The talk ended with both sides leaving on bad terms.
Vance walked out of the hotel with a calm face, came up to a car, opened the door and got in.
"How did it go, boss?"
Ambrose and Emery had been waiting for him inside the car, and once he was in Ambrose asked it.
"We parted on bad terms. The Chief wanted me to be more magnanimous, not to make so much of it. It was almost funny. How am I supposed to be magnanimous about that?"
Vance said it with a snort of laughter.
"Is that so. Then our position is a little dangerous."
Emery said it. If that was how it stood, they had provoked an Elite-Four-class fighter, and if the man moved against them there really would be no small risk in it.
"If he's clever, he won't. Throwing himself in over an outsider is not a wise choice. Besides, if he dares to move, the League's people are watching from the sidelines, and I imagine a Branch Chief interests them a great deal."
Vance said it looking at the two of them. The place where the three of them lived was inside Celadon City, and if an Elite-Four-class man really did appear there, it would certainly put the Celadon authorities on their guard and bring a response; he might well come to grief on the spot.
As for the more extreme course — going over to the League — Vance had no thought of that for the present.
"Headquarters will be sending someone in a few days as well. We'll be moving on somewhere else."
"Doesn't matter to me. I'm sick of Celadon City anyway. If we move, we move."
Ambrose spread his hands and said it as though it made no difference at all to him.
"Same here."
Emery agreed.
After Vance had gone, the private room fell silent.
Bram sat quietly, tapping the tabletop with his fingers, sunk in thought, his face particularly dark.
He had just provoked a Psychic of boundless potential, and that would leave him badly placed.
For the short term there was no problem. Later, there was no telling.
He knew himself well enough: he would never advance at Vance's pace.
"Chief, about this—"
Draven said it hesitantly, with a light of hope still in his eyes.
"I don't know either, Draven. Tell me, why did you have to provoke him? You saw it yourself just now — I did what I could to stand up for you."
Bram, out of sorts, picked up the drink in front of him and took a long pull at it.
At that Draven went pale, and the light went out of his eyes. He already knew what the man meant. Even so, he had to struggle a little longer.
He had a wife and children both; a Team Rocket man he might be, but the face he wore in Celadon City was that of a respectable company director, and a happy life was waiting for him. He did not want to die yet.
"Chief, this Vance looks down on everyone and pays back the smallest slight. I'm afraid it won't end well later on..."
"You needn't go on. I know what you want to say."
Bram cut him off. He was no fool; how could he not see what Draven was driving at?
But he had weighed the danger in it, naturally.
In a situation like this there were usually only two ways out.
The first was to strike hard at once and remove this man of enormous potential before he had grown, and be rid of the trouble for good.
But strike at a snake and fail to kill it, and the harm comes back on you; if he could not be removed, the consequences would be grave.
The second was to mend things with him while the quarrel was still small.
"You said an Elite-Four-class battle broke out in Porta Vista a while back? And that it might have had something to do with him?"
Bram's eyes had gone very deep; he had put the whole of it together.
"Yes. I told you about it some time ago."
"Mm. Then it's no wonder." With that Bram had made up his mind. He patted Draven on the shoulder, gave him the words "look to yourself," and left the private room.
"Chief..."
Draven watched him go with empty eyes, sat down on legs that had gone soft under him, and muttered to himself.
"It's finished. It's finished."
Now even his old chief could do nothing, and he really was in danger.
"Make a fight of it?"
The thought came to Draven all at once — say what you liked, he was a Gym-class Trainer himself. Then he remembered the presence Vance had let out a little while before, and the fight went out of him again.
While he was letting his mind run wild, Vance was already back at the villa, fully equipped and ready to leave at any moment.
Right through to the small hours, nothing stirred.
Vance's communicator sounded once. He picked it up and glanced at it: it was from the Celadon branch.
He opened it and found a letter of apology from Chief Bram himself, with an attachment that was said to hold something he wanted.
"An attachment. Is this a list of names?"
He opened it, and there they were, name after name: the people who had taken part that day, and the other squads under Draven.
The man who had brought Vance up in Draven's office was marked out with particular emphasis.
Plainly this was Bram giving ground, and his show of good faith besides; he added that whenever Vance had the time, he could come to the branch base and collect a handsome gift, which made it clear that he, Bram, had no intention whatsoever of making an enemy of him.
"So this Chief Bram knows which way the wind blows after all."
Vance gave a small laugh and showed the message to Ambrose and Emery.
When the two of them had read it they let out a breath as well. Not having to go up against an Elite-Four-class fighter was all to the good; if it had really come to that, the strain on the pair of them would have been considerable.
"So are we still going to headquarters?"
Ambrose asked it, looking at Vance.
"Of course we are, the application's already in. But not until this business is dealt with. Staying on in Celadon City is dull enough, isn't it?"
Vance answered, and told the Pokémon to keep watch, spreading them out around the villa.
Some precaution was still called for.
Two days passed quickly.
On this day, out in the countryside north of Celadon City, a party of men with hurried faces was making its way through thick forest.
"Faster. I feel as though someone is watching us."
The man at the front said it tensely. He was the very one who had named Vance in Draven's office that day, a Squad Leader himself, and he was leading his men back after finishing an assignment.
"Clap, clap, clap—"
Vance came out slowly from the undergrowth ahead of them, clapping his hands.
"Your instincts are good, Squad Leader Gideon."
"It's you."
The Squad Leader Gideon recognized Vance as well, and it was precisely because he had recognized him that he had grown so tense.
"That's right, it's me. You didn't expect me to turn up here, did you."
Vance said it cheerfully, picking a branch off a tree as he came and giving it a swish through the air. Not bad — it had not snapped. These men would be the ones snapping shortly.
"Squad Leader, don't waste words on him. If it's to be a fight, let's have it."
One of the men at his side shouted it, backing his Squad Leader up. His face hardened and he let his Pokémon out, and Pokémon of Intermediate and Advanced strength appeared one after another on the ground.
Gideon let his own Pokémon out too — an Elite-class Donphan and several Pokémon of Advanced strength. A man does not make Squad Leader without something behind him.
The overall strength of this squad was a great deal greater than that of Vance's own squad in its day.
To Vance as he was now, though, it was nothing much.
"Lads, time to go to work."
The Gyarados, the Slaking and the rest of them came out of their Poké Balls.
The moment the two sides faced each other, a disturbance ran through the other side's Pokémon.
The fighting opened up across the area, and very soon fell quiet again.
It was an overwhelming battle, a rout from beginning to end.
Even the Donphan, the strongest of them, was no match for the Blaziken.