It happened in the space of a spark. The Raticate charging at the front had not even reacted before Vance had finished the three Rattata behind it.
He knew this kind of Pokémon well. He had spent no small part of the last three months practising on them.
His belt gave a slight shudder, a streak of red light swept out, and a red fish appeared on the field — red all over, a golden crown-shaped fin on its head, two yellow barbels trailing from its face.
Magikarp. You find them everywhere in the Pokémon world, at the water's edge in every corner of it, surviving even in filthy water. Their hold on life is extraordinarily stubborn.
The moment it appeared it flopped forward to the three Rattata and swung its tail, three times in a row with a rush of air behind each blow, slapping them off their feet.
Struck again while still dazed, the three landed with their eyes spinning, entirely out of the fight.
Man and Pokémon worked together so smoothly, with nothing wasted, that they looked like a pair who understood each other perfectly. Which is what they were.
"Ding. Three Rattata defeated. 9 Battle Points awarded."
The system's chime sounded in his ear.
"Good. Three more down."
Vance was satisfied with that. The system's defeat missions only counted with a Pokémon involved — he had tested it.
The way he and his Pokémon worked together was odd, nothing like the usual Trainer arrangement, but as long as it completed the missions it did the job.
He was the main force; the Magikarp played support and picked up the kills.
There was no help for it. When the time had come to choose a Pokémon, he had somehow ended up with the Poké Ball holding a Magikarp.
Three months on, though, Vance did not regret the Magikarp.
With the system's rewards and his own unrelenting work, everything was moving in the right direction.
His Magikarp was not like the others of its kind either. Not dull-witted, not blank-eyed. It worked as hard as he did, hungry for strength, chasing the same distant light of a life turned around.
Vance had put most of his resources into it, and across those three months the two of them had grown together.
"Raticaaate—"
Only now did the Raticate come to. Seeing the Rattata like that enraged it, and told it at the same time that this prey was trouble.
It drew a deep breath and straightened up. A faint glow rose off its body and its presence sharpened.
"Focus Energy, is it."
Vance tightened his grip on the iron bar, and his expression turned serious.
A Raticate in that state had to be handled carefully. Getting hurt out here would be a problem.
The system panel in front of him brought up the Raticate's data.
That was another of the system's functions, the Scanning Eye, which let him read the details of any Pokémon he was looking at.
> **Name:** Raticate (male)
> **Type:** Normal
> **Ability:** Run Away
> **Aptitude:** Advanced
> **Level:** 20
> **Moves:** Tackle, Tail Whip, Quick Attack, Focus Energy, Bite, Pursuit, Hyper Fang
"Level 20 and still no Sucker Punch or Scary Face. Reality and the games really aren't the same thing."
Vance murmured it to himself. In his previous life he had watched the anime and played the games as well, and he remembered a Raticate having Scary Face and Sucker Punch by level 20 in the games.
Out here it came out differently — the environment it lived in, perhaps, or how well the Pokémon had been fed.
He had confirmed as much on plenty of Pokémon by now.
While he was thinking it over the Raticate finished gathering itself and charged again, the great teeth at the front of its mouth glinting cold, its momentum stronger than before.
Vance did not meet it head-on. A few shifts of his body, using the ground around him, and the attack went past.
As he dodged he quietly took out a brown pellet, crushed it in his hand, let the dust drift out into the air, and then let the Raticate tangle with him.
"Raticaaate—"
Several attacks and it could not touch the prey in front of it. The Raticate was beginning to get anxious.
"Fwoomp—"
Hyper Fang missed again and closed on air.
"Ratii—"
Late to it, the Raticate felt something wrong in its own body. It was slowing. Its strength was draining away.
"There. You've had a good many swings. My turn."
Judging it about right, Vance stopped dodging. Another Teleport put him behind the Raticate, and the iron bar came up and down toward its skull, practised and precise.
"Crack—"
The Raticate saw stars. It was not that it did not want to dodge, it was that it could not. Something was wrong — its mind kept up and its body would not follow — and instinct told it the prey in front of it was behind that.
"Crack, crack—"
Before it could react, two more blows landed on its head. Its awareness blurred, and in the haze it seemed to see its own great-grandmother calling to it.
It reached forward, wanting to take hold of something, and a streak of red appeared in front of it. A fish's tail. A sharp slap, its body sailed through the air, and its awareness went dark.
"Ding. Raticate defeated. 10 Battle Points awarded."
The system's chime sounded again.
"Ten points. Not bad. Worth a good deal more than three Rattata."
Vance said it with a small laugh. Battle Points were measured against the relative strength of the two sides, and ten meant the two of them had been fairly evenly matched.
"An Advanced-aptitude Raticate ought to be worth something, too."
He took out a blank Poké Ball as he said it and threw, and it struck the Raticate where it lay and drew it in.
"Clunk—"
The Raticate put up no resistance whatsoever. Caught on the first throw.
He ran the system over the other three Rattata. Ordinary aptitude, not worth much.
Still, after a moment's thought, he took out three more Poké Balls, drew the three Rattata in, and slid them into a compartment of his pack.
Vance's pack was a spatial pack, with several compartments. The main one held a space of twenty-odd square metres for storage, though nothing living could go inside it — not even a Poké Ball with a Pokémon in it. The balls he had just put away went into a different compartment.
The spatial pack was one of this world's great inventions, built on the principle of folded space, and a marvellous thing. Out in the field it made a Trainer's life enormously easier.
It explained something that had puzzled Vance while he was watching the anime: how the main cast produced so much out of nowhere without ever being seen to carry any of it. With a thing like a spatial pack, it made sense.
The pack was a reward for how well he had performed — twenty cubic metres of it.
Not many in their intake had one. They were not handed out to everybody.