The Valley of Dragons is a place where the strong are honoured and dragons rise. There is no fancy way of living there. There is absolute strength, and that is all.
And among the Hydreigon clan most of all.
The Deino lay staring straight up at the ceiling, and in his eyes those savage old days seemed to surface again.
In those days he had been the promising young blood of the clan, nicknamed Handsome by the other dragons, a prodigy among them; he had had Advanced strength while still very young, and for a while there had been nobody to touch him, and Beauty and the other dragons had looked at him with new eyes and cast him longing glances.
But all that had gone as soon as he made the step up to Advanced.
It was as though his body had sprung a leak. He could never raise his strength again, and in a fight he could not even give his whole strength to it; his mind was never settled, and there was always some outside force in his head interfering with him, so that he could not concentrate on the battle.
With so many of the elders present, the Deino knew that no Pokémon could possibly be interfering with him in secret — and yet interfered with he was.
Every battle ended in defeat.
And so his strength never grew, and he met resistance whenever he fought, and he lost and lost again, and the clansmen who had been behind him caught him up, and at one of the clan gatherings he was beaten by an old rival far weaker than himself, and Beauty left him too.
Oh, and those few two-legged beasts came and looked at me as well, and after any amount of examining they all said there was nothing wrong with my body, and they could not find a cause for it.
Later another lot of two-legged beasts came, grey-haired ones, and chattered away discussing him, and after all the discussion they agreed that my body had undergone some peculiar change, and then they asked me what I usually ate, and whether I had eaten anything unusual, or done anything.
I ate what I always ate. Apart from the meat the two-legged beasts brought, I ate Berries, and I soaked in the dragon pool as usual.
Oh, and I remember swallowing a broken dragon bead over at the dragon graveyard — no idea whose it was — but all of that is what any ordinary Dragon-type goes through.
What else was there that was so special? If you are no good at your job you are no good at your job, and there they were saying they had a line on it now and would have my problem solved before long.
After that I went out to clear my head, and one moment of carelessness and I was gone. Farewell my homeland, farewell Beauty.
His thoughts came back, and the Deino looked with irritation at the ingratiating human in front of him. Damn it, what was the man being such a nuisance for?
Couldn't he see that he, Deino the Handsome, was looking back over his life? He was past saving. He had better face facts and be done with it.
"Knock, knock. Nils, Director Locke wants everyone over there. Are you in?"
Someone was calling him at the door.
"All right, all right. You go on ahead, I'll be there in a moment."
Nils answered him, said a few more words to the Deino, and then recalled him into the Poké Ball.
The Deino was glad enough of the quiet. Nobody bothered him inside the Poké Ball, and that suited him better.
"Can they have found something? Or is it another check on the guard detail?"
Nils muttered it, carrying the Deino's Poké Ball hidden on him; then, passing a certain spot, he thought better of it, locked the ball, shrank it and tucked it into a recess in the corner, and went on to where he was wanted.
...............
"Ha ha ha, there was something in this one after all. Everything I wanted was here." In the box Nolan took the lots he had won with great satisfaction and paid by card at once.
Buying what you want puts a man in fine spirits.
"Next will be the Gible, won't it. That lot out there won't be able to hold themselves in."
Vance said it with a grin. The real excitement was in the final lot, and it would be worth seeing how many rich men were in the room.
A pseudo-legendary. Even with as many fine Pokémon as he had, it moved him a little; but it was no use — everything he owned would not carry him past these people.
His purse was the whole of the trouble.
"And now the final lot of this auction — the pseudo-legendary Pokémon Gible. Behold."
A Pokémon shaped like a little shark appeared on the stage, keeping its dignity out of Dragon-type pride, not at all afraid of an occasion like this.
"The pseudo-legendary Gible. You all know what it is, and the particulars are in the leaflet and in the catalogue, so I shall say no more and waste none of your time. Reserve price one hundred million Poké Dollars!"
The auctioneer was brisk about that too, no dawdling, straight to the bidding.
The room came alive at once, everyone below the stage staring red-faced at the Gible up on it. This was a pseudo-legendary. As a rule, if it grew up at all, a Gym was within reach — and Elite-Four-class was not out of the question.
Get hold of the Gible and there was a chance of becoming a Trainer whose name carried across a whole region. It was a pity that all they could do was want it.
Never mind not affording it. Even a man who could afford it would not have an easy time of it afterwards; a Pokémon at that level could only be protected by the very great, and these people could not have kept hold of it.
The great men hidden about the hall began speaking up, and the bidding climbed fast.
A pseudo-legendary Pokémon is something even a Gym-class Trainer wants very keenly; for an Elite-Four-class Trainer the pull of it is perhaps a little less, but none of them would refuse one either.
Whether he raised it himself or left it to his family and his descendants, it was an excellent thing to have.
"Six hundred million! The guest in Box A-10 bids six hundred million Poké Dollars. Is there anything more? If not, this pseudo-legendary goes to that honoured guest."
"Six hundred and fifty million! My dear Oren, I have taken a fancy to this Gible myself. My apologies."
"Then I am sorrier still, because I mean to fight for it as well. Everyone knows your house, brother Oren, wants to raise an Elite-Four-class of its own — but forgive me, so does my family."
.................
The noise outside went on; competitors, perhaps, trading words at each other, and the box had amplification in it, which made it louder still.
From what the men were saying, perhaps every one of these buyers wanted the Gible in order to change his family's fortunes and climb into a higher rank of things.
"Hmph. One billion. I intend to have it today. Do as you please."
A heavy voice rose, and the room went quiet at it, and the bidding stopped.
That voice had come from Box A-1, which said that its owner was no small figure.
"One billion. Is there any further bid?"
The auctioneer went on calling, but nobody bid again, and in the end the Gible went to the man in Box A-1.
"Tsk. League higher-ups, and here they are bullying people and coveting a Pokémon. Tsk, tsk, tsk. That Kingsley family sinks lower every year."
Nolan clicked his tongue and laughed, with an air of contempt about it.
And the Kingsley people, once they had taken delivery of the Gible, left at once.
There the auction came to a pause for the time being, though other entertainments were going on below, and to the music a company of beautiful women danced upon the stage.
The two of them ordered a few things at random and settled down to watch.
"Boom—"
All at once the liner shook several times, as though she had been attacked, and the lights inside her dimmed as though something had gone wrong with the electrics as well, and people began to panic.
Happily she had righted herself within a dozen seconds or so.
"Ladies and gentlemen, a pod of Wailmer passed us just now and caused a little disturbance. The matter has been dealt with. Please do not be alarmed."
The announcement came over, telling everyone aboard not to be alarmed.
"That wasn't Wailmer going past. That was the backwash of a battle."
Vance looked off in one direction. Over there he could feel several immensely powerful forces laced together, at the level of an Elite Four.
In that direction, Elite-Four-class Trainers were fighting!
At that same moment, as the hull lurched, a shrunken Poké Ball was jolted out of a corner up above one of the passages; it rolled along the metal plating and dropped straight down, and fell neatly into a large glass of beer, where it went glugging down under the froth and out of sight.
"Rotten luck. Thank goodness these two beers are all right, or they'd have had it out of my wages again."
Caught by the sudden lurch, an attendant had gone down on one knee against the hull beside him, holding two large glasses of beer in both hands.
He had only just reached the spot when it happened, and in the dimness he never noticed that one of the glasses he was carrying now had a shrunken Poké Ball in it.