"Mm. It was a sealed space, and the lights in it were on at every hour. There were a great many Pokémon in there with me back then, all of us soaking in that solution together, and every so often a needle would go into my body, and people in white clothes would come with notebooks and look at us............"
The Vigoroth told it slowly, speaking of what had gone before; lively as it always was, telling this brought a look of fear to its face.
"That's all past, Vigoroth. You have us now, and it won't happen again."
Vance stepped up to comfort it, and patted its shoulder.
The Gyarados beside them was moved as well; Vance had explained such things to him often enough. The Torchic, on the other hand, wore a face full of confusion. Solutions, needles, whatever they were, it did not understand any of it. It had never even heard of such things.
But it could feel the mood in the room, and knew that what the Vigoroth was talking about was a bad thing, so the Torchic put its clever little head to work and cast about for bad things of its own.
It remembered falling into the water once, and the keepers pouring a bitter medicine down its throat. That had felt dreadful, it had hurt, and there had been no running away. Thinking of that, the Torchic understood well enough.
"Rooaar— boss, can this of mine be cured?"
"It can be cured, Vigoroth. You only need to stop training for a few days and rest properly. Have a little faith in me."
Vance said it with confidence on his face and certainty in his voice.
"Rooaar— I believe in the boss."
The Vigoroth nodded. It trusted Vance a great deal.
For the next several days Vance was busy with the Vigoroth — building up its nutrition, shoring up its foundations, repairing its body.
The cost was the greater part of everything he had.
He spent the system's Battle Points as well, exchanging them for rare and hard-to-find materials; the more common ones Vance got hold of in the ordinary world, and he made several trips down to the Team Rocket base beneath the Game Corner, throwing several million at it to get what he needed.
He used the equipment in the base to make up the medicines, too.
After many days of treatment, carried out with great care by a Vance who now had the skill of an Advanced Breeder, the three sources of power inside the Vigoroth came into balance; and after all that torment the Vigoroth still had the Psychic type on the system's display, which had not gone away — that much, at least, was a good thing.
Vance remembered that before the breakthrough there had been no Psychic on the Vigoroth's type line, and after it there was.
And going by how the Vigoroth performed, the strength of its psychic energy was no worse than that of a Psychic-type Pokémon of the same level. From now on it would not be too much to call the Vigoroth a Psychic-type itself.
"There, Vigoroth. From today you can start training as you normally would."
Vance said it with a faint smile, clearing the Vigoroth to take part in training again.
"Rooaar—"
The Vigoroth got to its feet, threw a few punches to warm up, and then ran through Scratch, Slash, Thunder Punch and the rest of its moves one after another. There was nothing wrong with any of them.
What had changed was that they hit harder than they had before the breakthrough.
With its body well again the Vigoroth was delighted, and the energy about it swelled all at once: its energy level broke up a stage and reached 32.
"Is this the sweet after the bitter? Another level."
Seeing it, Vance was pleased too, glad for the Vigoroth.
All those resources he had poured in had gone to the treatment, but they did the Vigoroth's strength good as well, so there was nothing strange about its gaining a level this quickly.
"You'll have to work hard too, Torchic. Look how plump you've got."
Vance said it to the Torchic on his shoulder.
"Torchic—"
The Torchic answered, and let out its level-8 energy as it did, as if to say it had not been slacking — it had been training hard these past days too, and the reason it had grown plump was that the food Vance gave it was simply too good.
"Hah, a bit of plumpness is no bad thing. There — off you go and train."
"Tor— wait, wait. Boss, there's something I want to say."
The Torchic stayed where it was on his shoulder.
"And what's that?"
"Well — I'd like a training room of my own as well."
The Torchic said it after a moment's thought.
"There's no need for that, surely. A space this size is plenty for you to train in; you can carry on however you like. Besides, I'm here as well. What is it you're worried about?"
Vance turned the Torchic's request down. There did not seem to be any need for it.
"Ah. Nothing. I'm not worried about anything."
Seeing the Torchic like that, Vance knew the reason well enough, and thinking back to the fright he had given it he felt rather ashamed of himself.
"Ahem. Now then, Torchic, your boss has been a bit short lately. Haven't much money left. It's all gone on the Vigoroth, you see, so we shall have to be careful for a while."
Vance cleared his throat and offered that explanation instead.
"Money? What's money? Can you eat it?"
The Torchic asked it with its innocent eyes wide. It genuinely had no notion of money as a currency.
"Ah, I forgot to explain that to you. Money is a currency people need in human society. You can't eat it, but you can exchange it for things to eat. The food you eat every day — the ingredients for it were bought with money too."
Vance took the chance to explain it to the Torchic, and even took out several Poké Dollars of different values to show it.
"And how do you get this money?"
Having had it explained and learned what money was for, the Torchic asked again.
"Hah. You needn't trouble yourself about earning money. What you have to do now is train properly, and once you're strong you'll be able to earn a great deal of it."
"Right. I'll go and train, then. I want to get strong quickly."
"Go on, go on."
The Torchic hopped down from his shoulder and ran off to train.
Vance rubbed his nose and watched the Torchic's small retreating back, feeling a little ashamed. Deceiving a Torchic that was so much like an ordinary small child did not sit quite right with him.
Then again, what he had said was not entirely untrue. He really had spent a great deal of money on the Vigoroth.
He had only a little over a million Poké Dollars left, which did count as not having much money.
At that thought, what little shame he felt disappeared.
Watching the Vigoroth train, Vance found himself wondering why Team Rocket had dropped the Vigoroth and the others on Trial Island in the first place. What was the point of it?
That was what concerned him.
And suppose, in a case like the Vigoroth's, he had had no way to treat it. What would he have done then?
Abandoned it? He doubted he could have brought himself to.
And if he did not abandon it, what else could he do? Go to Team Rocket?
"That does seem possible. Perhaps they were an experiment of Team Rocket's — there's no telling."
The thought struck him. A Trainer capable of catching Pokémon like these would be no weakling to begin with, and could hold them down when they lost control.
And then he would turn to the organization for help. That did seem to hang together.
"Whatever the purpose behind it, the Vigoroth is my Pokémon, and that will not change. As for Team Rocket, I don't need them."
Vance said it with a steady look in his eyes. The Vigoroth had been caught by him, and that made it nothing to do with Team Rocket; it was no longer their test subject.
Besides that question, the thing that held Vance's attention was that mysterious source of power inside the Vigoroth.
He still did not know exactly what that power was. He could tell only that it did the Vigoroth no harm, and for the present there was nothing he could do about it.