The next day several more people came to the villa: Lance, Steven and Cynthia together, and Vance kept them company throughout.
"That's right, I'm here to poach you. Well, Vance, will you come? Come and make your way in Hoenn. Hoenn is very good too, no worse than Kanto."
Steven said it with a laugh, giving another demonstration of how a man is poached.
"I'll think it over."
Vance put him off.
"Give over. Kanto is a large enough stage; there's room enough on it for Vance to make something of himself."
Lance put in. Poaching from their Kanto region right in front of him — was that not treating him, Kanto's "Near-Champion", as of no account whatever?
"You'll have a fair idea of what I've come for. It's the same as before — an invitation to join the Central Investigation Bureau. Generous terms, and there's room to talk about them."
"Thank you for the kindness. I shall have to think about it further."
Vance put it off, and did not agree to it.
"The way you're going about this — are you meaning to enter the Elite Four tournament three months from now?"
Something had come back to Lance, and he asked it.
"Yes. I do mean to enter the Elite Four tournament three months from now, so I'd rather not be 'working for wages' just yet."
Vance answered, letting a little of his plan out. There was nothing much in it either way.
As he recalled, a man who took a seat in the Elite Four could go to the central vault and choose a treasure as well.
Apart from that, anyone who wanted to choose there had to earn it, trading merit won in the League's service for the chance of an exchange inside.
There were several things in there that he needed, that could be used in reviving Deoxys, and that had likewise come from beyond the sky.
Before, when he had not yet come across Deoxys, he had never given them a thought; this time they had come back to him.
"A bit early, isn't it? Not that I think little of you — it only seems to me you've no need to hurry. Whet yourself for a year or two and I dare say you'd do. Among the few of us, the weakest Pokémon has Near-Champion strength, and the fighting strength of a Near-Champion and of Elite-Four-class are worlds apart, you know; the distance between those two is greater than the distance between Gym-class and Elite-Four."
Lance heard him out, thought it not quite advisable, and gave his advice.
"I think it will be all right. It's a good chance to see something of it."
"So long as your nerve doesn't go to pieces."
"It won't, naturally."
Vance answered with a smile. His nerve go to pieces? Not a chance of it.
When the time came, whose nerve went to pieces was anybody's guess.
"Very good. I was just the same in my day. After I took the Conference title in the Hoenn region I went in for that year's Elite Four tournament too, and my luck held, and that was how it came about."
Steven said it now in a ringing voice, talking of his own past.
"Impressive."
Vance put his thumb straight up. Remembering that this was Steven, it was nothing out of the way.
"Miss Cynthia is more remarkable still. Set against her, I fall a good way short."
Steven turned the talk towards Cynthia, who had said rather little.
"It's all right."
With the three of them looking at her, Cynthia said it mildly.
"All right, indeed. That's modesty. Miss Cynthia challenged the Champion outright, and lost only narrowly at that. When Sinnoh's Elite Four tournament opens again, that Champion's seat is hers. Oh — and that is next year, which makes her eighteen. A Champion at eighteen. I won't say nobody will come after her, but nobody has come before her, and that's the truth of it."
Vance looked across, and remembered it too. It did seem to be so; as he recalled it she had become Champion at just that age, and the youngest Champion in the League besides.
If he counted as a monster himself, then this one gave away nothing to him either; as monsters went she was further along than he was.
Vance pulled in a mind that had been drifting up a little. He had not earned the right to drift yet; at present he still did not measure up to her.
"Then when we meet again next year I shall have to call you Champion. There — that is what a real Champion is."
Vance said it to Cynthia.
"Ha ha."
Steven and the other one both laughed.
Cynthia looked a little embarrassed, and coloured slightly.
"Elite Four Lance, aren't you going to do a little poaching here? This one is a genuine Champion, a good deal stronger than I am."
Vance said it in jest.
"Can't be done. With her I've no means at all; there's no poaching her over. And if I did, those few old fellows would hit the roof, and I might very well get a thrashing for it besides."
Lance shook his head and laughed.
Of people at Cynthia's level a League had only a handful, and they were the public face of the years to come; every League set more store by them than by anything else.
If one of them were poached away, the League's old hands would be stirring themselves.
"I... I came this time to ask you as well, whether you'd care to come to Sinnoh."
Cynthia said it slowly.
"Hm?"
Lance's face was one great question mark.
Vance and the other two looked at her; and under that looking Cynthia's face went red as well, and she felt awkward and out of countenance.
"Pff — ha ha, surely not. Cynthia, are you turning recruiter too? You don't look the part in the least."
Steven laughed outright. So this good friend of his had come to do a little recruiting as well, had she — and looking thoroughly unprofessional about it.
"Sinnoh, is it."
Vance wore a thoughtful look.
"Wait — you're not really going? Don't tell me this is a honey trap."
Steven, seeing the look of him, felt that he had been moved.
Could it be that by sheer accident Cynthia, unfit recruiter as she was, had hit precisely on Vance's weak point, and talked him round?
"Here, here, here. We'll have none of that."
Lance was growing anxious too. How was it the man looked as though he had been moved?
Inwardly he was regretting that he had not brought a woman along and set a honey trap for the lad himself.
For no reason he could name, Lorelei's face came up in his mind.
"The devil."
He shook his head and threw the figure out of it.
To be thought worth having by three Champion-grade figures — though not all of them were Champions yet — did give Vance a certain quiet satisfaction.
But what he had been turning over just then was not any persuasion of Cynthia's; beautiful as Cynthia was, he was only thinking what chances might be waiting over in Sinnoh.
"Over here in Kanto, is there a post going with good money, little work, and a fairly free hand about turning up?"
Vance said it offhand.
"There is. Come to Investigation Headquarters. There's an Inspection Department under our headquarters, and inspection is all it does. There's a post open just now that would suit you very well — taking charge of inspecting the major Gyms, going round in the course of the year to inspect the Gyms that fall short. It answers every one of your conditions exactly. Join now and the terms are generous; you'd come in at Deputy Director."
"There really is, then."
Vance had only said it offhand, and had not expected there really to be such a thing.
"You're not having me on?"
"It's the truth. When have I ever told anybody a lie?"
Lance said it with his face turned serious.
"Very well. I am interested in that post. We'll say that one, then."
In the end Vance did mean to hold a post after all. Deputy Director of the Inspection Department — that counted as a good one.
The post was not a low one; it sat at Investigation Headquarters; the work was free; and it took him round the country inspecting Gyms.
He remembered that the anime had this post as well. That Joy inspected Gyms too, and what people remembered of her was that she had caught a Legendary besides, a Latias.
Another capable person; and now he had become one of the same kind himself.