"Booom—"
On Trial Island, over one of the large lakes, two Pokémon were fighting hard.
The two in it were a Gyarados and a Poliwrath.
The way things stood, Gyarados was giving ground step by step, and it looked bad; he was not far off being beaten.
"Gyarados, Ice Beam!"
Vance gave the order from the bank.
Gyarados fired an Ice Beam at once, sealing off the line of the Poliwrath's advance.
The Poliwrath raised both hands and put out an Ice Beam of its own on the spot, with more force behind it than his.
"Hissss—"
The two freezing beams touched in midair, and then one of them drove straight on across, right back toward Gyarados.
Seeing Gyarados outmatched, Vance reached out from the bank at once and pulled him clear of the place.
"Croak—"
The Poliwrath floated on the surface, looking quietly off into the distance, and did not pursue.
This was not the first time. Every time that Gyarados was losing, some force carried him off at the critical moment; and every time he came back he had improved a good deal. By now he could hold a hard fight for dozens of exchanges.
The ripple of that power carrying the Gyarados away felt like a threat to it too. The Poliwrath was wondering whether it ought to move house.
Over on the other side, Vance was treating Gyarados's injuries.
Several days had gone by since the day of the "airdrop". After looking around, Vance had not pushed deeper into the inner ring of the island to meet those few "strange" airdropped Pokémon; he had stayed out on the fringes instead, gathering resources as he went and training Gyarados along with it.
He had happened at one point to run into the Poliwrath, that "old acquaintance", and Gyarados had insisted on fighting it, to pay it back for frightening him the day he evolved. He had been at it with the thing for days now.
"Your grasp of Ice Beam still isn't up to temperature. You've come a long way, though — you can take on something stronger than yourself now and hold a hard fight ten rounds without losing."
Vance said it as he finished rubbing the medicine into Gyarados.
"Hmph. I can feel it. Give me time and I'll have it down."
Gyarados said it in a low voice, lying flat on the ground, then thought of something and looked over at him.
"Boss, what's your view on it? Is there a better tactic, something that lets me beat the thing?"
"A better tactic?" Vance put away what he had in his hands, thought about it, and shook his head.
"The tactics you used today were good enough. Next time you fight it, you can draw it toward the bank and move the battle onto land — that way it gets a few degrees less help from its surroundings."
"Honestly, what you did today is already respectable. That Poliwrath is an Advanced Pokémon, energy level 34, nine levels above you. Take it slowly. With your aptitude, passing it is only a matter of time."
Gyarados had taken another step forward as well, and stood at level 25.
"No, no, no, that isn't enough. I don't want to trade blows with it — what's trading blows worth? I'm going to beat that little piece of trash, I mean it. Boss, is there a harder, more punishing way to train, something to make me strong fast?"
Vance smiled at that confidence of his. This Gyarados was not only sure of himself, he nursed grudges.
"I'm not afraid of hard work."
He added it at the end.
Vance laughed to hear it.
"Don't be in such a hurry, little brother. Take it slowly. Haste makes waste."
.........…
"Thud, thud, thud—"
"Ah — not the face, damn it!"
A group of men had been dumped in a heap, bruised and swollen-faced.
Several badly wounded Pokémon lay on the ground as well, with one more hanging in a tree.
An ape-like Pokémon — white all over, brown markings down its back, brown around the eyes and on the chin, a tuft of red hair on its head and black claws — had a Mightyena pinned and was grinding it along the ground.
The Mightyena under its foot had nothing left to fight back with, and was whining low in its throat.
The strange part was that this ape had not killed anybody.
"Thud—"
A black shape landed beside the men. The Mightyena.
"Ah, we're dead, boss. Even your Mightyena can't hold it. What have we stirred up here? Whose Vigoroth is this strong?"
"Quit your hollering. Go and find yourself somewhere cool to lie."
"Why, boss?"
"So you rot slower."
"Agh! Boss, I don't want to die!"
"Neither do I."
Rufus let out a sigh. He did not want to die either, but running into an absurd Vigoroth like this today left him nothing to work with.
Whose Vigoroth knows Psychic-type moves? Here one moment and gone the next, and strong with it. The thing was preposterous.
One, two, three, and his little team had been dealt with.
He opened both blackened eyes, and the moment he lifted his head a line of blood ran out of his nose.
"You. That red thing, the one about so big — hand it over. Tasty, that."
The Vigoroth stood to one side, gesturing.
The sound of it jolted Rufus and his eyes went wide. He was seeing ghosts — the Vigoroth in front of him was talking!
Talking was not the right word for it either. It was telepathy.
"Hm? Be quick. I not kill you."
The Vigoroth, seeing the state of him, grew impatient and pressed him along.
"Got some, got some, Vigoroth-san."
With his life on the line Rufus's head worked uncommonly fast. Ghosts or no ghosts, he dug into his spatial pack in a hurry and chivvied the followers beside him.
Any slower and he really would be seeing ghosts.
"Faster! Get the Pokémon food out, and anything red down at the bottom, energy cubes, whatever there is — all of it out. Quick. Maybe we don't have to die after all."
"Right, right, right, we've got some."
In a scramble the men pulled a great heap of Pokémon food out of their packs, every colour of it and every kind, and set it out in front of the Vigoroth.
"Please, help yourself."
Rufus said it to the Vigoroth with a fawning smile.
Suspecting nothing, the Vigoroth took a handful of Pokémon food into its mouth and spat it straight out again.
That had Rufus and the others badly on edge. If his lordship was not satisfied, that might well be the end of them.
Fortunately, once it had spat out the ordinary Pokémon food, the Vigoroth picked up an energy cube from the side and ate that; this time it did not spit, but chewed a few times and swallowed.
"Whew. We're saved."
Rufus let out a long breath and wiped the sweat off his forehead.
The few boxes of energy cubes they had were soon finished. The Vigoroth picked over the rest, ate a little, and looked at them with dissatisfaction on its face.
"Not enough."
"Ah — not enough?"
His heart, just set down, rose into his throat again. Rufus looked round at the men and said loudly, "Hurry up! Whatever you've got, out with it. No holding back now."
"Boss, there really isn't any. You know how useless and how broke we are — it took us forever to put those few boxes by, and they've all been eaten."
The men beside him said it with faces like mourners.
"We've nothing left."
Rufus's face was as long as theirs, and he resigned himself to it. It seemed there was no escaping death after all.
He shut his eyes and settled in to wait for it. A dozen seconds went by with no pain, and when he opened them he found the Vigoroth was gone.
"Ha ha! Come through a disaster like that and good fortune's bound to follow. Rufus is going to make something of himself yet."
The men beside him heard the laughing and opened their eyes as well.
"Ah, boss, are we dead? Eh — how are we still here?"
One of the followers said it blearily.
"Dead my arse. How would any of you be dead with me here? Stick with me and you'll all go far."
Rufus barked it at them, with none of the cringing of a moment ago.