Sure, maybe Navi and Rei would win from here, maybe they could take on Lairon, but it wouldn’t be a clean fight.

  And it should have been.

  Rei had used too much energy against Bronzor. Even considering she’d been holding back, carefully limiting how much type energy she fed into each move in the combo-chain, it was still a mistake… Though, not one that should’ve mattered all that much. If he hadn’t let her get caught by Mawile, if that fight had gone better, Rei wouldn’t be fresh, but she’d still have enough left in the tank to face Lairon head-on. Maybe even win the whole thing by herself.

  But Mawile did, in fact, happen.

  Myst licked his lips.

  Honestly, he should’ve lost right then and there. Maybe he even deserved to. Rei was strong, easily ready for a fourth badge fight. So the fact that she’d taken that much damage from the Mawile, a Pokémon that wasn’t even the ace of a third-badge team?

  He wanted to kick himself.

  It didn’t matter that most trainers would’ve made the same mistake. That even Cynthia might have.

  He shouldn’t have. Not with everything he knew.

  The moment Mawile appeared, he should have seen the play. After all, its game plan wasn’t exactly subtle. His brain had practically spelled it out: it lured you in with that harmless, sweet look, then clamped down with that giant, steel jaw. He just hadn’t expected what it would try when the whole luring you in part didn’t work.

  But he should have.

  Mawile learned Fake Out.

  Its ability was Intimidate.

  It needed to get close to fight.

  Those three things alone should’ve told him everything. But he hadn’t connected the dots quickly enough, hadn’t thought through what they actually meant. If he had, he could easily have told Rei to stay light on her feet. To be ready with Quick Attack the moment anything felt off. If she’d dodged the opener, the battle probably would’ve ended just like that. Ended like the last part of the fight, without Mawile being really even able to fight back.

  Instead, it had turned into a brawl, a close-range slugfest between a Pokémon built and trained for that kind of fight, and Rei, who, for all her love of fighting dirty, very much wasn’t.

  The only reason she could even escape was her constantly neutralizing the damage from Brick Break with her own Fire Punch, counteracting force with force, blow after blow.

  He paused, then blinked as he felt something soft bump against his leg.

  Rei had seemingly spawned beside him. She didn’t look upset. If anything, she looked pleased, bouncing slightly, full of post-fight energy, like she hadn’t nearly been knocked out earlier.

  When he didn’t move, she glanced up, tilting her head.

  Myst smiled down at her, even as his nails dug into his palm.

  Honestly… Rei was more than he deserved.

  He always tried of course, but every time he watched Cynthia train, it became obvious just how wide the gap between them was. The way she knew what to practice. The way she could just feel when it was time to stop or push further. It wasn’t something you could teach. If it was, then every trainer would already be growing at Cynthia’s pace.

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  Instead of, well… no one.

  He asked, of course, but in the end Cynthia could explain to him the principles, but she couldn’t make him get it. That was part of the reason why he had shut down any attempt of going over what he knew and what he didn’t know. To put it simply, there would be no point. Cynthia thought the reason he, and by virtue his team, was falling behind was because of the way he hadn’t been optimizing their diets.

  Him lacking the knowledge.

  As if that alone could’ve made the difference.

  Sure, it was important, but in the end it that was just that. Optimization. Maybe it would make Rei grow a couple of percentages slower, but that was it. If he had not been adding supplements to her diet at all, that was one thing, but not finding the perfect mixture? It wouldn’t make up the difference alone.

  Cynthia should know that, had to know that on some level, but she still didn’t bring it up. He honestly wasn’t quite sure why. Was it because she didn’t want to make him feel like he wasn’t enough? Because of some kind of taboo he didn’t quite understand? Either way, it didn’t matter. In the end, the reason Rei was growing more slowly than Cynthia’s team wasn’t just one thing.

  It was all the things.

  All the tiny gaps.

  One percent here. Another there.

  None of them mattered alone. But added up? Suddenly Rei was ten percent slower.

  Suddenly Riolu was faster.

