Half an hour later, Misty and Serena returned to Mateo's shop, crystals exchanged for a healthy sum of money.
Voices carried from inside before they reached the door.
"Yes, that's it, control the heat right there, and then strike. Good heavens, is this really your first time? You handle the tools like someone who's been doing this for twenty years."
"It's done. It's perfect." Mateo's voice carried a tone Serena and Misty hadn't heard from him before: genuine, slightly wounded amazement.
"Ash, you're infuriating. I spent years reaching my current level. You walked in here thirty minutes ago and surpassed it. If you weren't a trainer, you'd be the most famous crystal sculptor in the Orange Islands."
The two girls exchanged a glance and stepped inside.
Ash was sitting at Mateo's fire pit. The forge, the tools, the workspace that belonged to Mateo's family heritage was occupied by a boy who'd never touched a sculpting implement before today.
Based on Mateo's reaction, whatever Ash had produced in that half hour had been exceptional.
What had he made?
Ash turned at the sound of their footsteps. His face was streaked with black soot, a broad smear across one cheek and another across his forehead, making him look like a chimney sweep who'd lost a fight with the chimney.
Misty and Serena burst out laughing at the same time.
Then they saw what was in his hands, and the laughter died.
"You're back. Perfect timing." Ash stood, soot-faced and grinning, and held out two crystal sculptures. "These are what I made. Used up my share of the cave crystals. First time doing this, so there was a lot of waste. I wanted to make one for Pikachu too, but the material ran out."
The sculptures weren't Pokémon.
They were Misty and Serena.
Misty's figure stood in her classic outfit: crop top, shorts, small backpack. Togepi perched on one shoulder. One arm raised high, the other hanging loose at her side.
Her face wore a bright, open smile, caught in the moment just before a jump. The pose radiated the energy that defined her: bold, sunny, unafraid.
Serena's figure stood with her hands clasped behind her back. The same outfit she'd worn every day since joining the team: black sleeveless top, red skirt, pink hat. Her smile was different from Misty's. Softer. More reserved. Shy at the edges but warm at the centre. The kind of expression that said she was happy but didn't quite know what to do with the happiness.
Both sculptures were carved from the blue cave crystal, and the translucency of the material made the figures look as though the real girls had been captured inside gemstone.
The detail was extraordinary for a first attempt. Posture, proportion, expression, all rendered with a precision that made Mateo shake his head in quiet disbelief.
A careful eye might notice that Misty's statue carried slightly finer detail than Serena's. The expression was a fraction more nuanced. The personality captured a shade deeper.
Ash hadn't done it on purpose. He didn't play favourites with effort. The difference came from familiarity. He'd spent six months beside Misty. He knew every expression she had, every gesture, every shift in mood. The knowledge had flowed into his hands without conscious direction.
Serena, he'd known for four days. Four days of genuine warmth and growing understanding, but four days nonetheless. The sculptor's instinct could only reproduce what the mind had absorbed, and the data sets weren't equal.
Nobody looking at just one sculpture would notice the gap. Placed side by side under close inspection, the subtle difference might surface. But both carvings were, by any objective standard, remarkable.
"You made these?" Misty's voice was small with disbelief. She knew Ash better than anyone alive, and she had never seen him touch a sculpting tool. "Since when can you carve crystal?"
"Since about thirty minutes ago." Ash's grin was wide and soot-framed. "Mateo taught me the basics. The crystal alone cost over a hundred thousand in raw material. First time, lots of waste. But it worked out."
The cost didn't bother him. One night's sleep and the Chat Group would generate more value than a cave full of crystal. He was earning a fortune in his sleep. The expenditure was trivial.
He'd chosen crystal over glass for two reasons. Confidence in his Aura-enhanced hand coordination. And the feeling that Misty and Serena deserved better than glass.
"Is this what you were being so mysterious about?" Serena held her sculpture in both hands, turning it in the light. The crystal caught the afternoon sun from the shop window and threw pale blue reflections across the walls.
Her own face smiled back at her from inside the gem, shy and warm, exactly the way she looked when she didn't know she was being watched.
"I was worried I wouldn't have enough time to do it well." Ash rubbed the back of his neck, relief mixing with pride. "Turns out I picked it up faster than I expected."
Mateo stood to the side with his arms folded, fighting the urge to say something he'd regret.
Talent higher than expected. That was what Ash had called it.
Mateo had spent his life in this craft, and he could say with professional certainty that "talent" didn't cover what had just happened.
In the first twenty minutes, Ash had gone from fumbling the most basic melting technique to moving with the fluid confidence of a master artisan.
Not a student who'd grasped the fundamentals quickly. A master. Someone who looked like they'd been immersed in crystal work for fifteen years and had simply forgotten about it until today.
