"Falling no way short of a super Legendary. That is a very high bar."
Vance said it with feeling; one had only to think about it to see the difficulty of it. A super Legendary meant a Pokémon of the order of Ho-Oh or Rayquaza, not the likes of Suicune or Moltres.
"Very high indeed. But it is the Boss's strategic decision, and all we can do is the research. Happily we got a part of the data off this Godbeast Gang, which has given us a direction."
Blaine nodded and brought Vance up in front of a great screen, over which dense lines of figures flickered along with any number of diagrams, showing the parts of different Pokémon — hands, legs, heads and the rest.
Vance could follow some of the simpler data; anything deeper was beyond him.
"Experimental material is a problem as well. Luckily you have brought some in good time, so we should not run short for a while. I have you to thank for it, and I shall report what you have done to the Boss when I get the chance."
Blaine turned his head and said it with a smile.
"You're too kind, Senior Blaine. Have you anything here that can make good a Pokémon's foundation? I took a Darkrai off the Godbeast Gang's people this time, and it is badly damaged."
"The Godbeast Gang's Pokémon... You must not let the look of them deceive you. That sort is not for you."
Blaine looked at him, with something of advice in his tone.
Every Legendary he had had to do with had some flaw or other, if it was not a question of lifespan, and their wits were dull besides. Pokémon like that might serve well enough as fighting strength; but for raising, for a Trainer of such extraordinary gifts as Vance, they were altogether unsuitable.
He supposed Vance had been taken in by the look of a Legendary.
"I know that. I have it all reckoned up. Set your mind at rest."
Vance said it with a smile.
"Mm. By the look of you, you will not do anything unwise. As it happens, some things have just come in here that you could use."
Blaine nodded and motioned him to follow.
A few moments later the two of them came to a deeper part of the research floor, where a huge apparatus stood before them with a dozen or more staff busy about it.
"Send your Pokémon out and have it go inside."
"Right."
Vance let the Darkrai out, said a few words to it, and had it go in.
"As it happens headquarters has sent over a batch of Dark-type resources, and I am tied up with that other business for the moment, so you may as well be the first to use them."
Blaine explained, pointing at the apparatus in front of them.
"This is Team Rocket's most advanced technology. It raises a Pokémon's abilities, its lifespan, its aptitude, everything, all round. A good many of the Boss's Pokémon have been through it, and Ariana and the others have theirs put right in it as a matter of course; it is only that it eats up a great deal of material, and the cost runs high."
Vance took a few looks at it and sent out his mental force to feel it over: it was not only large but finely made, and inside it lay several Champion-class Dark-type treasures.
"Begin."
"Sir."
The researcher in charge answered, and went off about it.
Blaine looked at him, saw that he was about to speak, and got in first. "You need not thank me; it is no more than your due. Come along and see what else you can use. The Darkrai will take three or four hours in there, and you had better not go yet — bring it back tomorrow and the day after, and the effect will be better still."
"Right. Then I shall not stand on ceremony."
Vance said it with a grin. If the thing could be settled here, it would save him a great deal of work and material.
"Have you any Legendary essence left, anything of that sort..."
.........
"Senior Blaine, have you anything here in the way of energy material from beyond the sky? Meteorites from outside the world, something of that kind — it would be useful for my own training."
...............
That evening Vance lay comfortably in a hot spring. This trip to Cinnabar Island had brought him no small harvest.
From Blaine he had got a small piece of meteorite from beyond the sky.
Vance had tried it: when he brought the meteorite out, Deoxys's crystal answered to it.
And when the Darkrai came out he had looked it over as well: its unsteady foundation had partly recovered.
Pokémon technology, it seemed, was not to be taken lightly either.
Legendary essence and the like they did not have here; and if they had, Blaine would not have dared use it freely.
A Super Legendary Project was under way in Team Rocket now, and everything to do with Legendaries had been requisitioned for it.
Vance had meant to sound him out and ask something about the Pokémon in question, to see whether it was the one he suspected; but Blaine gave nothing more away.
Perhaps it was too important. Beyond that one piece of news, he got nothing at all.
"Glug, glug—"
The hot spring bubbled up glugging, and steam went up into the air.
"Could it be Mewtwo? Though the timeline doesn't seem to fit. Or something else."
Vance thought it over, casting his mind back over the original story to compare.
By the timeline, Ash had not set out on his journey yet, and here they were beginning already?
He turned it over a few times and then let it go; even if it were Mewtwo, it came to the same thing.
He had transmigrated himself; it was nothing strange if other things went differently. The anime world as it had been had had no Vance in it.
And he was Champion of this year's League Conference now; the butterfly effect of that would bring other things on after it.
Perhaps, in some corner he had not noticed, the butterfly effect was working already.
He put his guesses away and thought about his plans for what came next.
How did things stand with the Godbeast Gang? Had they still not found out that Elder Vayne, their man of contact with the League, had disappeared?
Perhaps they had not; or perhaps they had, and did not care.
...............
After a few days' holiday on Cinnabar Island Vance took his Pokémon back to the Indigo Plateau. He had fleeced a great deal out of those few days: the Darkrai, for one, had recovered a good deal, its energy level had risen to 65, and it looked far better in itself than before.
Then one day Vance went to the League's office building, the first time he had ever been to his own place of work.
He had had a message from his superior, the head of the Inspection Department, telling him, the deputy head, to come in.
"Champion Vance."
"Director Pemberton, how do you do, how do you do."
The two shook hands and then sat down facing each other.
"Ha ha. This year I have a young man come to me, and the Conference Champion at that. That is no common thing; in the past they always went over to the investigators."
Pemberton was head of the Inspection Department under the Investigators' Headquarters, a middle-aged man running to fat, with a square face and a receding hairline.
He had worked for the League more than thirty years, and had risen to the post on seniority alone. In fighting strength he was below Vance: in his fifties now, no more than an Elite-Four-class Trainer, and one of the weaker sort within that grade.
If it really came to a fight, one of Vance's Pokémon could have swept the whole of his away.
Just now he was all smiles as he talked to Vance, warm and friendly in his manner, with no airs about him at all.
"Quite a coincidence, then."
Vance said it with a light laugh.
"Ha ha, a coincidence indeed. I was away on business these last days and not here, or I should have made the Champion's acquaintance long before this."
"I meant to call on you as well; only you were not here, and so it was put off."
Vance answered. When a man treated him with respect he returned it, naturally, and put the thing prettily.
Sure enough, when Pemberton heard it he laughed aloud and looked very pleased.
The two of them flattered each other a while, and the atmosphere was cordial enough.
"I have called you in because an assignment has come down from above, and I am short of hands here, so it must be you."