  A blur of movement knocked him out of the spiral. He stumbled slightly as Rei slammed an ear into his leg, hard enough that he almost toppled. The impact sent a sharp pulse of pain up his side.

  He gritted his teeth but still managed a shaky smile.

  Rei stared up at him, completely remorseless.

  “Yeah, okay. I get it,” he muttered, giving his leg a small shake to work out the sting.

  Satisfied, Rei gave a huff and nodded.

  Myst exhaled and finally started walking.

  Cynthia had crouched low, almost bowing in front of the older woman, who was still chastising her with the focused energy of someone thoroughly unimpressed.

  Some part of him wanted to laugh, but he understood.

  It wasn’t that Cynthia couldn’t stand up for herself, it was that she probably figured the old woman was too stressed, too scared. She needed to vent her fear somewhere, and Cynthia didn’t mind being the target.

  Still… just because Cynthia didn’t mind didn’t mean he didn’t.

  “You don’t think you might be taking your worry out on the wrong target?” Myst called out.

  The woman’s head snapped toward him. “What?” she barked. “You here to give me a heart attack too?”

  He shrugged, ignoring the question. “I get that you’re stressed. And I get that you’re frustrated. But don’t you think there’s something more important to focus on? Like, maybe, the kids you mentioned?”

  The retort froze on her lips.

  She stopped cold, expression stiffening. Then her head jerked toward Byron, who was making his way across the arena now. The crowd had finally begun to filter out in an orderly line, and he was striding toward them with tight, efficient steps.

  The woman bit her lip, her face crumpling for just a second, like she might cry. But she forced it down, standing straighter, jaw clenched.

  Myst watched her face shift as Byron approached, watched the sheer relief that bloomed in her expression. It wasn’t just that a Gym Leader was coming toward her. She looked like she was seeing a saviour.

  He blinked.

  He’d always known Gym Leaders were important. That they mattered.

  But seeing it now, in real time, in this woman’s shaking hands and trembling breath?

  He realized he hadn’t really understood just how much.

  …

  Byron hadn’t even finished hearing where the kids had gone missing before he’d pulled them all into a car and raced straight for the mines. Once there, he wasted no time, evacuating the entire school onto buses, then immediately calling for backup over his walkie-talkie.

  The whole process took maybe forty-five minutes. And by the end of it, Myst had to admit: he’d gained a whole new level of respect for the Gym Leader. He might not have been as intense as Benkara was on the battlefield, but he could definitely play the part when he wanted to.

  Myst looked away from Byron, glancing around the area.

  Still, he was surprised by how quickly the place had emptied, and even more surprised that no one else had shown up. Sure, the Gym was closer to the mines than the city center, but he’d assumed the area would be crawling with trainers by now, eager to help.

  This was Oreburgh, after all. Not some tiny mountain village.

  He let out a slow breath.

  Then again… maybe it was just as well.

  According to the old woman, the kids had wandered into the old mines, abandoned shafts and tunnels left behind decades ago. That was why she’d gone straight to Byron. Apparently, you couldn’t just stroll into places like that anymore. Wild Pokémon had moved in, and unless you could end a battle before it even started, it was dangerous. One wrong move in the wrong tunnel, and you could bring the whole place crashing down on your head.

  Myst glanced toward Cynthia, then paused.

  She was staring at the mine entrance with wide, reverent eyes, like she was looking at something sacred. The same expression she usually reserved for things old enough to be written down as history… or, well, Umbreon.

  He stepped closer, relaxing a little at the quiet calm in her posture.

  It was almost funny, how shy she could be about some things, and yet so fierce about others. Nicknames? She still blushed whenever someone she didn’t know asked about Queenie. Archaeology? She’d come down on you like divine judgment if you so much as hinted the past wasn’t worth preserving.

  He stopped just behind her and followed her gaze into the dark.

  “I guess the mines have been here for a long time?”

  Cynthia turned to him with a smile that was, honestly, just a little too cheerful for the situation.

  “Nope!”

  He nodded slowly. “I figured, you looked like—wait, what do you mean no?”

