To meet with this here was more than Vance had looked for, and his mind settled on it that instant.
Set against this, relics of Legendary Pokémon and high-aptitude pseudo-legendaries and the rest all fell a little flat.
If it came off, he would have a Pokémon that gave nothing away to a super-Legendary. Deoxys.
In the anime everyone had seen what Deoxys was worth in a fight. It had the power to face Hoenn's Legendary, the sky dragon Rayquaza, head-on.
And Rayquaza is a super-Legendary, of an order far beyond Legendaries like Suicune and Raikou; the one of about the same standing as it is Ho-Oh.
Deoxys is a Pokémon produced when the DNA of a space virus clinging to a meteorite was struck by a laser and mutated. It is a two-legged Pokémon shaped rather like an alien, and it has four formes — Normal Forme, Attack Forme, Defense Forme and Speed Forme — each of them weighted towards a different ability.
The four formes have features in common. The body is mostly orange-red, the face blue-green, with three blue-green dots on the back. A purple stripe runs across the face, and there is a crystalline windpipe in the chest cavity. In the rectangular black sockets grow round white eyes.
A Psychic-type Pokémon.
"This will be the crystal out of its chest. It's decayed a great deal too far."
The crystal in his hand was not the size of his palm, and had the look of a pebble; the pulse of life on it was exceedingly faint as well. Had Vance not reached the Master-class in the Viridian Power himself, and had he not known what was coming, he might have felt at it as closely as he liked and still made out nothing.
He held the Deoxys crystal in his hand and turned it over carefully.
"Bzzz, bzzz, bzzz—"
There was a sound from the doorway over there, and then two young people came in. A man and a woman.
They saw Vance and said nothing, and went off about their own business of choosing treasures.
Both faces were strange to him, and where they came from, or by what right they were allowed into the central vault to choose, he did not know; naturally, with a treasure of such weight on him just then, Vance had no interest in looking into any of it.
He took up the crystal in his hand, jade-like as it was, got to his feet and went.
Afterwards he stopped in front of the Flame of Moltres as well, and stood there taking it in carefully.
The treasures here might be looked at and handled, so there was nothing out of the way in Vance doing it.
Holding the other treasure, standing in front of the Flame of Moltres, Vance wore a torn look, glancing now and then at the thing in his hand, for all the world like a man who could not settle which of the two to take.
The whole performance was of course deliberate.
Out of caution, he was doing what he could to make himself less conspicuous.
Had those two not come in, he would not have made anything at all of picking the crystal up.
At any rate Vance held that there was no great harm in care, above all where a Pokémon on a level with a Legendary was concerned.
After that Vance kept it up in the same style, lingering a while before the other treasures with the same torn look, and only when a certain amount of time had been used up did he come to his decision, take the Deoxys crystal and walk out.
"Hello. I'll take this one."
Outside, the director was already there waiting for him.
"Very good, I have it. The Johto headquarters is here as well — would Champion Vance care to come and look round?"
The man nodded to show that he had it, and put out the invitation to look round as well.
The Conference Champion was treated handsomely indeed, and had the good of it wherever he went; he was a man of "talent" now.
"No need."
Vance declined, went through the civilities and then took his leave, came outside, mounted Aerodactyl and made for the Indigo Plateau.
Just now all he wanted was to get back and make out what this treasure of his was, and whether there was any room to work with it; naturally he had no energy to waste here.
"Roar—"
Aerodactyl rose into the sky and flew for the Indigo Plateau, and before long they were back at the villa there.
"Good work. You're all free to do as you like. Keep an eye on anybody who comes near. Tell me if you find anything."
"Roar, roar—"
"Whooaa—"
The Pokémon all nodded to show they had it, and Vance went inside.
The villa had a cellar to it as well, where things could be stored.
A good many of these houses were built so, and this one, given as the Champion's reward, was no exception.
Vance had checked it over too: nothing here had been tampered with.
Which stood to reason. If they tampered even with the house they gave as a prize, the League would be a poor thing indeed, and they were not so low as that.
Vance took out paper, called up the system as well, and put the Deoxys crystal through an analysis.
The results came up one after another on the system panel, and several points worth noting went down on the paper.
Vance still liked a record kept the primitive way. Computers and the like always felt to him as though they would leak; not safe enough.
"Every one of its vital signs is absurdly low."
Vance murmured it when the analysis was done, looking at the figures.
His Breeder's knowledge came welling up, and he turned over the means of bringing it back.
"System. Analyse the conditions for revival."
On top of that Vance put the system to work thinking it through alongside him, and gathered together what came back.
"The Viridian Power will serve, at least. It's this meteorite from beyond the sky that's the trouble — the points to exchange for one are absurdly high, so it wants planning properly. It could be got hold of out in the world as well."
Meteorite aside, the materials the revival called for were all exceedingly rare and dear, and not easily found.
So Vance meant to go about it by degrees, and take his time.
He would build up the resources for the revival without letting it hold back what Gyarados and the others needed. Everything he had at present went into Gyarados and the rest, and their strength could not have climbed so fast without resources poured in.
In the end Gyarados and the others were where his foundation lay, and the feeling built up along the road was deep besides; even with a Legendary on the scene, nothing would come before them in the order of raising.
To chase after a Legendary single-mindedly and throw every resource into it was not something Vance needed to do; raise Gyarados and the rest properly and they would not fall so very far short either.
And to hold Gyarados and the others back for this Deoxys's sake — would that not be giving up the root to chase after the branch?
"Slowly does it. I may yet manage to pass for a Legendary's Trainer."
As he said it he exchanged a batch of cheaper substitutes out of the system, to be going on with.
He could not produce the whole of it at one go, so for the present it would be "paid by instalments".
In the haze of power the crystal gave off a faint glow, and Vance felt the power around him being slowly drawn away into it.
Vance drove the Viridian Power harder and sent it in.
Half an hour later Vance stopped the flow, picked up the crystal and looked at it. This time the recovery was rather different. It looked a good deal brighter.
"That will do for today. Later on I'll hunt out the treasures that can be used, and try to have it successfully revived inside half a year."
Putting the thing away, Vance sat down cross-legged on the floor to recover the power he had spent.
Happily, when the system had given him the Master-class Viridian Power it had attached the corresponding skills and techniques along with it, so he did not have to go feeling his way himself, which saved him a great deal of time.