While Vance was dealing with the two Elite-class Pokémon, the Gyarados and the others at the far end of the field were going through everything in their path, beating one Pokémon after another.
By now the three of them had six of the enemy's Pokémon ringed in, very much with the air of "the three of us have you surrounded"; a good many Pokémon lay on the ground unable to fight, the work of those three a moment earlier.
Their Trainer was fierce. His Pokémon could hardly be anything less.
That savagery left the five surrounded men badly shaken, with nothing remaining of their earlier swagger.
"This is bad — Boss Z has been taken!"
said one of them, sharp-eyed, in a blind panic, seeing Hunter Z held fast in Vance's grip.
At those words the rest of them were frightened out of their wits. This time they really were done for.
They had been counting on the boss of their band to break a way through, come and reinforce them and turn the thing around. And now? The man leading them had been taken. What were they supposed to do?
Fight on with what? Their bare heads?
Never mind that terrifying boy — they could not beat the three Pokémon in front of them with their blood up, either.
The Gyarados above all could not be held back. Beating one Pokémon after another had raised his presence to a certain pitch, and there was nothing in the world so satisfying as the state he was in.
He had no wish to stop. He simply could not stop.
"Bang—"
A Sandslash took the Gyarados's Aqua Tail full on, went straight up into the air, crashed down through several thick trees and dropped flat on the ground, following the Pokémon that had gone before it.
That made it three against five.
"Bang, bang, bang—"
At that moment the Vigoroth settled another one, and the situation changed again: three against four.
"Roar, roar. Now this is living."
Another Pokémon down, and the Gyarados was thoroughly worked up; his condition was better still, his body as though amplified, seemingly a little stronger than before.
"Kaw, kaw, kaw—"
The three Pokémon closed in on the five men and four Pokémon with no good intent at all, walking slowly forward, squeezing away the room they had left to live in.
The five men and four Pokémon gave way as though driven, backing off meekly step after step; the three of them had beaten the fight clean out of them.
"That's my Pokémon for you."
Vance smiled at the sight.
"Sir, we were wrong, we didn't know who we were dealing with, we gave offence — but please, be generous and let us off this once. I've a little put by, and I'll gladly hand it over to make amends."
Beside them, Hunter Z, held fast by psychic power, begged for his life.
Right then he wanted to die. Why had he charged the moment he saw a boy? Why had he let it go to his head? He would have given anything to have the moment back.
Well, that was that. He was finished.
His Pokémon hammered, himself taken.
"Heh."
Vance gave him a look with a good deal behind it. He had already decided how this was going to end for them.
"Boom, boom, boom—"
The Gyarados and the other two had finished their fight as well, and carried four men and one corpse over to Vance; the fifth had been unlucky enough to take a hit in the fighting and had died on the spot.
"Spare us!"
The four of them, filthy and beaten, began begging the moment they touched the ground.
Vance looked at them coldly and said nothing.
The pitiful sight they made left him unmoved. If he had been the weaker of them, by now it would have been him lying dead.
A force wrapped around the men's packs and brought them through the air to Vance.
He pulled a good deal out of them: specially made food lures for Pokémon, carefully designed equipment for capturing them, supplies in bulk, and a great heap of odds and ends.
"Sir, we're handing all of it over to you. We only hope you'll let us go, and we'll see you well repaid afterwards."
Hunter Z said it ingratiatingly. The prop on his face had long since come away, and the face beneath was the one on the wanted notice.
Vance gave a short laugh, a surge of power moved, and Hunter Z died where he stood!
*The man's a fool. Once you're dead all of it is mine anyway.*
Then Vance put hypnosis on the rest, drew a few pieces of information out of them, and when he was done killed the lot of them together.
The job said dead or alive; the League centre would accept the bodies if he brought them in, as long as he could produce some evidence — and as for evidence, what was in their spatial packs was already more than enough.
Leaving nobody alive also served to keep his standing as an Advanced Psychic hidden a while longer.
He did not want to be found out yet. He could go on playing the fool and catching people out.
"Sorry, gentlemen. All I can say is you blundered into me with your eyes shut. I didn't want this either." Vance said it to the bodies with a rueful look on his face.
"I'll be borrowing your bodies."
Once everything was packed away Vance took his Pokémon and left, passing on through layer upon layer of green forest.
The bodies, of course, went into the several spatial packs the men had brought with them.
Vance was not about to put them into a spatial article of his own. It was unlucky, and it would have left him faintly uncomfortable.
Better to use theirs. Let their own gear carry them — everything put to its proper use.
It was only after he had left that Vance remembered he had taken a job before coming out into the field, to gather a batch of medicinal herbs. All his attention these last few days had been on his Pokémon, and he had let it slide for the time being.
So he kept an eye out on the way back, and after a little searching he found a place where the herbs the job called for were growing, and gathered them as he passed.
"Perfect. Absolutely perfect."
Herbs in hand, Vance set off back to the city, riding the Aerodactyl through the sky, looking down at the sea of forest below and up at the clouds gathering and unfurling overhead; and thinking of what this trip had brought him, he felt wonderfully light.
Before long Celadon City came into view in the distance. Nothing at all had happened along the way.
Vance went to the Pokémon Center and handed in the materials the job had asked for, mentioning as well that he had killed the Blood Axe Hunters — which startled the woman at the front desk into fetching an older supervisor to handle the business with him.
The handover went very smoothly. Once the bodies had been examined and found in order, and with a few other things as proof, the job's reward went into his account at once.
At the same time Vance's Pokédex showed his confirmation had gone through. Besides the million Poké Dollars of reward there were contribution points; his balance now stood at 1,510.
Confirmation required 1,000 contribution points, but they were not deducted — they were only a precondition for it.
On that point Vance felt the League had done something decent for once, in not taking a thousand contribution points off him.
"Hahaha. Mind how you go, Mr Vance."
The supervisor saw Vance out with every courtesy. The boy carried a Pokédex, which made him one of their own; and young as he was, with strength like that, he was well worth flattering.
Vance gave a calm nod and walked out.
"Sir, why were you being so polite to him just now?"
the woman at the front desk asked, not understanding, once Vance had gone.
"You women never see past the end of your noses." The supervisor gave a snort, and went on: "According to the intelligence, these Blood Axe Hunters had two Elite-class Pokémon, and the boy Vance took and killed the lot of them — which proves he has Elite-class strength himself. And he is all of eighteen. What does that tell you? It tells you he's a prodigy, and he will certainly go far."
"Really?"
The young woman at the desk heard him out, and her eyes lit up as she looked after the departing figure.
"Stop staring. A man like that is out of your reach."
The supervisor poured cold water on it at exactly the right moment.
"Hmph. You're horrid. Can't a girl even think about it?"