“Now go! Finish it off with a Dynamax Mindstorm!” With one powerful brandish of his gloved hand, Kai gestured in the direction of the colossal Toxtricity before them. The creature fought hard and valiantly, but now as electricity streamed from its vents with reckless abandon, it had to know the fight was finished. Nevertheless, it opened its mouth in preparation for one final, desperate attack.

“Garde, Gardevoir!” came the response of the Toxtricity’s contender. It stood delicately and gracefully, its curtained cloak billowing as the electrifying Dynamax energy filled the den. “Gardevoir!” she repeated in affirmative. The momentous Gardevoir allowed a pink sphere of pure psychic energy to coalesce in her palms before brandishing it in a mirror pose to her trainer, sending the blast careening into the nearby Toxtricity in a wave that exploded into a fantastic eruption.

Finally defeated, the opposing Pokemon collapsed, the raw max power leaving its body in a magenta haze before it shrunk down several sizes in multiple short bursts, returning to its normal appearance. With the remains of its strength, the Toxtricity slinked back into the den, leaving Kai alone and victorious, his trusted Pokemon partner by his side.

“Good job, Gardevoir!” he called up to the Pokemon, and she gave an acquiescing murmur. Kai smiled up at his titanic partner, allowing briefly a hint of pride to swell up inside him for his beloved Gardevoir. The pair had been quite inseparable ever since she was naught but a wee Ralts, and Kai cared deeply for her ever since finding her stranded and alone on the outskirts of Lumiose City. Despite those humble beginnings, she had since grown into a snarky Kirlia, followed by a strong and confident Gardevoir that stood over him now. And in that sense, Kai too had developed into a trainer who could do this Pokemon the honor of allowing her to call him his master.

“Alright, you deserve a good rest,” Kai said. The Gardevoir absentmindedly said her own name as Kai waited expectantly for something to happen.

“Hm?” intoned Kai aloud. As he stood there beneath the Gardevoir’s gaze, he looked around the den. The other Pokemon had already retreated into its hole, and the two were alone. There was certainly no need for Gardevoir to maintain the max energy that had caused it to balloon to unrealistic sizes. Something was… amiss.

“Um, I said,” began Kai, quite confused at his Pokemon’s insistence on staying huge, “you deserve a good rest! C’mon back down here, Gardevoir, it’s okay.” Kai clapped his hands, hoping this would get his Pokemon’s attention. Sure, they’d Dynamaxed before, but always in the controlled environment of stadiums and other places built on top of Power Spots. Here in the Wild Area the only things stopping domesticated Pokemon from abusing their massive sizes was the bond of trust built between them and their trainers. But surely, if any trainer and Pokemon were to have an unshakable bond, it’d be Kai and his Gardevoir, right?

The clapping did have an effect: it apparently reminded Gardevoir that Kai was still here. She actually turned her head back down toward Kai, seemingly surprised but… oddly… excited. Kai breathed a sigh of relief, glad that Gardevoir had once again acknowledged Kai’s place as her Pokemon master.

“That’s right, now come back down here like I said –”

BOOM!

That single footstep shoot Kai off balance and sent him to the dusty ground. Kai coughed as Gardevoir’s massive foot stepped over him, not totally unlike a zeppelin as it deposited upon him a further veneer of dirt before crashing down.

Kai growled, unwilling to put up with this disrespect any further. “That’s it!” he muttered, and from his bag he pulled out the Great Ball that normally housed Gardevoir. Clicking the button, he aimed it at Gardevoir, and a red beam reached out, striking Gardevoir as she turned in agonizing slowness to face Kai when… nothing happened.

“What?! Come on, get in the ball!” he said, clicking again and again, but every time, all it did was confuse Gardevoir.

Dropping the ball to the ground, Kai was dumbstruck. Why wasn’t she getting back into the ball? Why… what was she even doing?

“Voir… Garde-voir!”

And with an almighty descent, Gardevoir hopped her dainty, floaty little hop, and sat down.

The very wind blast from her cloak’s unfathomable movement forced Kai to block out the gust with his forearm, leaning into the flow to avoid being sent flying as Gardevoir jumped. Upon contact with the ground, another storm of dust, and Kai had to cover his eyes as the electrified waves of particulate threatened to blind him. Shadow fell over him, and as the winds that whipped at his jacket ceased, Kai braved a squint, only to open his eyes even wider.

