As if on cue, a deafening roar echoed from the streets below. Two massive, heavily armored Pokémon—a Rhyperior and a Tyranitar—were cshing in the middle of a simuted intersection. The Tyranitar opened its maw, unleashing a devastating, point-bnk Hyper Beam that missed its target and smmed directly toward the side of a five-story gss-and-steel building.

  I braced for the explosion. I reached out instinctively to pull Jennifer and Anabel back, expecting a rain of shrapnel and a shockwave that would rattle our teeth.

  Instead, the moment the beam crossed the sidewalk, a massive, translucent red energy wall fred to life out of the pavement, forming a perfect, glowing dome over the intersection. The Hyper Beam didn't shatter the structure; it smmed against the red grid, spshing against the barrier like water until the attack simply fizzled out.

  "Did the street just project a forcefield?" I asked, my jaw dropping.

  "Hard-Light Battle Zone Barriers," Emma expined smoothly. "The goal of this project isn't just to build a city, but to make it entirely battle-proof. Quasartico wants humans and Pokémon to coexist seamlessly. That means battles will happen in the streets. Those red walls trigger instantly to contain the kinetic and elemental energy, protecting the infrastructure while letting the trainers go all out."

  "It's a city built to contain a warzone," Anabel whispered, her face pale as the red walls powered down and vanished back into the pavement.

  "It's beautiful," Jennifer noted, though her hand was resting on her holster. "And terrifying. If someone like Colress got his hands on tech that can instantly isote and trap targets anywhere in a city... he’d be invincible."

  "Which is why the airspace is locked down, and why you guys are here," Emma said, turning away from the rail. "The big brains in Kalos agreed to let you use this sandbox to train. You get to fight against the toughest, meanest criminals we’ve drafted, and the scientists here get to monitor how their red walls hold up against that weird 'Prisma' energy you carry around. They want to see if they can break the barriers."

  "So I'm a b rat," I muttered, though I couldn't stop staring at the glowing blue streets.

  "The most important b rat in the world," Emma winked, her pyful smirk returning as she started toward a heavy set of reinforced doors at the end of the walkway. "But before we drop you into the warzone, we need to make a pit stop. The head of R&D wants to see you. She used to be high up in a group called Team Fre before they went bust. Looker says she's the only one smart enough to bridge the gap between Kalos tech and whatever it is you do. Come on, I'll introduce you to Mable."

  The air in the b we entered was thick with the smell of ozone and a sterile, chemical scent that reminded me of the hospital I’d spent most of my life in. Screens glowed with a harsh, crimson light, flickering with data streams that looked less like research and more like a countdown.

  Mable stood over a terminal, her back to us, tapping away on a sleek, white rotom phone with a jagged, lightning-bolt antenna extending from the top. She was wearing a crisp white b coat over a dark, form-fitting dress patterned with interlocking yellow and pink rings, accented perfectly by a neat teal necktie. Her vibrant blue hair was cut short, with two perfectly curled locks framing her face. She didn’t look like the friendly professors I’d seen on TV; she looked like someone who could calcute the exact force needed to shatter a mountain and then be annoyed at the dust.

  "I told you, Emma," Mable snapped, her voice sharp and cold. "The expansion suit’s thermal output creates a 0.5% deviation in my sensors. Do not bring the ‘Cakes’ into my workspace when I am calibrating the barrier outputs."

  Emma rolled her eyes, but she had a smirk on her face. "Cool your jets, Boss. I brought the Zero-Point. And he brought company."

  Mable finally turned around. Behind a pair of thick, white-framed translucent goggles, her bright blue eyes were piercing—searching and analytical. She swept her gaze over Anabel and Jennifer, lingering on Jennifer’s muscur frame with a faint, unimpressed curl of her lip, before locking onto me.

  "So," she said, her voice dropping into a smooth, dangerous velvet. "The boy who collects souls. I am Mable. Currently, I am the 'acting' director of this facility—a title I hold as part of a plea deal I find increasingly tedious."

  "Acting director?" Anabel asked, her brow furrowing. "Where is Professor Sycamore? I was under the impression he oversaw all Kalosian energy research."

  "The Professor found the current political climate surrounding the redevelopment too... stifling," Mable replied, her voice dripping with bored condescension as she adjusted a holographic slider on her tablet. "He recently resigned. Walked away from the pressure entirely. It’s only been four years since Lysandre fired the Ultimate Weapon, and the government realized they didn't have the stomach—or the specific scientific pedigree—to safely oversee the containment of extreme Mega Evolution. I was offered a plea deal and appointed to repce him because I actually understand the 'mess' Team Fre left behind. Out here? On this isnd? I am the one who ensures the experimental grid we are trying to perfect doesn't colpse."