The material made it worse. Crystal was harder to work than glass in every dimension: higher melting point, stricter temperature tolerances, less forgiving of imprecision.
Beginners didn't start with crystal. Veterans approached crystal with caution. Ash had carved two portrait sculptures from solid crystal in thirty minutes and made them look alive.
Portrait work. Of all the possible subjects, human figures were the hardest. Pokémon sculptures needed form and spirit. Get the shape right, capture the vitality, and minor surface imperfections disappeared.
Human portraits demanded perfection at every scale. A fraction of a millimetre off in the expression, and the entire piece lost its soul. That was why almost no shops in town offered human carvings.
The work was thankless. Hours of labour could be undone by a customer saying "that doesn't look like me."
When Ash had first announced he wanted to carve human figures from crystal, Mateo had tried to stop him. A beginner, on his first day, using the most difficult material, attempting the most challenging subject? That was a recipe for wasted crystal and wasted time.
Ash had insisted. And the Crystal Onix, which Ash had promised to leave overnight for Mateo to study, was too valuable to refuse.
So Mateo had taught him. Expecting failure. Getting humbled instead.
In twenty minutes, Ash had replicated skills that Mateo had spent over a decade acquiring. In the final ten, while creating the two sculptures, he'd done something Mateo still couldn't: he'd put a soul into the crystal.
The very quality Mateo had been chasing his entire career, the thing his father had possessed and he couldn't find, Ash had produced on his first attempt because he knew the subjects. Not their measurements. Their essence.
Mateo could learn technique from the Crystal Onix. What Ash had demonstrated in this forge was something no crystal specimen could teach.
Misty and Serena held their sculptures and couldn't put them down.
Crystal felt different from glass. That was the first thing both of them noticed. Where glass was sharp and cold against the fingertips, crystal carried a coolness that felt alive. Smooth, weighty, with a natural solidity that glass couldn't replicate.
Misty traced the carved strands of hair on her figure and felt the texture shift under her touch, each strand carrying the crystal's inherent grain.
"This feels completely different from any glass ornament I've seen," Serena said, turning her sculpture in the light. "They're both transparent, but this is gentler. Warmer, somehow."
"When the light hits it, it looks like there are stars trapped inside." Misty rubbed her thumb across the crystal cheek of her figure, eyes soft.
Serena's sculpture was a fraction less refined than Misty's. She could tell, if she looked with a critical eye, which she chose not to.
The fact that Ash had made one for her at all was more than she'd expected. Her relationship with Ash was days old. Misty's was months deep. The gap in the carvings reflected a gap in intimacy that was honest rather than hurtful.
He'd still made one for her. That was the part that mattered.
"Glad you like them." Ash wiped soot from his face with the back of his hand, spreading the smear further.
"Pika Pika!" Pikachu tugged at Ash's pant leg, expression wounded.
"You already have one. Don't be jealous."
"Pika Pi! Pikachu Pi!" The indignation was real. Pikachu's "sculpture" was a roadside glass trinket Ash had picked up from a vendor.
Before today, it had been perfectly satisfactory. Now, watching Misty and Serena hold hand-carved crystal portraits, the glass Pikachu felt like a participation trophy.
"There's no crystal left. I used everything."
"I have some!" Serena raised her free hand like a student who knew the answer. "I kept a piece of crystal to send home as a decoration, but now that I have this," she held up her sculpture, "I don't need it. You can use mine to make one for Pikachu."
"Serena, that's yours. I can't just..."
"You made sculptures for Misty and me! Letting me give you the crystal is the least I can do. I actually think the money from selling my share should also go back to..."
"Stop." Ash held up both hands. "I'll take the crystal. Do not bring up the money again."
It had taken a combined diplomatic effort from Ash and Misty to get Serena to accept her share of the crystal sale proceeds. If she returned it now, the entire negotiation collapsed.
"He's right," Misty added with a smile. "When Ash gives you something, take it. Talking about money makes things awkward. Just let Pikachu's savings fund the crystal. He's happy to contribute."
Pikachu patted its chest. The "savings" were Ash's money funnelled through Pikachu's personal stash, which made it functionally unlimited. The yellow mouse had no concerns about liquidity.
Serena laughed. The tension in her shoulders loosened, and the last of her resistance to accepting the gift dissolved. "Then I'll take it. Thank you, Pikachu."
"Pika Pika." Pikachu waved a dismissive paw. No big deal. As the longest-serving member of Ash's team, Pikachu had developed a sharp eye for interpersonal dynamics.
This new teammate's feelings for Ash were about as subtle as a Thunderbolt. Where that led was Ash's problem to figure out. In the meantime, generosity between teammates was just good policy.