  She grinned at his reaction. “The mines aren’t actually that old, they’re important for other reasons.”

  He tilted his head. “Like what?”

  She coughed twice, then stepped back, spinning on her heels and gesturing wildly like a tour guide. “Welcome to the Oreburgh Mines, the lifeblood of Sinnoh! Metals, minerals, and…” Her voice dropped into a dramatic hush. “Evolution stones.”

  He stared at her for a moment, then let out a sigh. “Cynthia, I don’t get it.”

  Her smile faltered, just a little. “Of course you don’t,” she mumbled under her breath, barely loud enough for him to catch.

  Before he could respond though, she sighed. “Myst, why would evolution stones be found in a mine?”

  “I mean… I don’t know. Should I? They’re stones. Where else would you find them?”

  Cynthia blinked. Her expression shifted, like she just realized this was something he didn’t know.

  He smiled back, not letting it irritate him.

  “Oh. Right. That makes sense. Sorry.” Her cheeks flushed faintly as she cleared her throat. “Well, most people don’t know, so no worries. But evolution stones aren’t just… rocks. They’re formed when type energy crystallizes over time, in places with really high concentrations of that energy.”

  Myst followed her gaze back to the mines. That… kind of made sense.

  “So… what? You can find evolution stones down there that shouldn’t be there or something?”

  Cynthia’s eyes lit up again. “Exactly! And that’s the weird part. It’s just a normal mountain, completely saturated with Rock-type energy. Finding something like a Hard Stone? Sure, that makes sense. But evolution stones?” She shook her head. “It doesn’t add up. Not with how many they’re finding.”

  “And, considering the look on your face, I’m guessing there’s some big historical explanation?”

  “Not historical, mythical.” Her grin, already wide, reached creepy status. “Some historians think this is where the One God first descended, saturating the land with so much type energy that the mountain’s still infused with it, even millennia later. That’s why it’s so important. This isn’t just a mine, it’s a bona fide archaeological treasure trove.” She hesitated, biting her lip. “Honestly… the fact it’s being mined at all is kind of heartbreaking. I get it. I do. It’s valuable. But we should’ve studied it more, understood it, before we started digging.”

  Myst shrugged. “Well, you know how it is. Evolution stones cost a fortune. One of those things is worth more than my entire monthly budget. People in charge can never resist pure profit.”

  Cynthia sighed. “Yeah. I know. It’s just… a shame.”

  For a few seconds, she stared longingly at the mines, then she paused, glancing back at him, her face lighting up slightly.

  “Hey, do you know—”

  Myst cut her off before she could even ask. “No.”

  She pouted slightly.

  Myst let out a wry smile at the sight. Honestly, some part of him still regretted bringing up Dialga and Palkia. Afterward, she’d asked him questions for hours around the campfires over the next few days, only to sulk when she realized that, while he did know a few things, none of it included actual historical facts.

  Still, before he could crack a joke to cheer her up, Byron swore—loudly.

  They both turned.

  Byron stood a few meters away, looking like he was two seconds from hurling his walkie-talkie into the dirt. Beside him, Johanna stood with her arms crossed and her mouth drawn into a thin, unimpressed line, clearly agreeing with whatever had just set him off.

  Byron gave the walkie-talkie one last glare, then noticed them watching and let out a long, frustrated sigh.

  “So. We’ve got a problem,” he said without preamble. “I know I said help would be appreciated, but it looks like I’ll be going in alone.”

  Myst frowned, brows knitting as Cynthia narrowed her eyes beside him.

  But before either of them could get a word in, Johanna’s head snapped toward Byron, disbelief flashing across her face. “What do you mean, ‘going in alone’?”

  Byron didn’t flinch. He just pressed on, voice grim. “I tried calling for backup, but every ranger’s tied up managing the Geodude migration. Even if they rush over at top speed, they wouldn’t get here before the hour’s up. And with where the kids are, regular trainers won’t cut it. We’re not getting reinforcements, not unless an old friend decides to drop everything.”