  "So they needed your brains, but they kept you on a leash," I noted.

  Mable finally turned fully toward me, her translucent goggles catching the crimson light of the b. "I am the necessary brains, Landon. They provide the funding and the cage; I provide the results. It is an arrangement that I find increasingly tedious."

  She walked toward me, raising her jagged white tablet. It hummed with a sickly purple light as she waved the device over my chest. "Fascinating," she murmured, watching the data on her screen. "The energy isn't just external. Your 'System' allows you and your companions to temporarily transform, taking on Pokémon-like traits and abilities. You are rewiring your biological frequency in real-time."

  She lowered the tablet, looking at me with intense, absolute fascination. "Do you realize what that is, Landon? It is localized, internalized Mega Evolution. You are generating the exact same power output as a Mega Stone, but you are the vessel. It’s brilliant... and it makes you the perfect stress-test for my Battle Zones."

  "I'm not an experiment, Mable," I said, my voice low. I could feel the familiar heat of my Penultimate Primordial System wanting to fre up in defense. "I'm here to train."

  "You are a b rat with a destiny, Landon," Mable corrected me, her smirk returning as she leaned against a terminal. "And right now, you are hopelessly unoptimized. You’re fighting like a relic. You wait for a gap, you think about your move, and then you execute. That’s turn-based logic, and on this isnd, it’s a death sentence."

  "What do you mean 'unoptimized'?" I asked, looking down at my hands.

  "I mean the world has outpaced your reaction time," Mable said, her eyes gleaming behind her thick goggles. "The 'Drafted' trainers Looker dumped into the jungle—the former syndicate leaders, the brawlers like Guzma and Courtney—they aren't here to py by your rules. They’ve been 'drafted' into this project because they are apex predators who understand real-time execution. They don't wait for you to finish your sentence, let alone your move. They are here to break my red walls with brute-force Mega Evolution, and if you get in their way, they will break you too."

  She walked over to a workbench and picked up a pair of high-tech goggles, tossing them at me. I caught them, feeling the heavy, cold weight of the tech.

  "Put those on. They’ll link your System's HUD to the city's grid. It will help you see the Battle Zone boundaries and, more importantly, it will map your abilities to the Z-A control interface."

  I slipped the goggles on, and my vision glitched for a second as the familiar blue text of Cryo’s interface merged with a new, sleek purple overy.

  "I've mapped your primary abilities to a four-input mental trigger," Mable expined, her voice sounding far away as I stared at the icons flickering in my peripheral vision. "A, B, X, Y. Four moves, instant execution. But there's a catch—every time you use one, the goggles will track the energy depletion. You’ll have a cooldown period where that specific power is locked out while your cells recharge. You can't just spam your strongest attacks anymore. You have to move, dodge, and time your 'buttons' with precision."

  "So it's like... a game?" Jennifer asked, her brow furrowing as she looked at the tactical dispy on the wall.

  "For you, perhaps," Mable said, looking at Jennifer with a cold, analytical stare. "For Landon, it is a synchronization of soul and architecture. If he misses a 'button' command or fails to dodge a field-of-effect attack, my red walls won't protect him. They will trap him inside with whatever is trying to kill him."

  She paused, her expression softening just a fraction, a shadow of something like empathy crossing her face. "I spent my life chasing a 'beautiful' world for a man who wanted to take life to save it. Now? I’m stuck in this cage, researching the habits of monsters that shouldn't exist. I sympathize with things that lose their freedom, Landon. But if you want to keep yours, you need to prove you can control that power in a real-time environment before it consumes you."

  She turned back to her monitors, the conversation over. "Now, get out. Emma, take them to the Sector 4 Drop-Zone. I want to see how he handles a live environment."

  "You heard the dy!" Emma chirped, already strutting toward the back exit. "Come on, Landon. Let's see if those 'Cakes' can handle the real-time action!"

  I looked at the goggles in my hand, then at the A-B-X-Y icons hovering in my vision. The world was moving faster than I was used to, and if I didn't catch up, the "Drafted" were going to tear me apart.

  "Thanks, Mable," I muttered. She didn't answer.

  As we walked out into the corridor leading to the city sectors, Jennifer leaned in close. "I don't like her. But Landon... if what she says is true, this isn't just training. It's a total rewrite of how we fight."

  "I know," I said, tightening the strap of the goggles. "But I've spent enough time being a victim of the rules. It's time I learned how to press the right buttons."