It was her foot. Before him was Gardevoir’s humongous, colossal, unfathomably-sized, Dynamaxed foot.

“Gardevoir! Voir, voir,” said Gardevoir in what was, clearly by her intonation, an invitation.

Kai rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. “You… you want me to,” he called out between Gardevoir’s cloak.

“Voir, voir.” Gardevoir nodded in affirmation.

Kai looked at the massive foot in front of him. It was… towering. The ridges that made up the connective tissue of this psychic Pokemon’s soles could be easily discerned if he squinted, and each had with it a layer of thin, earthy grime that coated it from the day’s battles. His partner Pokemon was, evidently, not going to retreat peacefully back into the ball until she had been… “refreshed”. It was a custom developed ever since she was just a Ralts. Too small and dainty to survive many consecutive fights without attention, Kai always made sure to clean up his Pokemon of scratches and dirt following the pair’s many scuffles. It made her feel safe, and it made him feel responsible. Of course now Gardevoir was just a bit hardier, and it wasn’t as ubiquitous a ritual, but Kai still felt the need to refresh his Gardevoir after a tough fight. Trouble is, he never had to do so when she wasn’t normal-sized.

Now? She was practically the size of the Goldenrod Radio Tower, and she appeared to enjoy it. The heat just from Gardevoir’s foot was palpable, and it washed over Kai all-powerfully, inescapably. The den could house colossal creatures, but here and now, as Gardevoir’s scent permeated the cavern, it made Kai feel very very small.

“Voir! Garde-Gardevoir!” repeated Gardevoir expectantly. Her eyes glowed with psychic energy, and above her head the coalescing max energy revealed she still had quite the stockpile to spare.

Kai gulped. He had never felt such a feeling of powerless before his own Pokemon. Truly, the Galar region was something else.

Facing the giant foot, bits of crusted dirt already falling off in sprinkles, Kai reached in his bag for his Pokemon Refresh kit, which housed everything a groomer needs to ensure their partner is happy and healthy.

Removing the brush from the fanny pack, Kai took yet another hearty gulp. The earthy scent of his Gardevoir’s bare feet seemed to weigh down on him. Yes, for the situation, the brush seemed the most apt tool.

He raised his hand up and placed the bristles on a particularly large clump, on a rough section of the foot close to the heel.

Immediately, the foot twitched, and he could hear Gardevoir breathe out a bit of a trilling gasp, the ghost of a chuckle.

Tensing, Kai began to drag the brush down a length of her foot, near the bottom of the heel, removing from it a trail of the dry, caked-on dirt and revealing more of the pure, pristine skin beneath it. The combination of grassy soil and Gardevoir’s conscientiously cared-for foot, pleasant smelling after years of pampering, wafted into Kai’s nostrils as he made yet another trail through the thin layer of sediment. He tried not to think about it as he took a step back and looked up at the pulsating wall of flesh before him. Bits of dirt had already combined with the sweat that Gardevoir worked up from the prior battle, and calcified, resulting in them falling off on their own. The concoction was potent, and it made Kai feel woozy as he realized just how massive a task seemed to be perched before him.

Kai grit his teeth as stubbornness possessed him. While yes, Gardevoir was behaving in an uncharacteristically entitled manner, he still felt determined to complete the task. The time for discipline would come; now, he was determined to perform to his Gardevoir’s expectations.

Grabbing onto the patchy sole with one hand, brush wedged into his elbow, Kai began to climb. He was able to easily grasp onto the rough patches of dirt and skin as though trying to scale an ever moving, pulsating, fleshy rock wall. Years of exploring through all the regions of the Pokemon world should have prepared himself for this, and yet, he couldn’t help but be constantly struck by the realization that he was exploring his Pokemon. This wasn’t some outcropping found in a misty cave; this was a living, breathing creature, one that he knew and had forged bonds with. And he was on its foot.

Through this exploration, Kai still tried his best to attend to the grooming. As he ascended bit by bit, he was able to utilize the brush to remove more and more of the dirt, clearing out Gardevoir’s pores and allowing them to excrete the aromatic excretions of sweat that the Pokemon had worked up over the course of the day’s combat. As he removed this shell piece by piece and brushed more and more at her bare skin, however, Gardevoir seemed to have an increasingly intense reaction.