  Johanna opened her mouth, but Byron cut her off with a quick glance. “No offense, but even with all three of you, I’m not confident you can handle what’s down there. If it were just your lives at stake, maybe I’d consider it. But these are kids. And in the old mines, if you can’t stop a wild Pokémon before the fight even starts, you’re done. One stray move, and the tunnel collapses. You get trapped. You die.”

  Johanna paused, took a deep breath, then narrowed her eyes. “Okay, you don’t trust them, fine, but I’m a six-badge trainer. I can handle wild Pokémon. If I don’t want them to move, they won’t.”

  Byron shrugged, unbothered. “Maybe. But you haven’t trained for real combat in a while, have you? If that badge were from the past year, I’d let you in. But my wife’s a fan, I know your badges are almost ten years old. Too old.”

  Johanna’s jaw clenched, her face flushing red. “Oh? You think Contests don’t require real battling? I promise you, I haven’t gotten weaker.”

  Byron didn’t miss a beat. “Maybe not. But you haven’t gotten stronger, either. I know how Contests work. You don’t fight to overwhelm your opponent. You fight to be beautiful. That’s not what this needs.” He met her glare, tone final. “Even with you and little Miss Shirona backing each other up, you’re not going down there.”

  Myst stared at Byron, then glanced down at his side, where his team rested. He wanted to say that he was here too, but the truth was that with Rei this tired he wasn’t sure how much he could help. Navi was strong enough to sweep a first Gym, sure, but out of everyone on their little party, she was still the weakest. All she had as an advantage was—

  His thoughts caught, and his mouth opened before he fully finished the idea. “What if we had a guaranteed way to get back out? You haven’t seen Cynthia’s full team. Or mine.”

  Byron turned to him, already shaking his head. “Doesn’t matter. You’re not going in, no matter what.”

  Myst didn’t hesitate. He reached for Navi’s Poké Ball and released her.

  She appeared with a fierce cry, then immediately went still, sensing the mood.

  Byron’s gaze locked on her. His eyes widened slightly as he noticed the blue cap. For a second, it looked like he might say something, but he shook it off, refocusing on Myst.

  “You think that’s going to convince me?” Byron said, voice flat. “No offense, but the only reason I even considered letting her in—” he nodded toward Cynthia, “—is because I know she has a Riolu, and I’ve seen her Gabite in action. If another ranger showed up with a Rock-type to help stabilize the tunnels, I’d take the risk. But as it is?” He shook his head. “I’m not putting your lives on my hands. If the place collapses, you’re trapped. Probably dead.”

  “Navi knows Teleport,” Myst replied flatly. “If we find the kids, she can get them, and us, out. Instantly. You don’t have a Pokémon that can do that, do you? And you’re assuming the kids are scattered. Most likely, they’re in a single group. We just need to follow your lead, then get them out.”

  Byron frowned, eyes drifting down to Navi again.

  “You’re saying she can teleport nine people? From underground? That’s not a standard battle-port. That’s deep range. That’s a lot of passengers. If your Ralts isn’t strong enough, she could leave someone behind. Fine if it’s me. But what if it’s a kid?”

  Cynthia stepped in. “Then we teleport just the kids. Or one of us and the kids. Either way, Myst is right, this gives us options. If one of them’s hurt, we might need to get out fast. We can always walk back ourselves later.”

  Byron was still watching Navi. His face unreadable.

  “You really think you can do it?” he asked quietly. “Teleport nine people, from deep in a mountain, all the way to the surface?”

  Navi stared back at him, and Myst felt a small smile twitch at the corner of his mouth. They’d never tested it. Four people had been the limit so far, and not across this kind of range. He didn’t know what she’d say.

  But Navi didn’t hesitate.

  Her horn glowed with a steady, confident light.

  “Yes.”

  Byron exhaled and clapped his hands once. “Alright, fine. You can come with me. Just don’t make me regret it.”

  Myst tried not to let a smile break out across his face in victory.

  He didn’t notice Cynthia’s eyes widening as she stared at Navi.