"I didn't kill you. The Rhydon did."
Vance, standing off to one side now, murmured it, and finished the Arbok with an idle hand.
"Roar—"
The Rhydon swung its head round and glared at him with real malice.
"What are you looking at? The man you were supposed to protect is dead, and you had a hand in it. There isn't even a whole body left of him. At least when I did it I left him in one piece. You're harder than I am. Tsk, tsk."
The Rhydon was past reason, and came at him again.
"Hey. You come over here as well."
"Kreee—"
Overhead the Fearow struggled hard, but it had not yet climbed to Advanced, and Vance's thick psychic power folded around it and teleported it somewhere new — somewhere directly in the path of the Rhydon's attack.
"Kreee—"
Every part of the Rhydon's attack landed on the Fearow's body. Elite-class force is not a thing an Intermediate Pokémon can stand against.
Fearow: dead.
Vance had the body away in his pack before it hit the ground. Pokémon material, that; worth a fair amount of money.
Wilder's three Pokémon were all dead now, and Yara's two had died at the Rhydon's hands as well.
People and Pokémon both, all of them dead. Only the Rhydon was left on the field.
Going by the kill record, the MVP of this fight was the Rhydon. Top damage, and no argument about it.
Which left one problem: what to do about the Rhydon itself.
Vance thought it over and had his plan. He would draw it into the interior of Trial Island. There were no few powerful Pokémon in there, more than enough to handle one Rhydon, and he could watch how it went and decide from there.
"What are you roaring about, you big lug? Can you even touch me?"
Vance taunted it again, and then led it off toward the middle of the island.
The Rhydon came after him, roaring one roar on top of another, refusing to be shaken off, with every appearance of meaning to see him dead.
Which suited Vance exactly. He had his pace worked out.
"Boom, boom, boom—"
Great trees went over one after another. Weaker Pokémon felt the Rhydon coming and scattered, not daring to stay where they were; a few unlucky ones met it head-on and were torn apart on the spot, flesh and blood strewn across the ground. It was a savage sight.
On they went, dust rolling up behind them. The Rhydon seemed to have settled on Vance, and would not be shaken loose.
Vance was deliberately keeping his speed down, playing it along on the line a good way behind him.
"There."
Away to the south he could feel a powerful presence. He put on speed and made straight for it.
"Roar, roar—"
With Vance out of sight the Rhydon grew anxious, and sped up after him.
"Bzzz, bzzz, bzzz—"
"Grrrr—"
"An Ursaring and a swarm of Beedrill."
When Vance arrived he found a swarm of Beedrill mobbing an Ursaring. But the Ursaring's hide was thick and its strength out of the ordinary, and the swarm could do nothing with it; every time a paw came up and came down, one or two Beedrill dropped out of the fight.
The strongest thing on the ground was the Ursaring — Elite-class, and the strong presence Vance had picked up.
The Beedrill were mostly Intermediate and Advanced. The one at their head, a little larger than the rest of its kind, was level 38, close to Elite.
Close, but only close. Against an Elite-class Ursaring it still did not amount to much, and even with numbers on their side they were not gaining.
"Bzzz, bzzz, bzzz—"
After a short, fierce spell of it, perhaps because it simply could not win, the Beedrill that looked like the leader gave an order: break off the hunt, and it drew back with its wounded.
"Roar, roar, roar—"
The Ursaring roared in triumph. It did not counterattack. Its attention went instead to the honey in its paws, as though that swarm were worth less to it than what it was holding.
"Sorry about this. Just borrowing it."
"?"
The Ursaring's vision blurred, and the honey in its paws was gone. Vanished out of thin air.
Not quite out of thin air, though. The sweet smell of it still hung there.
"Roar, roar—"
Unforgivable. The Ursaring let out a roar, angrier in its heart than the Beedrill had made it a moment ago, and set off along the trail of the smell. It was going to tear this thief to pieces.
In all its life nobody had taken honey out of the hands of the lord of this forest. It took from others. That anyone should take from it was outrageous.
The thought made it angrier still, its temper burning.
"Angry, are you? The angrier you are, the better this works."
Vance said it with a small laugh, and headed back to meet the Rhydon coming up behind him.
"Roar, roar—"
The sight of Vance turned the Rhydon's eyes redder still, and it let fly with move after move, everything at once.
Vance slipped aside, and the Rhydon's attacks went on into the Ursaring charging up behind him.
"Boom, boom, boom—"
The ground shook. Elite-class force is nothing small; in a moment the ground was pitted with craters.
"Sorry to put you to the trouble. Here's some honey for you. Enjoy your meal."
Vance threw the honey across and flickered out of the clearing.
"Roar—"
The Rhydon knocked it to the ground with the back of its hand, and that not being enough for its temper, raised a foot and stamped on it several times.
A pair of red eyes came up out of the dust, in time to see the Rhydon trampling the honey with its own eyes; that, and the attack a moment before, settled it. The Rhydon in front of it was the guilty party. Robbery was one thing, but this was an insult — throwing the honey down and stamping it flat to its face.
"Roar—"
The Ursaring let out a furious roar, its sharp teeth glinting cold, an Elite-class presence rising off it, all of it fixed on the Rhydon.
The Rhydon was no sweeter in temper. The two of them squared off, two Pokémon with short fuses facing each other directly, and a battle on a grand scale opened up in the forest.
"Rumble, rumble—"
A vast noise came up from where the two Elite-class Pokémon stood, moves flaring one after another at the heart of it, frightening in its scale.
Some way off, Vance stood in a tree and watched the pair of them go at it.
He swallowed a white pill, and a good deal of colour came back into his face; his strength was returning quickly.
"Quite a show." Vance laughed. The fiercer the two of them fought, the better. With any luck the fisherman on the bank would walk off with the catch.
On type the Rhydon had the advantage; on strength it was the Ursaring, Elite-class and as high as level 45, three levels above the Rhydon's 42.
Levels alone do not decide a fight, of course. There are other unknowns that come out in the middle of one.
A Pokémon with real depth behind it can fight above its level, and win as well.
Here, though, both were Elite-class with no gulf between them, and it was hard to call.
Before long both of them were covered in wounds and running with blood.
"Roar—"
The Ursaring caught the Rhydon's head as it came forward and stopped it where it stood, drew its arm back, and drove a fist up into its jaw. The force behind it was enormous; the Rhydon was knocked clean through the air and came down with a crash.
"Kubaaa—"
A stripe of light rose up, and even at that distance Vance felt the heat of it. The Ursaring's Hyper Beam.