When the Hyper Beam had passed, the Rhydon lay in a large blackened crater, its hide split in a dozen places, its breathing thin — but it had not lost consciousness.
The deep red had drained out of its eyes by now. It had come back to itself.
The next moment the Ursaring was standing in front of it, and another round of attacks came down over everything.
The Ursaring cared nothing for any of that. It poured out the whole of its anger, both fists carrying a freezing cold, hammering them into the Rhydon until it was crying out with each blow.
The Rhydon had likely spent a good deal of its strength chasing him all that way in a fury.
It was now thoroughly on the losing end. Strong as its defence was, it could not hold up under an attack like this from the Ursaring.
"Now."
Vance, who had been watching the two of them fight, said it, and teleported down to the ground with a Poké Ball in his hand, recalling the Rhydon pinned under the Ursaring into the ball.
The ball had come off Wilder as well — the very one the Rhydon had been kept in to begin with.
Badly hurt, close to losing consciousness, with nothing left to resist with, the Rhydon went into the ball.
"Much obliged, Ursaring. A shame my own strength only goes so far, or I could have found you a position with room and board thrown in."
Vance locked the ball and said it with a smile all over his face.
"Roar, roar—"
The beaten thing under its paws had disappeared, and it was certainly this smiling human's doing — daring to take the food out of a bear's mouth. That made the Ursaring angrier still. Points of light gathered at its muzzle, and the next moment a Hyper Beam with everything behind it came firing out.
"Boom!"
The Hyper Beam ploughed a trench better than ten metres deep into the ground, and Vance was no longer standing where it struck.
"Roar—"
From a long way off Vance could still hear the Ursaring bellowing. He turned and left the place.
Taking the meat from a tiger's jaws like that, keeping the Rhydon, was not softness on Vance's part, nor returning kindness for an injury. He had another purpose.
A living Elite-class Pokémon sells for a very high price on the black market outside, far more than the materials off a dead one.
"Ha ha ha. Rich. I'm rich."
In a hidden cave, Vance looked at the heaped mountain of supplies in front of him and said it happily.
"It's true what they say. No horse fattens on the day's grazing, and no man gets rich on his wages."
Set out in front of him were twenty-odd Poké Balls shrunk down small, each with a Pokémon inside. Wilder's haul over the past stretch, presumably, and the species in them were on the rare side.
"Growlithe."
Vance picked up the ball holding the Growlithe and said the name. Of all of them, the Growlithe was the most valuable.
Out in the wider world a Growlithe is all but standard issue for the Officer Jenny family and the police; a brave, loyal temperament suits the work.
The line has no small potential to it either. Its standing is almost level with the starters, and a great many people have their hearts set on one.
This Growlithe was unconscious. Wilder must have caught it here on Trial Island and not yet brought it round to him.
*Good luck on his part. It's mine now. There must be plenty of good things on this island if it holds Pokémon like Growlithe. Team Rocket must have sunk real money into Trial Island.* Vance thought it over quietly.
Trial Island was dangerous at every turn, the place Team Rocket used to sift new members, so of course they ran it with care; placing a few opportunities inside somewhere so dangerous was only natural.
Any new member who came out of Trial Island alive was worth that much.
"Pity the aptitude is only Elite-class. A little higher would have been better. I'll set it aside for now."
Vance said it with some regret. His standards had risen since the system came to him.
What anyone else would have called precious was, to him, nothing much. He did not feel a great deal of pull from it.
An ordinary Trainer would have thought he had come into a treasure and put everything he had into raising it as his main battler.
For his own part, there was nothing much to say about it. He could take it or leave it.
Out of the same heap he also sorted more than ten boxes of Intermediate energy cubes, mostly Rock, Poison and Normal.
Intermediate energy cubes are sought-after goods outside as well, used for raising Intermediate and Advanced Pokémon.
There were a dozen or so treasures besides: high-grade Charcoal, a Water-type evolution stone, Mystic Water...
A quantity of well-aged medicinal herbs, a pile of Pokémon materials, trial cards, and assorted odds and ends — breeding manuals, Poké Dollars and the like.
"So Wilder had a Gym-class uncle standing behind him. No wonder he was so well furnished, and had an Elite-class Rhydon minding him."
Vance had a notebook in his hand with Wilder's own notes written in it, and from it he was learning a good deal more about where Wilder had come from.
Grady. Division Commander in Team Rocket, at present away on a mission in Johto. Earlier in the year one of his Pokémon had broken through to Gym-class, after which he had been transferred to Goldenrod City in Johto as Branch Division Commander.
Wilder, it turned out, was an orphan as well. His parents had died in an accident when he was nine; he had ended up on the streets and been pushed around by the local thugs, and at fifteen his uncle Grady had found him and brought him into Team Rocket. What he had been through young, along with the indulgence of a childless Grady who doted on him, had only made him more overbearing and harder to handle.
"Which means I don't have to worry about this Gym-class man coming after me for the time being?" Vance said to himself when he had finished Wilder's notes.
"Not entirely. Division Commander Grady has been in Team Rocket for years and knows a great many people. There's no saying none of the examiners here are friends or men of his."
Vance rubbed his face. It seemed he would still have to watch himself.
"With the score this batch of cards brings in, that should be about enough. Enough for a high placing, at any rate."
Vance packed the trial cards away. Wilder and his people had collected every card in this area, and now it had all come to him cheaply.
With this windfall, money and resources would not be a worry for a while, and he could give his whole mind to raising his Pokémon.
*If I come across a suitable Pokémon I could catch one and raise it. Trial Island ought to have a few good ones on it — perhaps even a starter or two.*
Vance thought it over quietly, packed his things away, and sat down cross-legged to one side to rest.
He had a busy stretch ahead of him yet, right through to the end of the trial.
Once the trial was over he could sell this lot off and turn it into what he needed.
The night went by quickly. The sky paled along its edge, the grass on the ground was still beaded with water, and a thin mist lay over the forest.
Vance appeared among the trees to carry on with a new day of the trial.
Now that Wilder was dead, the lead role in the fighting from here on belonged to Gyarados, and this was a good place to season him.
And a good chance to look about for a Pokémon worth catching.