“Only when you steal my experience points,” she said. And for the first time, he smiled like he meant it.

She faced the crowd. Her heart hammered like a Sudowoodo’s fist.

Lyra grabbed his wrist. “No.”

“Keep your distance,” her mother warned that night, darning a woolly Slowpoke-tail sweater. “Kantonese have no respect for tradition. They took our Slowpokes during the war. They’d take our souls if they could.”

“We don’t eat that here,” he said flatly, though they absolutely did.

“I stopped it,” Gold said, rising. His voice cracked. “I helped .”

Gold proved difficult to hate. He was a brilliant battler, his Typhlosion a furnace of controlled fury. He helped the old man in Azalea Town chase off Team Rocket. He returned the stolen machine part to the Power Plant without demanding a reward. He even bowed—actually bowed—to the Elder in the Sprout Tower.