“Ga-Ga-Ga… Gahahahahaha!!”

The thick bristles that had once been harmlessly wiping away dirt had now excavated enough of her padded soles that simply dragging it along the surface caused the pampered Gardevoir to break out into laughing fits. The rumbles in the magnitudinous foot began, and in a moment Kai realized that perched up high on the surface, he was in danger of quite a long fall, should things get to that point.

“Whoa, just a minute! Gardevoir?” he called out as the rowdy foot squirmed and squirmed. But she seemed to allow his words to fall on deaf ears as the foot began to angle itself downward, preparing to place the sole on the ground itself with an apparent slowness that Kai knew internally to be merely an illusion of her massive size. Nevertheless, he hugged her skin as fear raced through him before realizing:

The toes!

Kai looked above him, and saw that just beyond his purview, the Pokemon’s bare, white toes were watching over him. If he could reach them, he might be home free, at least for the moment.

So, brimming with trepidation, Kai began to race up the cascading foot, feeling confident he could at least make it to the big toe. But it wasn’t enough; Gardevoir’s foot had already descended halfway, and his legs were now unable to keep from dangling helplessly downward. Kai gasped and tried to clutch for dear life as finally, Gardevoir’s foot collided with the ground in a terrifying:

Pwuph…

A storm of dirt was sent outwards from the impact zone. The Gardevoir put a stop to her thunderous laughing, now having just a giddy little grin on her face as she rubbed the bottom of her foot slowly against the ground, and by extension, against Kai’s diminutive little body. Caught like a pebble in a shoe, Kai served as an unconventional salve as his tiny form served as the unexpected wedge that would relieve Gardevoir of the itch that had plagued her ever since Kai began his pampering of the Pokemon.

“G-g-g-get off!” screamed Kai against the fleshy cover as he was smothered. Yet despite the gesture, he was not suffocated. As a matter of fact, his Pokemon’s soft foot was incredibly discerning in how much force it attempted to apply to both Kai and the ground, and though his hair may have been in the process of being frazzled and his clothes were getting dingier and dingier by the moment, Kai was very much okay, the underside of the sole dragging gently back and forth across his anterior as his arms were pinned to their sides. Despite the relative safety however, Kai struggled to gasp entire mouthfuls worth of pure air through the miasma of his Gardevoir’s musky scent.

Clawing his way between the blanket of the foot and the roughness of the ground, Kai finally popped out between the Gardevoir’s toes, seething as his minuscule form waved across the field to where Gardevoir glared back in return, seemingly oblivious to his anger, and unable to suppress another giggle.

Kai fumed even more, and prepared to truly let his Pokemon have it, despite how impossible it would’ve been for the Pokemon to hear the tirade… but as he raised his fist in preparation, Kai’s fatigue from the ordeal caught up with him. While not hurt, Kai had been through quite the workout, and he began to sweat on his own. Panting, Kai braced himself with his arms against the mushy, doughy surface that was Gardevoir’s toe. He relaxed himself, and subsequently collapsed against the Pokemon’s flesh, allowing the charming and familiar aroma of this Pokemon’s feet to caress him.

Gardevoir, contrary to Kai’s expectations, saw this all, and with her expert care and dexterity, she plucked Kai from the tips of her toes and stared down at his small form.

Sleeping. Peacefully.

Thankfulness for all the times Kai had cared for her welled up within Gardevoir, and at once she decided to grant him a proper bed to awaken on when he came to.

Taking great care to caress Kai as she re-positioned herself, Gardevoir sat down in a near-cross-legged arrangement, her two soles now pressed up against one another. Slowly opening them in a butterfly shape, Gardevoir channeled her mystic energies, destroying with her mind any trace of dirt still left before she gingerly placed Kai between the two soles and pressed them back against each other, coating him in the entirety of her essence.

Gardevoir was a powerful fighter, but more importantly, she was a powerful psychic. And despite his insistence to the contrary, Kai knew innately that he truly enjoyed the feeling, the smell, the scent, the texture… he enjoyed everything about Gardevoir. And everything about her was made even more now that she was Dynamaxed.

Gardevoir smiled as she peered down at him while he slept, awaiting his rise through the conspicuous snoring. She knew that they were going to be spending a lot more time with her big. Whether Kai liked it or not.

And somehow, she had a feeling he was going to like it.