Outside the cave, after resting a while, Vance went round his Pokémon one by one and put medicine on them.
Only then did he find how badly hurt the Aerodactyl and the others were. The Gyarados had been travelling hard for a long time with its wounds on it, and they had worsened somewhat; fortunately, after some work on them, they were held in check.
Then he got out energy cubes and had them all eat, after which he recalled them into their Poké Balls and went back into the cave to recover.
The Pokémon were badly hurt, and his own injuries were no light matter either — the pills especially had overdrawn on his body, and it would take some time to nurse it back.
The night passed without event, and morning came soon enough. After a day of rest and regulated breathing Vance had recovered a little, and his head no longer stabbed at him so badly.
"Blow that away for me."
Vance came outside and threw Grady's body out, and as the Combusken's and the Zweilous's moves came down there was a roar, and under them Grady's body was reduced to flying ash.
"A tidy pile he was carrying. That's what comes of a man out of a big place like Goldenrod City."
Vance said it with feeling as he went through Grady's supplies.
Grady had been a great deal richer than Merrow, and what he carried was worth more too. Vance even turned up two lots of Elite-Four-class material, though the pity of it was that they were for Ghost types.
Understandable enough, though. Grady's main Pokémon had been a Gengar, so naturally what he had gone looking for were Ghost-type treasures.
Vance knew the treasure for what it was: the kind used to refine a Pokémon's body and strengthen its frame so that it could hold Elite-Four-class power — preparation for the Elite-Four tier later on.
An Elite-Four-class Pokémon is stronger than a Gym-class one because the power it can hold and control is greater, purer and stronger; and naturally, in order to hold that power, a Pokémon's body has to be refined up to a certain standard and then take energy poured into it, so that it can enter the Elite-Four state.
"An unexpected piece of luck." Vance put the two lots of Elite-Four-class treasure away and set about sorting the rest, and when he had it in order he made a rough estimate of what it came to.
Setting aside what the two Elite-Four-class treasures were worth, the rest of the supplies together came to over a hundred million.
That was better than Merrow, that fraud of a Branch Chief; his supplies had come to only fifty or sixty million.
Merrow might have been a Branch Chief, but he was also a Gym-class Trainer, and he had spent long stretches in Porta Vista, so what came his way was perhaps less than what came Grady's.
And not long ago the League had been striking hard, hunting Team Rocket down everywhere, so contact with the outside had grown less frequent as well.
"Division Commander Draven. Well, well."
Vance had Grady's communicator. Using Team Rocket's own methods he broke the password, went through the messages on it, and learned who Grady had been in contact with beforehand.
"Very good. Division Commander Draven, and these others."
Vance gave a cold laugh, and fixed a good many of the names on it in his memory.
Once he had recovered and got back to base, he would teach them what cruelty meant.
Anyone who had helped Grady was an enemy and an accomplice, and people of that kind he would not let go.
Vance had a good temper with his Pokémon. With outsiders he had nothing of the sort. Against an enemy, cruelty was the best answer there was.
A man who could make his way inside an organisation like Team Rocket was no innocent flower. Vance had no shortage of coldness, nor of cruel methods; it was only that he was careful and cautious by habit, avoiding trouble where he could and squeezing out more time to raise his Pokémon.
"Good, good. I hope you'll all still be there when the time comes."
Vance said it coldly. He had these few down in his little book already, and if he did not act on it his name was not Vance.
Then he put the things away again. There was no sense spending his energy on a set of dead men.
With these supplies, and what he had prepared himself, he would not have to worry about supplies for a long while.
"That reminds me. I've no idea where this is."
Vance took out his Pokédex to check his position, and found there was no signal on it. It would not display anything at all.
"All that wild swimming last night. We turned off course to avoid Pokémon on the way as well — it was hardly a straight line."
With the Pokédex no use, Vance got out the most primitive sort of map and studied it, and for the moment could make nothing of where he was.
"Never mind. Looking at it does no good."
After a moment Vance put the map away. There was simply no telling where he was.
This was bad. It looked as though he was going to be living wild out here.
The rest was uncertain, but one thing was certain: the place he was in now was an island, somewhere in the boundless sea.
The sea stretched out past sight, and it was thick with danger.
The Pokémon world's oceans take up a great share of it, far more than the land does, and the Pokémon living in the sea are naturally no fewer than those on land — a good deal more, in fact.
Add to that the rich resources of the sea, and that no humans live out there, and that there are no cities standing in the way, and the chances of meeting a powerful Pokémon are higher still.
"Well, that's me finished. If I can't turn that thing up, I'll have to stay here and be King of the Pirates."
Vance did not know whether to laugh or cry, and went on rummaging. What he was after was a compass, to fix his direction with.
"Found it."
It was not long before Vance turned a compass out of the storage bracelet. He tried it and found it still worked.
A thing that could point out the way was something a great many Trainers made sure to carry, above all Trainers travelling abroad; nearly every one of them had one, precisely so that it could be used when they got lost.
Vance took a few rough sightings, put them together with the sun overhead, got a general direction and let out a breath. A direction was enough; otherwise he would have been wandering the open sea.
The urgent thing now was to heal — get his own injuries dealt with first, and work at the rest by degrees.
As for Ambrose and Emery back in Celadon City, there was nothing he could do. He could only pray on their behalf.
"Ambrose, Emery — I hope the two of you are all right. If anything has happened to you, all I can do is send them down to keep you company."
If those two, who were his subordinates and his friends both, were to die, it would be on his account, and all he could do was take their revenge for them as the chance came.
...............
In Celadon City, inside the Pokémon Cottage, Draven arrived with a squad of men.
"Can you two get in touch with Vance?"
Draven said it straight out. He was uneasy, because he could not reach Grady. By any ordinary reckoning it should have been finished last night, and he should have been able to reach him.
And yet he could not.
At first Draven had thought nothing of it — held up on the road, perhaps — but as the time went on he began to feel there was something wrong.
By what Grady had said, the Branch Chief of Porta Vista would lend a hand as well, and would arrive yesterday, so the business should have been over.
But contact was simply gone. At first it had only felt wrong; then word came in from Porta Vista, and that made him feel very bad indeed.
At Beach No. 7 in Porta Vista there had been an Elite-Four-class battle. The cause was unclear and the participants unknown; on investigation by the relevant members it was found to be more destruction by members of Team Rocket.
Other people might not understand it. He understood it perfectly.
Porta Vista, Beach No. 7, and last night into the bargain. There it was — the time and the place both matched.
Above all when he saw those words, "Elite-Four-class". Elite-Four-class! One look at that piece of news and he was crying out that this was bad.
With an Elite-Four-class jumping into it, where did that leave anything?
And with Grady out of contact on top of it, the outcome was not hard to guess.
If Vance was dead, that was the end of the matter. But if he was alive?
Whether that Elite-Four-class Pokémon was his or not, it was a terrifying thing either way.
If it was his, then he was an Elite-Four-class Trainer, and killing a man like himself would be the easiest thing in the world.
If it was not his, then he had come out of an Elite-Four-class's hands alive, and that was no simple matter either.
So when the news came first thing in the morning, he had not even eaten before coming here to have these two get in touch with Vance.
This had to be got clear.
"No idea. You've got the phone as well."
Ambrose said it flatly, without raising his eyes, eating the breakfast in front of him.
Emery did the same, and paid him no attention either.
These past days the two of them had been watched too closely to make any contact with the outside at all.