"Rumble, rumble—"
Half an hour had gone by in this fierce fight, and the two sides were still trading blow for blow without a pause.
Mega Gyarados was holding its Mega Evolution on sheer depth of stamina, but wound after wound had opened across it, and a dim black ghost-power clung around each of them, which pained the Gyarados badly.
The Slaking and the others had taken their share of cuts too, and were still holding on.
In a gap in the fighting Vance got a pill out and swallowed it down, dosing himself to bring his stamina back, and threw himself into the fight with the Dusknoir again.
Their stamina was going fast, but as the fight went on there was something wrong with the Dusknoir's condition too.
Its presence had begun to waver, thread-fine cracks were opening across it, and life energy was leaking out of them in wisps.
But the Elite-Four-class foundation was still there, and for the moment there was no telling who would win.
Vance's plan was to drag it out — drag it out until something changed, and then he would have a hope of winning. Even if no hope of winning came, he could drag it out until its presence guttered and its level dropped, and then withdraw at his leisure.
The Dusknoir's attacks his side could still, with difficulty, hold off together, and when they could not hold one they Teleported clear of it — but injuries were not to be avoided.
After that Vance brought out medicines and used them on his Pokémon, adding what strength he could.
"Still too weak. All this work to fight one crippled Elite-Four-class."
Vance wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and said it with resignation.
If he could have run, he would have run long ago. Staying to fight this Dusknoir out was not a thing he had chosen.
One fight had shown him how strong Elite-Four-class really was. Even he, the Trainer, had been hurt.
This was the worst crisis he had met since he took up the Trainer's trade.
"People watching us, are there? Well — an Elite-Four-class battle, this much noise, this long. It would be strange if nobody had noticed."
Vance said it with his brow furrowed. Out-of-the-way the place might be, but the commotion an Elite-Four-class Dusknoir made was no small thing.
"Sir, what should we do?"
A squad of investigators had ringed the place at a distance and did not dare come closer, since the strongest among them was only a Gym-class Trainer, and even he would not go forward, for fear of being drawn into the fighting. To be drawn in was near-certain death.
"Do? We wait and see how it goes. Or would you care to go and find out what's happening?"
The officer answered his man sourly.
"I think I'd better not."
Another surge of that terrible energy rolled out, and it made the young man pull his head down between his shoulders.
If the officer, a Gym-class man, would not go in, then a small fry like him certainly would not. Going in would mean dying and nothing else — you had only to look at the backwash of that power to know it.
"Hm, hm. We hold here. I've already sent word up the line, so someone should be coming. What we can do is keep this area under watch, and whatever else there is, it waits until support arrives."
"Yes, sir."
"Rumble, rumble—"
The dim black Ghost-type power tangled with a dozen other forces, energies of every kind locked together, striking at and resisting one another, and then the whole of it burst apart at once.
The men on the outside took one look and called their Pokémon back in a hurry. Under the black of the night, moves of every colour flashed across the sky, the terror of them plain to feel.
"Pfft—"
Vance opened his mouth and brought up a mouthful of blood, everything inside him still shaking. The Gyarados and the others were guttering too, each of them carrying wounds.
"Roar, roar—"
A strange square of space formed and covered the whole area within it.
Inside it, Vance and his Pokémon felt themselves pressed down.
The move was the Dusknoir's. It had put up this Trick Room on instinct, and interfering with it did no good at all.
And inside this space the Dusknoir, which had not been fast to begin with, was amplified: its speed doubled.
In the blink of an eye the pitch-black shape was in front of Vance, a huge black fist came out, and it hammered him down into the ground.
"Roar—"
Mega Gyarados roared in anger and came forward to stop it, and the thing flickered round behind it and brought a fist down.
Then the Dusknoir turned on the Slaking, closed in, and swung a fist down.
The Slaking braced both arms and took the blow, and as its power opened for a counter the space in front of it was empty. The Dusknoir was gone.
The Slaking Teleported away at once, and the next second a huge fist came down on the ground where its feet had been.
The Dusknoir came after it fast.
"You two work with me. The way it does things, it will come round behind me. Watch for it."
Over the telepathic link the Gyarados and the Slaking both heard Vance's voice. Several exchanges in, they had the Dusknoir's way of fighting worked out, and they had their plan settled between them.
Vance appeared in midair and let a psychic beam off at it, which it dodged easily, and in a blink it had cut round behind him.
"Rooaar—"
The Gyarados came up off the ground and bit hard, and where it bit was exactly where the thing was.
The Slaking Teleported to the spot as well.
The Dusknoir moved to slip aside. Vance saw it, thought *there it is*, and went forward to meet it.
On its way clear it collided with a streak of blue, and in the collision a green power surfaced — the Viridian Power — and that pure life force was carried across with the impact and taken into the Dusknoir's body.
The streak of blue was Vance, of course. At full strength he struck the Dusknoir once and stopped it where it was.
The force of the counter-blow slammed Vance into the ground, and his insides felt as though they had been shifted out of place, the pain past bearing — but he had what he was after.
With no time to rest, Vance got up at once, felt for that thread of Viridian Power, and fixed the Dusknoir's position.
A Dusknoir with nothing but instinct, meeting life energy as pure as the Viridian Power, was bound to take it in. Vance had counted on that, and it had turned out as he thought. The Dusknoir was marked for him now: by sensing where the Viridian Power was he could place the Dusknoir, and that got round the problem of its speed.
"Behind — behind the Gyarados."
The Gyarados heard it, wrapped Dragon-type power around its tail and swept a Dragon Tail upward, and sure enough it struck the Dusknoir. With the position known, the Slaking came cutting in as well, Vance's figure appeared overhead, and the three of them landed another joint blow and traded a move with the Dusknoir face to face.
After that, wherever the Dusknoir appeared, Vance and the two Pokémon followed it in real time and placed it exactly. One man and two Pokémon together, with no thought for anything else, laid into the Dusknoir with everything they had.
Something began to go wrong with the Dusknoir as well: the fine cracks grew more numerous and wider, and its power started to fail it.
The man and the two Pokémon glanced at one another, all of them glad of it, seized the chance and got their strongest moves off at once.
The Gyarados's Dark Pulse, the Slaking's Thunderbolt, Vance's huge fist of energy.
Off to one side, at Vance's order, the Aerodactyl and the Zweilous attacked as well.
Moves in every colour of the spectrum came together and struck the Dusknoir all at once, driving it down into the ground, and its presence guttered lower still.
Seeing it, Vance gathered four walls of light and bound the place in, so that the Dusknoir could not slip away, then had the Gyarados and the others put their moves out again and hammer down on it.
Ice Beam, Thunderbolt, Dark Pulse and the rest came down on it a second time.
After a run of terrible, earth-overturning noise, the ground was full of the din of battle.